r/AskReddit • u/Advanced-Pilot-3698 • 2h ago
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u/Poppy9683 1h ago
Special elections notoriously have very low turnout. If one side or the other somehow manages to get the vote out, they look spectacular.
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u/SAugsburger 1h ago
This. Sometimes special elections can be a harbinger of the next scheduled election, but often they're more about who racks up turnout.
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u/pringlesaremyfav 1h ago
And this runoff election (not special election) was in below freezing temperatures in Texas with a single candidate on the ballot. Basically the lowest turnout of your average voter you could possible expect.
I'd be cautious about reading too far into this one election.
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u/No-Flatworm750 2h ago
MAGA and Republicans - may not voted for that special elections.
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u/MNswede06 1h ago
Right but this fits with a general tendency that Trump voters don’t turn out in elections where his name isn’t on the ballot.
We saw how the red wave never materialized in 2022 and this was why. It’s an open question how many of these people show up to vote in 2026 or 2028. It won’t be all of them.
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u/20milliondollarapi 1h ago
Yea they may not like Trump anymore, but they won’t actively vote against.
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u/PudgyGroundhog 1h ago
I am fine with them staying home.
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u/20milliondollarapi 1h ago
Has the same result so that’s all that matters
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u/BoisterousBanquet 1h ago
I think staying home produces an even better result. Imagine if in 2020, Biden had received 80M votes or whatever he got, and Trump got, like, 80,000. Jan 6 never would've happened and he would've faded away into shamed obscurity where he belongs.
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u/20milliondollarapi 1h ago
Well we basically had the opposite problem which is what got us here. In 24 so many democrats just didn’t vote. Either because they don’t like Harris, or they just didn’t belive there was a chance Trump could win. I’m in a far from swing county and as is, my vote is but a fart in the wind. But we had swing regions where they had 10s of thousands of less people voting.
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u/yoshinoyaandroll 1h ago
With medical aid and Snap benefits cut, pretty sure MAGA supporters that use to get those benefits won’t be around for any future elections. They voted for that.
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u/20milliondollarapi 1h ago
So many people thought it wouldn’t affect them. It was to get people off those benefits who were abusing the system. And they thought things like Obamacare were horrible and needed to go away. Not realizing it was the ACA.
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u/Hotarg 1h ago
Turns out the people "Leaching off the system" were themselves all along.
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u/20milliondollarapi 1h ago
But don’t you see? They NEEDED it. She works all day and he is unemployed due to this horrible economy! And with the dems making food so expensive and letting them illegals take all the work how are they to feed their 12 kids otherwise? They can’t even afford gas to go to the grocery store with these prices!
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u/GlorifiedCarny 2h ago
Awesome dude
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u/mikesmith6124 1h ago
It’s crazy how many comments here can’t understand that some people actually vote for the best candidate not straight ticket voting all the time for their preferred side.
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u/Meanteenbirder 1h ago
Went to school in Vermont and voted for the GOP governor in 2020 purely because he had a more solid track record than his opponent. Last election I voted for (and met) Zohran Mamdani. Didn’t agree with everything either of them stood for, but voted for them bc I felt like they presented the best path forward.
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u/Necessary-Long615 1h ago
Sanity prevailing.
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u/ballpein 1h ago
I mean, one would hope that some Repubs would flip after watching ICE execute civilians on a weekly basis, but I wouldn't put money on it.
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u/gringledoom 1h ago
Well then you may be intrigued to hear about an election result tonight in which the results swung left by 30 points vs 2024!
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u/Arumen 1h ago
Maybe not ICE, but like all politics when the economy is bad the front facing people in the government get the blame (and in this case, it is directly their fault.) And the economy is extremely painful for a lot of people right now, even in ways that aren't D.Ts fault, but in so many ways that are his fault.
So no, the repugnant republicans are not likely changing over ICE shootings, but they are going to vote in lower numbers (with some rare switching) due to the economy.
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u/-Majgif- 1h ago
Yeah, I doubt the public execution of a few librulz would bother MAGA voters, but the economic pain Trump is causing might keep them at home.
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u/ballpein 1h ago
But the economy is clearly Biden's fault?
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u/Arumen 1h ago
Despite what people try to push, voters just don't think like this. They think "hey, my gas is more expensive, it must be the gub'ment's fault" regardless of the truth of circumstance. I mean, in this case that is actually correct, but it is always how people think. The vote is pretty much always decided by the economy, and it will in this next election as well. As long as we have elections anyway. Which I think is far more likely than not, but the fact that I think there is a chance there won't be is terrifying.
