Republican politicians and causes have suffered a string of electoral and legal defeats over the past few months, raising questions about the party's ability to win elections ahead of presidential, congressional and state-level contests in 2024.
Donald Trump, currently the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has made progress against President Biden according to recent polls. A recent Harvard-Harris survey found Trump would have the support of 44 percent of Americans in a presidential election matchup against Biden, versus just 40 percent for the incumbent.
However, the GOP's improving national performance doesn't seem to be leading to success on the state level, where the party suffered defeats in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Florida on Tuesday. In August, Ohio voters rejected a Republican bid to make it harder to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.
In July, a court in New York state ordered lawmakers to redraw electoral boundaries in a move that is expected to give Democrats the advantage in around half a dozen more seats.
Newsweek has provided a brief summary of each Democratic victory that has taken place despite Biden's decline versus Trump in national polling.
New Hampshire
On Tuesday, Democrat Hal Rafter flipped Rockingham County's 1st District in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, beating Republican rival Jim Guzofski by 56 percent of the vote to 44 percent despite the constituency backing Trump in 2020.
Once Rafter is sworn in, the GOP majority in the New Hampshire House will fall to just 198-197. This could turn into a tie with the special election for a vacant Democrat-leaning seat due to take place on November 7.
Pennsylvania
Republicans in Pennsylvania suffered another defeat on Tuesday, following disappointment in November's midterms when Democrat Lindsay Powell won the special election for the vacant 21st District House seat and beat Republican Erin Connolly Autenreitch.
After Powell is sworn in, Democrats will have a wafer-thin majority of 102-101 in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, though the state Senate remains under Republican control.
The 2022 November midterms were disastrous for the GOP in Pennsylvania, with Democratic candidates winning the state's gubernatorial election and a high-stakes U.S. Senate battle, in which John Fetterman beat Trump ally Mehmet Oz.
Florida
Underdog Democratic candidate Donna Deegan was elected as the first female mayor of Jacksonville on Tuesday, defeating Republican Daniel Davis with 52 percent of the vote.
The election demonstrates Democrats can still compete in Florida, a state that has increasingly fallen under the sway of Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a 2024 presidential hopeful who secured re-election in November 2022 with a margin of nearly 20 percent. The Republican incumbent won 59 percent of the vote against 40 percent for Charlie Crist, in what was once regarded as a purple state.
Ohio
On August 8, voters in Ohio rejected State Issue 1, which would have made it harder to enshrine abortion as a right in the state constitution, by 57 percent to 43 percent.
The Republican-backed proposal would have increased the threshold for amending the state constitution to 60 percent of the vote, ahead of an anticipated poll on incorporating abortion rights.
Thomas Whalen, an associate professor at Boston University who specializes in American politics, told Newsweek that the vote could set Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown on the path to re-election.
"Modern-day Republicans have this unsurpassed ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Ohio is just the latest example," Whalen said. "This political gift, and that's what it is, should act as a springboard for a Brown re-election victory and a boost to Democrats around the country. File under 'Never Ending Story.'"
New York State
In July a New York state court ordered lawmakers to redraw congressional maps used for the 2022 midterm elections, potentially moving half a dozen districts from tossups to Republican-leaning.
Under the maps used for the first time in 2022, Republicans won 11 seats across New York, including four that were previously Democrat and six districts that voted for Biden in 2020.
It followed a Supreme Court ruling in June rejecting conservative-drawn congressional maps for Alabama on the basis that the brunt of the state's sizable Black population had been pushed into just one of seven districts.
