Does a shocking election result in Texas mean anything in Florida politics?

In the suburbs of Fort Worth, Texas, on Jan. 31, a Democratic candidate named Taylor Rehmet won a Special Election for a state Senate district by 14 points. It was the same district Donald Trump won by 17 points in 2024 — a 31-point swing, the largest over-performance in a competitive Special Election since Trump took office a year ago.

That result has energized Democrats around the country about the possibility of a major blue wave in the Midterm congressional election this November — but could that wave trickle down to the Sunshine State, where in recent years the GOP has emerged as a juggernaut?

“What we saw in Texas this past weekend is the American people coming together and rejecting what is happening — the corruption and the chaos out of the Oval Office,” says Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried.

However, special elections like the one in Texas are different in many ways from general elections, political analysts note. In the words of Gov. Ron DeSantis, “they’re quirky,” as he posted on social media following the Texas election.

“That said,” the Governor cautioned, “a swing of this magnitude is not something that can be dismissed. Republicans should be clear-eyed about the political environment heading into the Midterm.”

Florida Democrats boasted about how they narrowed the margins of two strong GOP-performing congressional districts in special elections held last April. Those candidates were boosted by financial contributions from around the country in races that took place just a few months into Trump 2.0.

Even with Democrat Josh Weil outspending Republican Randy Fine in Congressional District 6 by a 10-1 ratio, however, Fine ended up winning the seat by 14 percentage points — a seat Republican incumbent Mike Waltz had won by 30 points just six months earlier.

Democrats hope to seize on the public backlash to Trump’s mass deportations and specifically the hard-line enforcement against undocumented immigrants and even American citizens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65%) say ICE has gone too far, according to an NPR/PBS/Marist poll released Thursday.

The place where Florida Democrats presumably might hope to exploit those fissures is in South Florida, where Miami Republicans like U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar and state Sen. Ileana Garcia have been warning that such actions could backfire on the GOP this Fall.

But will South Florida Hispanic voters turn on the Trump administration and vote Democratic?

“Here in Miami, the immigration issue is not so clear-cut,” says Florida International University Political Science Professor Eduardo Gamarra.

​In a survey of 408 Venezuelans living in Florida, which he helped conduct last May, Gamarra found that 50% of Trump voters said they would vote for the President again, and 22% said they regretted their votes.

While many of those voters are thrilled the U.S. military extracted President Nicolás Maduro from power last month, Gamarra said, they remain upset about the Trump administration deporting hundreds of Venezuelans every week after the Department of Homeland Security announced termination of the 2021 designation of Venezuela for temporary protected status and urged them to “self-deport.”

“You’re going to have a significant segment of the Venezuelan voter who voted for Trump who will not vote for a Republican candidate,” he said. “Now, how large that’s going to be is anyone’s guess.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has listed three Republican congressional districts in Florida as “in play” this Fall: Cory Mills’ Congressional District 7; Anna Paulina Luna’s Congressional District 13, and Salazar’s Congressional District 27, a district that Trump won by more than 14 points in 2024.

Of the GOP members of Congress from South Florida, Salazar is the most vulnerable, Gamarra said.

“This is not a Cuban-only district,” he said about CD 27. “It has Haitians. African-Americans. Wealthy Latin Americans on Key Biscayne. It goes through downtown Miami and Little Havana, which is no longer Cuban. It’s mainly Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan … so it’s a very complex district, and that’s why she has trouble.”

Fried argues the immigration issue will backfire on the Republicans. “It’s disrupting communities. It’s putting fear into our immigrant communities. Everybody in Miami is walking around with visas and passports — that’s not how you build community, and I think that there’s going to be a complete rejection of what is happening on the ground.”

Fried’s counterpart, Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power, now a candidate himself for Florida’s CD 2, says “absolutely not” to the chance for a blue wave, noting that a Republican beat a Democrat in an Alabama state House race this past week by 60 percentage points, 28 points higher than Trump’s victory there in 2024

“This is like a bad re-run of Democrats using special elections to claim Florida in play,” he said. “Florida will remain red, and we will have victories up and down the ballot because Florida voters have rejected the radical agenda of the Florida Democrats.”

GOP political consultant Anthony Pedicini says Republicans in Florida are insulated from national trends because of their huge voter registration advantage, now more than 1.46 million. “As political operatives, we always watch the trends, and history shows us the party in power often doesn’t fare well, but I’d rather be us than them here in the free state of Florida,” he said in an email.

A coming Special Election that could indicate how November might play out takes place next month in western Hillsborough County in the state Senate District 14 seat that has been vacant since Jay Collins left it to serve as Lieutenant Governor on Aug. 12.

Polk County Republican state Rep. Josie Tomkow is taking on Democrat Brian Nathan, a union leader and Navy veteran, in a seat that Collins won by 10 points in 2022.

“One of the reasons why Democrats have over-performed in special elections is because they have more engaged voters in smaller elections,” Tampa Bay Area political consultant Barry Edwards said, noting the spending in the two special congressional elections last year. “In this race, that’s not going to be the case,” he added.

Tomkow has approximately $239,000 in her regular campaign account and more than $3.3 million in her political committee account, while Nathan has raised around $50,000.

Brad Coker, the longtime pollster with Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, believes Democrats “could be some pickups at the county or state legislative level,” referring to the Eileen Higgins victory in the Miami mayoral race in December.

“As far as the gubernatorial race and the U.S. Senate race, at the moment I don’t see any of the Democrats seriously contending in a statewide General Election contest,” he said.

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Mitch Perry reporting via Florida Phoenix, part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501 (c) (3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: [email protected].