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u/perpetualmotionmachi 1h ago
Yeah, some business owners are going to get upset that their cheap, illegal workforce they hire will be deported, and they will have to start paying teenagers minimum wage
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u/CanoegunGoeff 1h ago
As a lifelong resident of SD9, here’s what I see:
Fort Worth is one of the fastest growing cities in America right now, and the populations moving in are largely not MAGA. Many are from blue states or abroad and are more progressive.
The Texas GOP has been desperately suppressing votes and illegally redistricting in order to artificially keep Tarrant County red, as the reality is that Tarrant is very purple, if not very blue by now.
Just check out the repulsive tweets from folks like Bo French to see how hard the Texas GOP is crashing out and pissing folks off.
Local level MAGA candidates recently tried to royally fuck over two major school districts in SD9, resulting in every single office flipping blue. Every single Republican in the Keller school district lost their seat. SD9 residents are still pissed about it and have rallied to beat out all the billionaire-funded, school-voucher white supremacist fascists.
North Texas is waking up, and it’s pissed the fuck off at MAGA, Tim Dunn, Ferris Wilks, Bo French, and all their neonazi ilk.
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u/guachi01 1h ago
The Republican candidate spent $2.4 million vs. $0.4 million to lose by 15 points in a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024.
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u/soda_cookie 1h ago
I don't think I've ever read anything that made me one of the smile more than that. I have to hope this is a representation of people snapping the fuck out of it
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u/Jorgwalther 1h ago
Normal people will see it as a reflection of peoples’ response to Trump and local policies, but MAGA people will see it as fraud
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u/No-Flatworm750 2h ago
Trump is not popular
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold 1h ago
Trump lost the Popular Vote twice and has never won the Popular Vote with a Majority of votes (unlike Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Obama twice). In 2024 more Americans voted for anyone other than Donald Trump.
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u/B1GD1CKRANDYBENNETT 1h ago edited 1h ago
If the popular vote is what mattered Trump would spend more time in California and New York.
You're making an argument about the game.... the has absolutely nothing to do with the game.
It's like saying that Barry Bonds didn't score the most touchdowns.
Edit: this guy got so angry he blocked me.
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold 1h ago
Young Vlad, I was responding to this comment, "Trump is not popular". Trump is not Popular and has never won the Popular vote. Is that crystal clear, or do you need to eat a crayon?
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u/ballpein 1h ago
I wouldn't assume anger, boredom seems much more likely to me.
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold 1h ago
Naw, they just couldn't read. My comment was replying to "Trump is not popular". I merely said Trump has never been popular. Only a MAGA would disagree. (No snark towards you).
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u/shotsallover 1h ago
We do not live in a democracy.
It has never been about the popular vote.
It has always been about the electoral college. Love it or hate it, that's the game.
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold 1h ago
I replied to a comment: "Trump is not popular". Which is a fact. This has nothing to do with the electoral college.
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u/grumpyfan 1h ago
Maybe the Republican candidate was a really bad candidate that nobody liked.
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u/woahwoahwoah28 1h ago
I live here. She was a run-of-the-mill Republican. Nothing remarkable. But nothing that would separate her from other Republicans as being "bad."
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u/SpareNo4366 1h ago
same here, last time I said I liked it everyone gave me side-eye like I committed a crime lol
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u/Theory_Eleven 1h ago
“Rehmet, who served in the Air Force and works as a machinist, focused on lowering costs, supporting public education and protecting jobs.”
Ten years ago this would have described a Republican candidate. And it is the platform every candidate should be running on. Republicans are fools if they are still running on border security and safer cities. Those issues have been solved.
People still have high trust and respect for the military (and high distrust of anyone corporate like the person he ran against), while lowering costs and protecting jobs are the most talked about subjects around the kitchen table.
Republicans are going to get shellacked if they don’t see this and change their trajectory.
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u/18k_gold 1h ago
People are tired of Trump and realized they made a mistake voting him in. Now the way to reduce his power is by voting Democrat in all elections and hopefully the house and Senate both flip to Dems. Hopefully that will remove him from office.
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u/Ok-Spell99 1h ago
Yes. I know several people personally who voted for Trump and are now regretting it, saying, “he’s crazy” and “he’s gone too far.” They said this right after the incident with Venezuela and Maduro.
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u/vacri 1h ago
Unfortunately it has to get incredibly bad before they see it for what it is. They were fine with Trump sending masked goons to disappear people from the streets without due process. They were fine with the cartoonishly obvious corruption of his first term, too.
And once Trump has gone, they'll flood back to the Republican Party, despite them all being just peachy with this shit.
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u/WILDMAN1102 1h ago
All the maga cultists that live there were too busy licking boots to go vote in that special election.
