'If You Can Keep It': What The Democrats’ Recent Wins Mean For The Midterms
1A
NPR
4.3 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 13 April 2026
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
In Wisconsin, liberal judge Chris Taylor recently won a spot on the state Supreme Court by nearly 20 points. That’s nearly double the margin of victory another liberal candidate in 2025.
Some Republicans are worried about what wins like these mean for the GOP’s performance in the midterms. And as a shrinking job market, high inflation, and a costly war in Iran drag down the economy, Democrats are seizing the moment to capture voters.
In this installment of our weekly politics series, “If You Can Keep It,” we go deep on the Democrats’ recent successes. How are voters responding to a Republican party struggling to deliver on its promises?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Democrats are on a hot streak. |
| 0:10.3 | They've not only spurred massive turnout for primary, special elections, and state and local races, but voter data shows they're also gaining support among Republicans and independent voters. |
| 0:21.9 | That trend continued last week in Wisconsin, the Supreme Court election, which technically |
| 0:27.8 | is nonpartisan. |
| 0:29.7 | Liberal judge Chris Taylor, the Democratic-backed candidate, won by nearly 20 points statewide |
| 0:35.4 | in Wisconsin. |
| 0:36.2 | That's nearly double the margin of victory for another |
| 0:39.5 | liberal candidate in a judge race in 2025. And in Georgia's Redis District, even a Republican win |
| 0:46.0 | turned out somehow to be a success for Democrats. Despite losing to Republican former prosecutor |
| 0:53.7 | Clay Fuller in the race for former congresswoman Marjorie |
| 0:56.8 | Taylor Green's open seat in Georgia, Democrat Sean Harris overperformed slashing President Trump's |
| 1:03.2 | 24 margin of victory in the district by two-thirds. |
| 1:07.6 | The reason why I say we had a win tonight is because the Republican Party had to spend |
| 1:14.4 | almost $2 million in a smear campaign to get this win. |
| 1:20.9 | They should never have to spend money on a ruby red district. |
| 1:25.4 | Some Republicans, predictably, are worried about what these wins mean for the midterms, |
| 1:31.9 | for holding on to the House and maybe even the Senate. |
| 1:34.7 | As a shrinking job market, high inflation, and costly war with Iran dragged down the economy, |
| 1:41.2 | Democrats are seizing the moment to capture voters. |
| 1:43.8 | But here's a question, do voters |
| 1:46.3 | actually like Democrats? I'm Todd's Willick. You're listening to the 1A podcast for the latest |
| 1:52.8 | installment of our weekly politics series, if you can keep it. We're going to go deeper on the |
... |
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