A Path to the Majority: Special Elections and the AZ-07 Democratic Primary
What Adelita Grijalva’s Landslide Win Tells Us About 2026.
In 2017, President Trump was deeply unpopular. Voters were angry with Congressional Republicans cutting healthcare to fund tax breaks for the wealthy, and Democrats were winning special elections nationwide. Eight years later, in 2025, the same conditions are playing out.
Progressives, traumatized by Trump’s narrow but decisive 2024 re-election, can find some level of relief as we inch closer to the 2026 midterms. President Trump’s administration continues to rapidly shed the very voters who powered his return to office. Meanwhile, Democratic leadership in Washington remains deeply unpopular, yet local Democratic candidates are energized and dramatically outperforming Kamala Harris’ margins in special elections. Over the past few months, this trend has held across state and congressional races, meeting or exceeding 2018’s strong over performance. This signals promising prospects for Democratic wins in 2026.
Can Special Elections Predict National Election Outcomes?
Analyzing special elections is especially useful ahead of relatively low-turnout midterm elections. American elections feature two distinct electorates: the high-turnout, less ideologically committed Presidential electorate, and the lower-turnout, more ideologically driven midterm electorate. Special elections function essentially as a subset of the midterm electorate, usually featuring a much older, more affluent, whiter, and more ideologically committed groups of voters. While not fully representative, they provide timely indicators of national political dynamics revealing which constituencies are energized ahead of midterms and complementing traditional measures like polling, fundraising, and voter engagement.
Prior to 2022, lower turnout special elections tended to structurally favor Republicans, whose well-funded local networks of ideologically cohesive voters generated dependable coalitions in the midterm elections. However, the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade and revoked women’s fundamental rights to bodily autonomy across much of the country, created a new constituency of highly engaged and motivated liberal voters — upending the congressional elections and providing the foot soldiers who turned an impending Red Wave election into a Red Ripple. The post-Dobbs special elections were the first concrete evidence of a seismic political shift. HIT Strategies research showed how Democrats went from underperforming Biden’s 2020 presidential margin by about 6 points pre-Dobbs to over performing by six points afterward.
Arizona’s 7th and Democratic Primary Dynamics
There have been forty-two special elections across the country since President Trump’s victory last November, including races in state houses, state senates, and the House of Representatives. Democrats have successfully flipped three of these seats from Republican to Democratic control – all three seats voted for Trump by more than 12 points in 2024. Democrats are outperforming Harris’ 2024 margins by an average of 15 points. By comparison, Democrats were outperforming Clinton’s 2016 margin by an average of 12 points in 2017.
The Arizona 7th special election provides valuable insight into some of the key political dynamics roiling the Democratic Party ahead of the 2026 midterms. Adelita Grijalva won the September 23rd special election for Arizona’s 7th congressional district with 69% of the vote, defeating her Republican opponent by 40 points. In one of Arizona’s two heavily Latino and Democratic congressional districts, AZ-07 voters swung 10 points toward Trump in the 2024 election. Grijalva, running to succeed her late father Raúl, defeated two well-funded primary challengers with more than 60% of the vote in July.
Grijalva succeeded by standing firm on her progressive values and building a broad coalition, earning endorsements from key Arizona Democrats as well as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, two of the most popular Democrats in the country. More importantly, Grijalva ran explicitly on continuing her father’s strongly progressive track record and refused to triangulate or moderate her positions in the name of “electability.” Grijalva demonstrated that progressives can run campaigns on affordability and cost of living without compromising on trans rights, or embracing Trump’s punitive immigration policies. Indeed, the AZ-07 candidate who did run as an explicit moderate received less than 14% of the vote.
Lessons from AZ-07
The AZ-07 special election shows that President Trump’s 2024 gains among Latinos and younger voters may be fleeting, particularly as the cost-of-living increases and the Trump administration failure to address it. But more importantly, Grijalva’s overwhelming victory as an explicit progressive over a well-known moderate demonstrates that “moderation,” specifically tactically running to the right on key issues, is not a guaranteed electoral winner. Other factors, specifically funding and candidate quality, play a far role in a candidate’s electoral success.
AZ-07 is not significant in and of itself. It is a single low-turnout special election featuring one Grijalva replacing another. However, the dynamics undergirding Adelita’s victory are significant, and help illustrate where Democratic politics may be headed over the next year. Democrats face a choice as they chart a path out of the political wilderness – will they re-embrace popular progressive values that give the Party credibility, or will they try a novel strategy like triangulating to the right following an election loss?
Note: Thank you to The DownBallot for maintaining this handy list of special election results.
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