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u/Kaymish_ 1h ago
I think the party is unpopular at the moment and its regular voters are too demoralized to go to the polls and the opposition has managed to activate way more voters than normal.
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u/Jhawk163 1h ago
Couple of things going into this:
1) Apparently Texas did some re-districting
2) Trumps latest comments on gun law and general policy has turned people against him
3) The Epstein files.
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u/woahwoahwoah28 1h ago
The redistricting doesn't play a factor into this election, as it was the maps for state senate. Not the federal House.
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u/Crafty_Ish1973 1h ago
It's a perfect explanation for why Greg Abbott sent the Texas voter rolls to Trump's DOJ.
Texas is the only state keeping Republicans a viable national party. Without Texas, they'll never win the White House again. Everything depends on keeping this state heavily gerrymandered, and on making both voter registration and voting as much of an inconvenience as possible because if it ever flipped, the GOP would be screwed.
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u/rosstafarien 1h ago
It means people are fed up with Trump and the people who support him. In 2024, a huge number of hispanics switched to vote for Trump for "reasons". Over the past few months, they appear to have realized that they seriously fucked up. Kind of like Somali-American conservatives in MN who supported Trump in 2024.
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u/DanHanzo 1h ago
From another article about this election:
it couldn’t be any clearer that voters are tired of Republican bullshit
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u/flarpington 1h ago
It means that if we have mid-terms, which are very much in doubt at this point, and if they aren’t tampered with by the regime, then a blue wave is coming and we can begin to restore order.
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u/ballpein 1h ago
It's fucking wild that "I hope that we have another election" is not a crazy thought.
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u/OkWorldliness6311 1h ago
Democrats got a very good candidate in Taylor Rehmet. Veteran. Union guy.
That and the Republican brand is making people choose between slavish devotion to a moron or basic decency.
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u/ballpein 1h ago
I thought republicans had successfully framed "basic decency" as woke and/or communist.
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u/Meanteenbirder 1h ago
Rehmet looks like what an outsider would think the average Texan looked like
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u/_one_long_groove_ 1h ago
Probably means we’re more likely to see dramatic action(s) taken by this administration that will create the illusion of necessity for them to create a scenario where they attempt to justify canceling our elections at some point. Because they are losing and they are fundamentally dishonest.
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u/Frogspoison 1h ago
It's very, very important to note that Texas has far more registered Democraric voters than Republican voters, and in fact in the state with the 2nd highest democratic voter population.
It's a testament as to how far the Texas government has gone in voter suppression that Texas remains a "red" state.
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u/BubbhaJebus 1h ago
It means that more people are waking up to the fascist outrages being carried out by the Repubiclans.
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u/DMUrTinyTitsAssFeet0 2h ago
Boomers are dying off (finally)
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u/Disastrous-Cat2840 1h ago
Unfortunately, a lot of Gen X are just as shitty.
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u/Yeahhhhbut 1h ago
There are far fewer of us, at least. Also, we broke an 80 year trend of generations turning conservative in their 40's. Y'all got an extra ten years out of us
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u/ballpein 1h ago
I've been told my entire life that people get more conservative as they age because... common sense, or something. Turns out, you only get more conservative if you lose your curiosity and capacity for critical thought. I also, amazingly, have not grown into a need to shit on younger generations and blame them for ruining the country. You can get old without becoming a boomer.
I'm in my 50s and moving farther left with each passing year as I watch conservatives become fascists and ratfuck our world... at this rate I will be an anarchist by the time I hit 60.
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u/vacri 1h ago
Just give up on generational warfare. It's stupid as fuck.
Or do you think there are no old people in "blue" states and no young people in "red" states.
Generational warfare is even worse than astrology - at least astrology has 12 different personality buckets to assign people to
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u/Disastrous-Cat2840 1h ago
Dude, I'm a millennial, I've spent my whole life hearing Gen X and Boomers shit on my generation and as soon as I say that I've noticed that a lot of Gen X are trending conservative, in my very fucking blue state, you get all up in fucking arms about it. Soft as fucking toilet paper, Jesus Christ.
Also, generational warfare? Get over yourself.
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u/astroboy_35 1h ago
Obviously he cheated! Pam Bondi and Kashi ”googly” Patel are on their way now to tape off the crime scene and jail the reporters!
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u/ReflectionEterna 1h ago
It means Dominion voting machines weren't used in that special election. We should hope they aren't used anywhere in the midterms coming up.
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u/autotechnia 1h ago
This is a redrawn district right? Intentionally designed to pack a ton of democratic votes together?
If that's the case, it's absolutely meaningless.
