Trump, Musk face blame for setbacks, but are Wisconsin, Florida elections crystal ball for 2026 midterms?

Democrats are celebrating a larger-than-expected victory in a high-profile and historically expensive election in battleground Wisconsin, in the first statewide ballot box contest since President Donald Trump’s return to power in January.

And while the GOP came out on top in Tuesday’s other marquee contests, comfortably holding control of two vacant congressional seats in twin special elections in red state Florida, Democrats are spotlighting that their candidates overperformed in overwhelmingly Republican districts.

Democrats are portraying last week’s contests as early referendums on Trump’s sweeping and controversial moves during the opening months of his second tour of duty in the White House, including the massive federal government downsizing being steered by billionaire White House special adviser Elon Musk.

And Democrats argue that the results in Wisconsin and Florida are a sign of things to come in next year’s midterm elections.

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“These races proved what we’ve seen over and over again this year: people are already fed up with Trump’s chaos agenda and they’re voting for a change,” Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin emphasized in an email to supporters.

But Republican National Committee chair Mike Whatley, pointing to the Florida victories, countered that “the American people sent a clear message…they want elected officials who will advance President Trump’s America First agenda, and their votes can’t be bought by national Democrats.”

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In Wisconsin, liberal-leaning Judge Susan Crawford topped conservative-leaning Judge Brad Schimel by roughly 10 percentage points, to preserve the liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is likely to rule going forward on crucial issues like congressional redistricting, voting rights, labor rights and abortion.

With a massive infusion of money from Democratic-aligned and Republican-aligned groups from outside Wisconsin, which turned the technically nonpartisan race into the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, the contest partially transformed into a proxy battle over Trump as well as Musk, who personally inserted himself into the election.

Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who has taken a buzz saw to the federal government workforce as he steers Trump’s recently created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), dished out roughly $20 million in the Wisconsin race through aligned groups in support of Schimel.

And Musk, in a controversial move, handed out $1 million checks at a rally in Green Bay last Sunday to two Wisconsin voters who had already cast ballots in the contest and had signed a petition to stop “activist judges.”

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“I never could have imagined that I’d be taking on the richest man in the world, for justice in Wisconsin. And we won,” Crawford said in her election night victory speech.

The results in Wisconsin will likely give the Democrats a jolt, and validate their efforts to target Musk.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the chamber, argued that Wisconsin voters “sent a decisive message to Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and DOGE by rejecting an extreme Republican for their Supreme Court: our democracy is not for sale.”

And the DNC, looking ahead to next year’s bigger contests in the 2026 midterm elections, called the showdown in Wisconsin a “bellwether race.”

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But veteran Republican strategist Matt Gorman noted that two years ago, when the conservatives lost their majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the liberal-leaning candidate won by 11 points.

Pointing to this week’s 10-point margin, with Trump in the White House, Gorman asked”this is what Democrats are jumping up and down over?”

In Florida, the double-digit victories by the Republican candidates will give the GOP a little bit of breathing room in the House of Representatives, where the party is holding onto a very fragile majority as it aims to pass Trump’s agenda.

But the Democratic candidates in the two special congressional elections vastly outraised their Republican counterparts – a sign that the party’s base is angry and energized – which forced GOP-aligned outside groups to pour money and resources into the races during the final stretch. And the Democratic candidates ended up losing by 15 and 14 points in districts that Trump carried by 37 and 30 points in last November’s presidential election.

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Democrats quickly spotlighted how the party “overperformed” in Florida. And the House Majority PAC, the top super PAC supporting House Democrats, touted that the results showed “that the political headwinds are firmly at our backs heading into 2026.”

But Mike Marinella, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, argued that “Democrats just lit over $20,000,000 on fire in a doomed-to-fail effort to make two deep-red Florida districts competitive – and got blown out of the water in the most embarrassing way.”

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The elections in Wisconsin and Florida were held on the eve of Trump’s blockbuster tariff announcement, sparking a trade war with the nation’s top trading partners and triggering a massive sell-off in the financial markets. The latest move by the president could also set the stage for an even bigger ballot box backlash next year.

But Democrats have a serious brand issue right now.

The party’s favorable rating sank to all-time lows in separate national polls conducted last month by CNN and NBC News. Those numbers followed a record low for Democrats in a Quinnipiac University survey in the field in February. 

Additionally, the latest Fox News National poll indicated that congressional Democrats’ approval rating is at 30%, near an all-time low. And Democratic activists are irate over their party’s inability to blunt Trump’s agenda.

And when it comes to normally low-turnout off-year elections and special elections, the party in power – which in the nation’s capital is clearly the Republicans – often faces political headwinds.

“We’ll get up to fight another day. But this wasn’t our day,” Schimel said in his concession speech.

And Wisconsin GOP chair Brian Schimming noted that “coming off a successful November, we knew the April elections would be challenging.”

DNC chair Martin is touting that “Democrats have won or over-performed in nearly every special election race this year, including this week’s.”

But Republicans note that Democrats enjoyed a slew of special election victories in 2023 and 2024 before suffering serious setbacks in last November’s elections.

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“Special elections are special for a reason, and not always useful canaries in the coal mines for what lies ahead,” veteran Republican strategist Colin Reed told Fox News Digital. “While they can be used as a barometer for energy, they are also a reflection of the individual candidates whose names are on the ballots.”

And Gorman emphasized that special elections “are not predictive.”

Reed argued that “the bigger challenge for the Democrats looking ahead is the lack of a vision or governing agenda beyond reflexive and blanket opposition to the White House and their continued positioning way outside the mainstream on a slew of commonsense issues.”