Special elections in Georgia and Wisconsin Tuesday continued the pattern that has prevailed throughout the second Trump administration—a collapse of political support for the Republican Party, despite the failure of the Democratic Party to offer any genuine alternative to Trump’s policies of war, economic austerity and attacks on democratic rights.
The results gave further impetus to Trump’s efforts to prevent a landslide defeat in the mid-term elections November 3 through voter intimidation, blocking access to the ballot for poor and minority voters, and deploying his ICE immigration gestapo and even the US military at the polls.
Both of Tuesday’s elections took place in the shadow of the US war with Iran, which has already had disastrous effects on the US economy and particularly on the living standards of the working class, with the price of gasoline jumping more than $1 a gallon since Trump ordered massive bombing to begin on February 28.
Trump’s approval rating in national surveys has sunk below 40 percent. The most recent figures showed him at 41 percent in Wisconsin and 38 percent in Georgia, the two states where voting took place Tuesday.
Voter turnout was far lower than in the immediately preceding elections. In Wisconsin, total turnout fell from 2.36 million in 2025 to 1.51 million, a drop of 850,000. This disproportionately affected the Republican candidate, Maria Lazar, who received 600,000 votes, 460,000 fewer than last year’s defeated Republican, Brad Schimel.
The Democratic vote also fell, but not as sharply. Winning candidate Chris Taylor received 905,000 votes, down 396,000 from the 1,301,000 won by Susan Crawford last year. As a consequence, the Democratic margin widened from 10 percentage points (55-45) to 20 percentage points (60-40).
Taylor’s margin of more than 300,000 votes was a comparative landslide in a state that has been closely contested in the last three presidential elections. (Trump won the state by 23,000 votes in 2016, lost it by 21,000 in 2020, and won it by 31,000 in 2024).
Voter turnout was increased last year by two factors. It was the first opportunity for the electorate to show its opposition to Trump. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, also sought to buy control of the state’s highest court, pumping nearly $20 million into the coffers of the Republican candidate, a record for a state judicial election, nominally non-partisan.
The election in Georgia, in the 14th Congressional District, the state’s largely rural northwest corner, was to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the fascist advocate of conspiracy theories who fell out with Trump over foreign policy, particularly the US war with Iran. A March 10 primary left Democrat Shawn Harris, a retired Army general, who is African-American, competing with Republican Clay Fuller, a local district attorney.
Fuller won the runoff election with 56 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent for Harris. The 12-point margin was down sharply from 2024, when Greene defeated Shawn Harris by 29 percentage points, and Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 37 points. Even more significant was the collapse in voter turnout, which fell from nearly 300,000 to just over 130,000.
The Georgia result showed the largest swing against the Republicans of any special election since Trump took office. Such a double-digit swing to the Democrats, if it were to materialize on Election Day this year, would sweep an estimated 80 Republican House members out of office and would cost the Republicans control of the Senate as well.
All told, Democrats have captured 30 Republican seats in state legislatures and other off-year contests, while the Republicans have not captured a single Democratic seat. This pattern shows the mounting popular hostility to the Trump administration, albeit distorted and constrained by the reactionary, anti-democratic structure of the two-party system, with both parties committed to the defense of the financial oligarchy and the capitalist system.
Recognizing the growing popular opposition to his administration, Trump issued an executive order last month to curb mail-in voting and give the US Postal Service, whose board he appoints, the authority to reject state mail ballots that do not meet his “security” prescriptions. He instructed the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to prepare a master list of eligible voters and impose it on the states, in defiance of the US Constitution, which gives states the primary role in election administration and provides no role for the federal executive.
The White House is pushing for congressional approval of the SAVE America Act, which would make it mandatory for prospective voters to show proof of citizenship when they register and to show government-issued ID when they come to the polls. Both the bill and executive order are premised on the lies that millions of non-citizens are voting in US elections, and that Trump’s defeat in 2020 was the result of this voting by “illegal aliens.”
In an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia declared, “I am terrified that this administration is going to try to create some incident that can allow federal intervention.”
Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is well-informed on the operations of the US national security apparatus. He suggested that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was playing a major role in an effort to declare that foreign actors were interfering in the US elections, making it necessary to mobilize federal troops at polling stations.
He pointed to Gabbard’s presence during an FBI raid on election offices in Atlanta, Georgia and in seizing voting machines in Puerto Rico, actions that would not normally concern a cabinet official with responsibility for overseeing US intelligence-gathering overseas.
Warner continued, “the idea they would pick some threat real or conceived to use as an excuse, I think we have to be very conscious of. So I’ve been trying to meet with former military leaders, intelligence leaders, law enforcement, just to say, you know, if you see something that comes out that’s a crock, speak up and rebut. And the press, frankly, needs to do it as well. This is about the heart of our democracy, whether it’s going to be free-and-fair elections.”
For all their professions of concern, however, neither Warner nor any other leading Democrat has called for action to defend the right to vote or to oppose Trump’s efforts to rig the elections. They are far more afraid of a popular movement against Trump’s drive towards dictatorship than of anything Trump himself might do.