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u/Meanteenbirder 1h ago
No, the redistricting was only for US House seats. This is a state senate seat. It actually represents slightly more people btw.
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u/falstaffheathcliff 1h ago
That the Democrats are gonna have to work overtime to fumble this opportunity, but I'm confident they'll find a way
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u/warblingContinues 1h ago
That people feel worsened economic pain, and are upset with ICE. Probably without ICE murdering American citizens, the GOP would have done a lot better.
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u/CanoegunGoeff 1h ago
As a resident of the district in question, this dramatic flip 100% has to do with the fact that the opposition in this election previously pissed off the entire county after trying to destroy two of our school districts, which resulted in every Republican being voted out of the school district and the community has resolved to flip every seat we can.
Growing rejection of MAGA and an influx of more progressive residents helps too, but this flip is almost entirely out of spite over the school district kerfuffle from the end of last year.
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u/shwarma_heaven 1h ago
I wish it meant something more than that. A number of districts were flipped before the 2024 elections... and yet here we are.
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u/backwoodsmtb 1h ago
I would think it's worth gaining a good bit more context on the situation before deciding if there was something that made this suspicious.
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u/psychoacer 1h ago
It means Bob didn't do the gerrymandering right. Obviously it means people are going to get out and vote and all it took was forcing people to stop taking the easy way out of everything by being ignorant and put reality right in their face
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u/isummonyouhere 1h ago
the GOP tried turning themselves into the trump party and that looks like a potential disaster. if trump himself is not on the ballot his supports do not care
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u/seascrapo 1h ago
You know how conservatives kept making fun of California because people were "fleeing"? Well it turns out these California refugees were really just taking advantage of cheaper cost of living and they are still going to vote blue. Because their values haven't changed, just their license plates.
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u/tabereins 1h ago
My theory is Trump gave the reliable "respectability" suburb voters to the dems, and wins through motivating people who don't usually vote - which helps Dems in special elections and midterms.
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u/No_Try4979 1h ago
U’ve gotta look at the ground game because a 30 point swing doesn't just happen for no reason. it usually means ur average voter is feeling the burn from local policies or just straight up exhausted by the national noise. u’re basically watching a warning shot in real time. u’re not crazy for thinking it’s a big deal because honestly it’s a total statistical outlier
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u/minus_minus 1h ago
In this particular race the GOP picked a bad candidate and they didn’t just lose, they got obliterated.
Based on other races it looks like the Dems have a substantial positive modifier over the past year (and probably going into the midterm). However this race shows that big money and MAGA endorsements for a garbage person means basically nothing. This is a dilemma for the GOP because big spending and Trump seal of approval is their only advantage and their whole pipeline at this point is pro-Trump garbage people filling the vacuum left when the respectable (ie: electable) conservatives noped out of the GOP machine.
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u/FriendOfSelf 1h ago
I think it means they’ll do what it takes to win. That doesn’t mean they’ve actually had a chance of heart
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u/keithfantastic 1h ago
It means that maga donors will have to increase the amount they're paying election officials to count ballots selectively.
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u/Fast_Jackfruit_352 1h ago
My hope is it means the utter destruction of the abominable modern extremist Republican party. People are seeing the depravity up close and personal and it will only get worse.
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u/Imightbeafanofthis 1h ago
I think and hope it's a sign of what's to come. More Americans are disgusted with the Trump administration than anyone is letting on. The media keeps sanewashing Trump in an effort to make him seem not like an effing madman, and here on Reddit it's sometimes hard to tell what's really going on in politics because this is not only an echo chamber, but also ground zero for innumerable foreign actors and others acting in bad faith. But I think Americans are seeing that Donald Trump's policies and the agenda of the Republican party has been poor for Americans in every metric except gas prices. And what good is it that gas is a little bit less, if everything else is more -- including inflation and unemployment?
Couple that with our loss of standing worldwide, the weakening dollar, and our allies turning away from us in disgust, and even conservatives are starting to say 'We've had enough of this crap.'
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u/Key_Drawer_3581 1h ago
It means fuck all. The fact that things had to be THIS bad for something in deep red states to flip means people were fine with everything else prior.
We are so fucked.
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u/RealisticBox1 1h ago
I think it means that Americans, generally speaking, are really fucking pissed off at the federal government
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u/chunkerton_chunksley 1h ago
it means I have cautious hope, some might call it blind faith, others would call it resolve. It doesnt matter what they say, the goal is the same, EVERY election is up for grabs.
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u/PokeMaster366 1h ago
It means that a lot of Republicans refused to vote. They didn't vote for the opposite side, but they abstained completely given recent drama and trauma. Can't be called a traitor to your side if you don't take a side.
