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Democrats now face an unexpected challenge: managing expectations.

Yes, the party’s near-term future now looks bright enough for Democrats to openly discuss regaining control of the Senate and begin watching red-state gubernatorial races more closely for opportunities for advancement. GOP-held congressional districts that were once seen as outreach opportunities are now clear targets, and the party even spent money on a seat Trump won by 22 points last year in Tennessee.

“You can’t help but feel a little bounce in your step,” said former North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp. “I’m optimistic they can take back the Senate. I wouldn’t have believed it before Election Day.”

Victories in Virginia and New Jersey — and to a lesser extent in California, New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia — provided compelling evidence that, broadly speaking, the party’s electoral strategy, built around a relentless focus on affordability, was working to win back many of the Latino, Asian and young voters who swung toward Trump in 2024.

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The proof of concept, in turn, has revealed many things. Candidates who were hesitant about running feel better about their chances. Donors who were left on the sidelines are finally picking up the phone. Intra-party disputes, even over closing the party, seem less urgent when candidates across the ideological spectrum broadly agree on the message.

But party leaders are already issuing warnings about overconfidence and operators are recognizing the limits of the potential benefits in an era of hyperpolarized elections. The 2018 gain of 41 seats in the House is unlikely to be matched unless Trump’s approval rating, already at the lowest point of his second term, falls further. The party’s problems with rural voters, who wield disproportionate power in the Senate, have not been resolved. It is difficult to control the voters who do not follow politics, the ones who sank the Democrats in 2024.

“What I want to do is make sure that people don’t get complacent, right? We have to keep our foot on the accelerator,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin told News themezone. “You can’t rely on polls or special election victories to guarantee the next election. The only thing that can guarantee an election is hard work.”

The House map, narrowed by decades of sorting and political manipulation, contains very few undecided seats, meaning a blue wave would peak lower than it did eight years ago. The general image of the party remains linked to an unpopular former president. Even party loyalists assume that key leaders are hopelessly out of touch.

The immediate challenge is in Tennessee, where Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn is trying to pull off a major upset against Republican Matt Van Epps in a district that includes parts of Nashville but stretches from Alabama in the south to Kentucky in the north. Trump won the seat, left vacant by the sudden retirement of Republican Rep. Mark Green, by 22 points in 2024.

But anger over Trump’s handling of the economy is reaching even deep red areas, and when combined with the party’s advantage in low-turnout races, both Democrats and Republicans see a narrow path to Behn’s victory in the Dec. 2 special election. That has led the House Majority PAC, a super PAC run by allies of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to spend $1 million on digital and television advertising in the race.

“As Democrats have racked up victories based on affordability and cost reduction, our momentum continues to grow,” said CJ Warnke, a spokesperson for the group. “No Republican-held seat is safe and HMP will do whatever it takes to win the House in 2026.”

Former Rep. Conor Lamb’s victory in a special election in western Pennsylvania foreshadowed the 2018 blue wave in an equally deep red district. However, in that race, Democrats benefited from a gaping gap in candidate quality not present in Tennessee, Republicans have criticized Behn, 35, for her liberal policy positions and past comments she made calling herself “really radical,” all while portraying Van Epps as a clean-cut Army veteran.

“This could be Conor Lamb’s race, except Behn is not Conor Lamb and Van Epps is definitely not Rick Saccone,” a Democratic operative who works House races told News themezone, referring to the lackluster Republican candidate Lamb defeated. “That doesn’t mean there’s no chance of winning.” (The agent requested anonymity to speak candidly about the party’s challenges.)

Beyond the special election, House Democrats have added a handful of seats to their target list, including those held by North Carolina Rep. Chuck Edwards and Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles. They are also hoping they can reignite donor interest in Bob Harvie, a Bucks County commissioner who is challenging entrenched moderate Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania but has struggled with fundraising.

Part of the challenge comes from who is turning against Trump. While he is losing Latino, Asian and young voters he added to his coalition in 2024, his approval rating among white and older voters has barely budged. And many House Republicans represent districts with negligible numbers of voters of color.

This problem is even more serious in the Senate. While Democrats feel strong about their chances of picking up seats in North Carolina and Maine, the next wave of potential seat picks — Iowa, Ohio and potentially Alaska if former Rep. Mary Peltola runs there — are all the rural, predominantly white states where Democrats have struggled in the Trump era.

Heitkamp, ​​one of the Democratic senators who lost seats in the Trump era, believes the party can benefit from an “incredibly depressed farm economy” and anger over the president’s tariffs.

“The challenge for Democrats right now is to present an effective message with real, concrete examples of the things they would do if given power,” Heitkamp said, suggesting the party could propose limits on credit card interest rates. “They need to find people who attract paycheck-to-paycheck people.”

Optimism may be greater in gubernatorial elections, where candidates have more room to maneuver to separate themselves from the party’s weak national brand. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, incoming chair of the Democratic Governors Association, said the two gubernatorial victories in 2025 provide the broad outlines of a strategy for the party nationally.

“Our candidates across America will focus on making life a little better,” he said in an interview. “We’re going to elect Democratic governors in places where people don’t expect them.”

Beshear remained mum on specific targets, but Democrats have long been optimistic about state Auditor Rob Sand’s candidacy in Iowa and are now closely monitoring the candidacy of state House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson in Oklahoma. Former Sen. Doug Jones is also considering a run in Alabama, where he would have a rematch with Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville.

Optimism was also palpable at a meeting this week in DC for the Alliance for Democracy, a coalition of liberal donors. “This past year has been very downbeat,” said one aide, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about interactions with the donor class. “There has been an increase in the number of donors attending meetings.”

Democratic and liberal groups have struggled with fundraising this year; the Democratic National Committee, for example, took out a $15 million loan. It has created whiplash. “I’ve had donors go from not answering the phone to asking which R+25 district they should invest in,” another Democratic operative joked.

There also remain concerns about Trump’s record-breaking fundraising and how it could help the Republican Party (his super PAC is spending money in Tennessee, for example) and fears that the party is not conducting enough experiments while it has a chance.

“We have to get comfortable taking risks, especially between new cycles,” said Danielle Butterfield, executive director of the super PAC Priorities USA. “We’ve gotten very good at the science of politics, but we’ve lost the art of campaigning.”

But much of the donors’ attention also focused on pre-existing problems. Many still wanted to talk about podcasts and influencers, according to attendees. Concerns about how well Democrats are doing with voters who don’t follow politics closely (the exact group of people who sank the party in 2024) are widely shared by donors and operators alike.

“All those voters who turned against us last year are still here, and we won’t see them again until 2028,” Democratic pollster David Shor told a crowd at Crooked Con, which the liberal podcast company Crooked Media hosted a few days after the election. “It is up to us not to forget that they exist only because they are not voting.”

There are encouraging signs. Samson Signori, campaign manager for Abigail Spanberger’s successful campaign for governor in Virginia, said they found that “passive news consumers” made up about a quarter of the gubernatorial electorate in the state and were “very persuadable, very swingy.”

“This is a diverse group of people,” Signori told reporters at a briefing this week hosted by Third Way, the centrist Democratic think tank. “They come from all walks of life, all demographics, and from our perspective it was just about sending them very personalized paid media communications, just getting the message out there about affordability and cost reduction.”

Signori said the campaign was still evaluating the data, but the Preliminary results indicate that Spanberger won passive news consumers by nine points after Trump won the same group by five points a year earlier.