Dem candidates in Tuesday’s special state House elections in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire won by margins exceeding the baselines of prior results, continuing a trend of overperformance that the “horse race” circlejerkers largely have been, unintentionally or otherwise, ignoring going into 2024.

In New Hampshire, Dem Hal Rafter flipped a Republican-held state House seat by 12 points in a district that fat former President Trump won by a slight 49.1 to 48.7 margin in 2020. The win puts the GOP’s 198-197 majority in the (extremely overpopulated) chamber at risk of becoming a tie or, less likely, an outright minority, with four more special elections coming up to fill vacant seats.

Down in Pennsylvania, Democrat Lindsay Powell’s win in the Pittsburgh-area 21st State House District was less of a question mark given her predecessor Sara Innamorato’s 63.6 to 36.4 victory in 2022. Still, Powell outperformed Innamorato slightly, taking 65.26 percent of the vote at 98 percent reporting, per Decision Desk HQ, maintaining the Keystone state House’s one-seat Democratic majority that had been left tied after Innamorato resigned to run for Allegheny County Executive.

You can come up with any number of plausible arguments as to why results in flukey, low-turnout special elections do not matter for the overall national political picture. That doesn’t make the headline factually incorrect though. Either way, the true test of Dem strength will come in November, with statewide legislative and/or gubernatorial elections in New Jersey, Kentucky, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Virginia,- with the last one’s implications being of particular importance given vest-wearing affable suburban fascist “Diet MAGA” Governor Glenn Youngkin’s plans to pass a 15-week abortion ban should his regime seize control of both chambers of the state’s legislature.