Democrats are looking to flip two Republican-leaning state Senate seats Tuesday as they seek to continue their party’s success in special elections this year.
Voters are heading to the polls in Iowa and Georgia to fill seats vacated by Republicans. The election in Iowa may be a bit more consequential as it will determine whether Republicans continue to hold a supermajority in the state Senate, but wins or overperformances in either race would be a boost to Democrats at a time the party is seeking to improve its brand.
Here’s what to know about the special elections Tuesday.
Democrats competing in Republican-leaning districts
The Democrats competing for the two state Senate seats are facing a bit of an uphill battle, but one much more than the other.
The Georgia Senate seat in the state’s 21st District first became vacant in May when former state Sen. Brandon Beach (R) resigned from office after President Trump appointed him to become the U.S. treasurer. He had held the seat for more than a decade, representing a northern suburb of Atlanta.
The district is overwhelmingly Republican-leaning, having last elected Beach to another term with more than 70 percent of the vote last year. But Democrat Debra Shigley is hoping to pull off an upset as she competes on the same ballot with a half-dozen Republicans.
All the candidates running for the seat will face off, and the winner must receive a majority of the vote to win the seat. If no candidate receives a majority, then the top two best-performing candidates will advance to a runoff next month.
But with what is expected to be a significantly low-turnout election, predicting how the electorate will look is difficult.
Iowa’s Senate seat in District 1 will be the second one this year that Democrats are trying to flip. It became vacant in June when former state Sen. Rocky De Witt (R) died in office from cancer.
De Witt won the district’s last election relatively comfortably in 2022 but by a much smaller margin than Beach did in Georgia last year, ousting a Democratic incumbent by about 10 points. In what is also expected to be the same type of lower-turnout elections that the party has excelled in, Democrats hope Catelin Drey (D) can defeat the Republican choice for the seat, Christopher Prosch.
DNC going all in on Iowa
In a sign of their focus on the Iowa race, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) is engaging in a full-court press to try to win the seat, dispatching volunteers and resources to the small district in the Hawkeye State.
The DNC has sent a team of 30,000 volunteers for “get out the vote” efforts and host text- and phone-banks with the state Democratic Party. Along with the seat appearing potentially attainable, the party is particularly interested in it because winning the race would eliminate the two-third GOP supermajority in the state Senate.
Although Republicans have control of both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, breaking up the supermajority would ensure the governor’s nominees couldn’t sail through on a party-line vote, as a two-thirds majority is needed for confirmation.
The DNC is planning to support Drey, who is the founder of the grassroots organization Moms for Iowa, with canvassing, digital engagement and phone calls.
DNC Chair Ken Martin said the party has ignored the importance of down-ballot elections for too long.
“Rebuilding the Democratic Party starts from the ground up, and we’ve seen amazing victories in Iowa so far this year,” he said. “We’re all hands on deck to break the Iowa Republican supermajority and invest our resources in supporting candidates on the ground everywhere.”
Dems hoping to continue their winning streak
The biggest takeaway Democrats will look for from Tuesday night’s result is whether their candidates can continue the trend of performing better than the party did in the most recent elections.
The party has already been doing that through most of the special elections this year, one bright spot for the Democrats despite consistently low approval among voters of the party in polling. The DNC said in a release that Democrats have been overperforming in special elections in 2025 compared to the party’s past performances by almost 16 points.
That success has seen highpoints in Iowa and Pennsylvania earlier this year, when Democratic candidates flipped state Senate seats in districts that voted for President Trump in the 2024 election. Democrat Mike Zimmer won in Iowa in January by about 3.5 points in a district that voted for Trump by more than 20 points, and Democrat James Malone prevailed in Pennsylvania in March by almost 1 point in a district Trump also carried by double digits.
If a similar overperformance is seen in Iowa on Tuesday, that should be enough for Drey to pull off a win. But it will require the same amount of energy that Democrats seemed to have in past elections.
Democrats also scored a comfortable victory in April in a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race and outperformed in two special U.S. House races in Florida despite losing in deep-red districts.
Although the Iowa race is expected to be a lower turnout contest compared to regular ones, early reports indicate higher voter participation than normal for a special election.
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