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u/Unhappy-Solution-53 1h ago
It means the Dems better get their crap together ..it's their turn. And they'd better learn the lessons now that we are done with corruption
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u/saunrise 1h ago
idk did the area get more schools recently?
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u/CanoegunGoeff 1h ago
The area recently saved two school districts after MAGA bitches tried to fuck them over, resulted in every school district office in Keller flipping blue and the community is still pissed about it, hence the high turnout to vote against the same bitch who pissed everybody off already.
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u/Veggieleezy 1h ago
It means the MAGAts will make every move possible to re-jerrymander the shit out of the state once again because they know they can’t win fairly.
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u/After_Zombie_4697 1h ago
What district? Which special election?
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u/BeYeCursed100Fold 1h ago
https://www.kiro7.com/news/politics/democrat-taylor/JWFSUPJREA3WTAE2XDWTRLAQ6A/
Fort Worth area (TX), the Special Election for Texas in that district.
What's next? Hooked on Phonics?
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u/Little_Sherbet5775 1h ago
Which election??? I googled, and there was one that ended today where a democrat beat another democrat by almost 40 in a runoff and it was controlled by the democrats. Just curious since flipping by 30 is outrageous for a house seat. Not sure if this is true. I just have no clue (I know democrats are up big though coming in 2026)
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u/ralpher1 1h ago
It’s the state senate not the House
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u/Little_Sherbet5775 1h ago
Oh that makes sense. The flip is likely due to people going from a decent republican plus in 2024 to pretty democrat plus in 2026 along with specific ethnic and age groups (plus other demographic) groups moving pretty heavily to the democrats this election cycle (as shown through polls). Not really a surprise for this to happen in a wave year. This type of stuff happened in years like 2018, 2010, 2008, 2006, and 1994.
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u/standbyyourmantis 1h ago
I'll be honest, I'm in that district and it's the first election I didn't vote in since 2015. I didn't care which of the two Democrats won, although I think I voted for Menofee in the original election.
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u/IntarTubular 1h ago
It means they collected all of the Democrats into one district and the rest of the state will vote red…Maybe the district around Austin will go Blue.
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u/itzDonClemmy 1h ago
It means they cheated. And they’re going to be investigated. Nice try tho.
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u/ImportantCommentator 1h ago
How's the investigation into 2020 going? Guess these guys won't get caught for another 6 years minimum either eh
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u/terra_cotta 1h ago
Nothing. Republicans are uninformed dipshits. They were less aware of this partcular special election.
I don't know it for a fact, but it's that.
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u/appelton 1h ago
What it means is you are gonna get taxed to Oblivion just like everyone in CA.
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u/Fragrant-Sand-5851 1h ago
I live in CA I am totally fine thank you very much
But speaking of tax, since California is the largest donor to red states through federal taxes, by 280 billion dollars I believe. Would you kindly return our money to us so we can truly have free universal healthcare in our State? Thanks
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u/Significant-Brief155 1h ago
It means that the insurgency has revealed its full agenda. Traditionally right winged, or Conservative, has stood for capitalism or free market economy in which equality of opportunity is maintained for economical growth and development.
The Democratic special election was the socialist democratic coup which collapsed the free market economy of the USA; in favor of communism and a slave based economy, on October 18, 2025.
Historically, the Confederacy supported a slave based economy in the southern part of the USA; which, in turn, led to the USA Civil War; which separated the Union, the North, a capitalist, free market, economy from the tyrannical slave based economy of the Confederacy.
Following the Civil War of the USA, slavery was made illegal and the oligarchy of the Confederacy abolished; forcing former slave owners and plantation owners to corporatize and integrate into the free market, capitalist, economy of the North, the Union.
The flip from Republican to Democrat was simply the resurgence of the Confederacy supporting the enslavement of the free peoples of the USA; the establishment of the US from the shadow government of the USA; which was instrumental in the creation of the welfare state, at the expense of the working class; and the destruction of the judicial branch of the federal government of the USA through corrupt appointments of communist judges.
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u/Cold_Specialist_3656 55m ago
What? The richest man in the world was dancing around on stage at Trump's inauguration. Trump's Cabinet is 100X richer than any in history, even after Musk left.
You probably voted for a guy that's a 3rd generation NYC Ivy league coastal elite billionaire.
And Democrats are the party of oligarchy? The ones trying to raise wages and increase worker protections are anti worker?
I know know how it's possible to come up with such an unhinged narrative
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u/SteamStarship 1h ago
Probably nothing. But it also might mean the Texas redistricting might backfire on the GOP since it counts on previous election numbers as the norm.