Dem win in Texas reveals Trump's midterm election scheme is backfiring: analyst

The Democratic Party picked up a big win in a special election down in Texas on Saturday, and one analyst thinks the results reveal bad news for President Donald Trump's scheme to influence the outcome of the 2026 election.

Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped a Texas Senate seat in a district Trump won by 17 points in 2024, CNN reported. The 31-point swing towards Democrats is "one of the party’s strongest recent special election performances," the report noted.

Progressive YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen discussed the election results in a new video on Sunday.

"If this is in any way a microcosm of the electorate in November, that poses bad news for Republicans," Cohen said. "What's worse for them, the gerrymandered map that was passed this year was based largely on the notion that the Latino vote, which switched heavily to Trump and Republicans in 2024, would be permanent. And yet, in some of the largest Latino areas of Fort Worth, we saw swings of upwards of 50 points to the left."

The election results came at a time when Texas Republicans are gearing up to use their new Congressional map, which they rammed through during a special session last summer.

The new map was drawn to make five Democratic-held seats more favorable to Republican candidates. Democrats filed a lawsuit after it was passed, claiming the map was racially discriminatory. The Supreme Court ruled last year that the map can be used in the upcoming midterm election.

Cohen said the outcome signals that the gerrymandered map could turn out to be a "dummymander," or a gerrymander that backfires against the political party that drew it.

"Republicans might have just drawn a map that hands Democrats more seats," Cohen said. "When you add in the fact that Democrats will inevitably win five more seats in California, it almost makes you wonder whether this whole effort to subvert democracy and engineer a majority for Republicans in the House was even worth it for the GOP."