If a special election in Pennsylvania’s very red 36^th state senate district offers any guidance, a wave of voter anger is looming over the MAGA Republicans. In what experts described as “a major upset,” voters who chose Donald Trump last fall by 15 points, voters yesterday elected a local Democrat and rejected the GOP nominee for the open seat.

Democrat James Andrew Malone, the mayor of East Petersburg, defeated Republican Josh Parsons, a Lancaster County Commissioner, by a scant 482 votes, or just under one percent. But Malone’s narrow victory is seen as a bellwether because the Republicans were expected to win the seat easily.

Berwood Yost, a pollster at Franklin and Marshall College, noted that Republicans had easily won the Lancaster County district for decades. In 2022, Ryan Aument, the Republican who then held the seat, had run unopposed. When Aument stepped down to take another position he left an opening for Democrats.

But neither Yost nor other Keystone State experts anticipated the Democratic surge that propelled Malone. On Tuesday, Yost told a local radio station that it was “hard for me to imagine that there would be an upset here. Let's remember Josh Shapiro, who is the current governor, who is a talented politician, he couldn't win Lancaster County over [2022 Republican gubernatorial nominee] Doug Mastriano - even though he carried many other places in the state.”

In a statement released on Tuesday night, Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin called the Pennsylvania special election a “shockwave” that reflects voter anger over the Trump administration’s first two months of cuts and chaos.

“In a district that went to Trump by 15 in 2024 and has a 23-point Republican voter registration advantage, Malone’s victory is a loud and clear rebuke to Republicans’ threats to the programs Pennsylvania families rely on – from Social Security and Medicaid to our public schools,” Martin said.

“To protect working Americans, Democrats like Senator-elect Malone are competing everywhere, and in special elections throughout the country, we continue to overperform as voters join us in fighting back against the Trump-Musk agenda,” the DNC chief concluded.

Parsons, a MAGA Republican who echoed Trump on immigration, crime and the economy, had failed to show up for a candidate forum to debate Malone and a Libertarian Party candidate two weeks ago -- imitating the recent behavior of many GOP elected officials.