Today the entire world is waiting to see whether the ceasefire announced last night with Iran is going to prove to be meaningful and lasting or not. So far it seems to be shaky, at best. Will the Strait of Hormuz reopen to oil tankers or not? Is Israel going to undermine the ceasefire? Only time will tell, which is why we're going to wait to see whether this endures or not before commenting at length on it.

Instead, we'd like to focus today on some good news for Democrats. Elections last night in Georgia and Wisconsin brought further proof that the Democratic Party has the wind at their backs heading into this year's midterm election season. As Politico put it, "Democrats just had one of their best election nights since President Donald Trump returned to the White House. Again." That pretty much sums up the shift that has been happening ever since Trump took office.

In Georgia, there was a special election to fill Marjorie Taylor Greene's seat in the House. The Democratic candidate lost this race, which is understandable since it is "the state's reddest district." But even with the loss it was good news for the Democratic Party as a whole. In 2024, Donald Trump won this district by 37 points. Last night, the Republican candidate only won it by 12 points. That is a huge shift in the margin. In fact, it was the biggest shift of all the House special election races since the start of 2025.

In every single one of these races, Democrats outperformed their share of the presidential vote in 2024, and the smallest such shift was 13 points. The others saw a shift of 16 points, 23 points, two races with shifts of 17 points, and then last night's whopping big 25 points. If Democrats can manage to perform this well in the midterms, they will easily take back control of the House -- and they may even have a good shot at taking the Senate as well. If every Republican who won his or her race by 10 points or less is replaced by Democrats, then the Democrats will wind up with a huge House majority next year.

Of course, a standard caveat applies. These are, after all, special elections. They have far lower turnout than a regularly-scheduled midterm election in November. So you can't just translate these early victories to what will happen in November, but at this point it's certainly looking a lot better for the Democrats than the GOP.

Also notable was the fact that the shift in the Georgia voting pattern was across the board. Every single one of the 10 counties in the district shifted by double digits to the Democrats' direction. Shawn Harris, the Democratic candidate who lost, summed it up nicely: "If Democrats, independents, and Republicans can do this in a ruby-red district, the Democrats can win anywhere. Nobody ever thought that we would ever be this close."

The news from Wisconsin was even better. There was a state supreme court election held yesterday, and the liberal candidate handily beat the conservative one (judicial candidates are officially non-partisan). The last two such races were enormously expensive campaigns, one of which cost $50 million and the other of which cost $100 million. This time around, the conservatives didn't even put up a fight, spending only $1 million. Maybe Elon Musk didn't get the memo? Musk infamously tried to buy the 2025 contest, spending millions of his own money, leaping around a stage with a cheesehead hat on, and darkly warning that "the future of America and Western civilization" were on the line. For all the millions he spent, his candidate lost by double digits. This time around, the conservative candidate lost by 20 points (almost double the margin of the last race). This boosts the liberal majority on the court to 5-to-2 and will guarantee liberals stay in control of the state's top court for years to come. The liberal candidate even won some very red areas of the state -- including counties that Trump won by 16 or 20 points -- which is another very good sign for Democrats. Even in counties where the conservative did manage a win, the margin was incredibly small.

One of these counties was Waukesha, where the conservative only managed to get 54 percent of the vote. This is far lower than other Republicans have managed, but the truly impressive thing was that a Democrat won the mayor's race in the town of Waukesha, a reddish suburb of Milwaukee.

None of this guarantees a big blue wave in November, but at this point the Democrats are in a far better place than the Republicans. Donald Trump's job approval rating has sunk below 40 percent, gasoline is over four bucks a gallon, and for all his promises to bring down prices "on Day One," prices have just kept going up on just about everything. Voters are not happy, and they've been expressing their anger at the polls. Democratic voters are strongly motivated, while Republican voters (even those who still support Trump) are dispirited, and they seem to be growing more disillusioned as time goes by.

This is all very good news for Democrats. We've still got almost seven months to go before November's midterms, but Democrats have been on a roll that started pretty much right when Donald Trump took office again -- and it shows no signs of slowing down. Republicans just keep getting bad news at the ballot box, and they're rightfully worried, while Democrats truly do have the wind at their backs.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant