Democrats are claiming a surge of activism driven by fiery opposition to President Trump, offering hope for recovery in 2018 to a party demoralized after steep losses in the 2016 elections.
Democratic officials point to voter turnout in a handful recent special elections to fill vacant seats in state legislatures as evidence of the budding turnaround.
In a Feb. 25 Delaware senate race, the victorious Democrat received over 1,000 votes more than the party’s nominee did in the 2014 midterm. That’s noteworthy because turnout in specials tends to be sharply lower than in general elections. Plus, the vote occurred on a Saturday.
In a Connecticut senate race decided on Tuesday, the Democrat lost. But the ruby red district that went 2-1 for the Republican in the November general election, and the Democratic nominee lost by only about 2,000 votes, a net improvement of around 14,000 votes.
Democrats are watching to see if this trend carries over into an upcoming special election to fill a Republican-leaning, suburban Atlanta House seat, the off-year Virginia governor’s race, and ultimately, the 2018 midterms.
“In almost every special since Trump’s election, regardless of outcome, Democrats performed better in these districts than Hillary [Clinton] did just a few months ago,” said Carolyn Fiddler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.
Trump scored a surprise victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in November.
The Republicans’ 2016 sweep shut the Democrats out of power in Washington, capping a years-long slide for the party that saw the loss of its congressional majorities, several governor’s mansions and nearly 1,000 seats in states legislature.
Democrats say that Trump, his agenda, and conduct have energized their party and fueled leftwing activists to get involved. Party officials report an uptick of volunteers at local offices and point to the outcome of a host of special elections since Nov. 8.
In the Delaware race, which determined the balance of power in the state senate, Democratic officials say that more 1,000 volunteers were active on behalf of nominee Stephanie Hansen during the two-month campaign. Many traveled to the district from out of state. On Election Day, about 500 were deployed on the ground to turn out the vote.
Democrats have won two special elections for state legislature in Iowa and two in Virginia. Fiddler, of the DLCC, the party committee focused on state legislative races, said that Democratic turnout in these contests has, in some instances, outperformed 2012, when President Barack Obama was re-elected.
Higher turnout for Democrats is crucial heading into 2018. The party’s most committed voters are less likely to participate in midterm elections than general elections. That trend contributed to Republican wave victories in Obama’s two midterms, in 2010 and 2014.
Democrats are trying to figure out how to harness the energy they are seeing on the Left.
“I think you have to take a really fresh look at all turnout assumptions as we head into 2018. I don’t think you can assume it will look like anything we have seen in the past,” Democratic strategist Ali Lapp said in an interview with “Examining Politics,” the Washington Examiner’s weekly podcast.
Lapp is the executive director of House Majority PAC, the party’s designated super PAC focused on House races.
The vacant Georgia House district is on their radar because Trump defeated Clinton in the seat by only 1 percentage point. Republican Tom Price, who resigned from the 6th district to become Health and Human Services Secretary, won re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote.
“Yes, we’ve done poorly in midterms since Obama’s been president, just like they did poorly in the midterm when George Bush was president in 2006,” Lapp added, referring to the party’s last successful midterm, when Democrats won control of Congress.
The party that holds the White House historically suffers losses in the midterm.
With Trump in the White House, there is some chance the pattern could be broken. Republican voters skew white and older, and are more likely to show up to vote in midterms. That could help the party weather political headwinds.
Democratic leaders say they plan to invest resources and consider new strategies to motivate their committed supporters, who are low-propensity voters for showing up over the next two years. They’re counting on Trump make that effort a little easier.
“Our mission of this party — this committee — is to elect people from the school board to the Senate,” Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told reporters during a Feb. 25 news conference. “We’ve got to do that because we’ve lost a lot of seats.”
