When Democrats Stepped Aside, Independents Outran Them. But Only Slightly.

Results are current as of Thursday, Nov. 5. Votes are still being counted in some places, and these margins may change.

(This analysis covers only the four races we tracked where there was one major-party nominee on the ballot along with the independent: Osborn, Achilles, Bengs, and Kiley. Bodnar, Hill, and Thurow each faced both a Republican and a Democrat, so their margins answer a different question.)

None of the independent candidates we tracked won on election night. In Nebraska, Idaho, and South Dakota, the Democratic nominee had withdrawn, leaving an independent as the only major opposition to a Republican incumbent. In California, Rep. Kevin Kiley ran the same kind of race in reverse.

Meanwhile, Democrats had their largest projected midterm House vote margin since 1974; won both chambers of Congress; and flipped Senate seats in red states such as Texas, Kansas, Ohio, Iowa, and South Carolina, as well as purple North Carolina and Maine.

Each of the three red-state races offer an interesting point of comparison: Did the independent label add anything a Democrat wouldn't have in such a wave year?

Two Tests

Early estimates have Democrats winning the national House vote by about 13 points, a performance roughly 15 points better than their showing in 2024. Applying that 15-point swing to each seat's 2024 presidential margin gives a rough benchmark for how much the wave alone might have moved the race.

The governor's races give a second, cleaner test: each state in these races also had a Republican incumbent governor facing a Democratic nominee, showing how a Democrat fared in the same state, on the same day, against a comparable opponent.

Dan Osborn | Nebraska Senate | Independent

Osborn lost by 6.7 points in 2024. With every precinct reporting, he lost by 6.8 this year, 50.4% to 43.6%. The seat moved 18.4 points from Ricketts' 2024 win, but in a far better national climate against a Republican incumbent, Osborn's own margin didn't improve, and he finished 1.2 points behind the benchmark.

The more telling comparison is on the same ballot. In 2024, Osborn ran 18.5 points better than Democrat Preston Love, who ran against Ricketts in a special Senate election. This year, Democrat Lynne Walz lost the governor's race by 8.6, just 1.8 points worse than Osborn.

The opponents and offices differ, but a Democrat came far closer to Osborn this time.

It’s important to note that this was Osborn’s second high-profile race, so he headed in with higher name recognition than the other candidates analyzed here, with the exception of incumbent Kevin Kiley.

Todd Achilles | Idaho Senate | Independent

Achilles lost by 23, 1.5 points behind the benchmark and 6.4 better than Risch's 2020 margin. East Idaho News described it as the narrowest race of Risch's career.

But his 33.5% barely tops the 33.25% Democrat Paulette Jordan got in 2020. Democrat Terri Pickens got 32.3% in the governor's race, losing to Gov. Brad Little by 24.7. This is only 1.7 points worse than Achilles.

Another independent drew about 7% in each race: Natalie Fleming for Senate and John Stegner for governor. The improvement over 2020 came mostly from Risch's decline, from 62.6% to 56.5%, close to Little's 57.1%. Achilles held the Democratic share more than he expanded it.

Brian Bengs | South Dakota Senate | Independent

The candidate who lost by 43.5 as a Democrat in 2022 lost by 21 as an independent. That 22.5-point improvement came against a different opponent and in a far better climate, and he finished 6.8 points behind the Democratic wave benchmark.

When comparing his vote share to the split in the governor's race, his performance looks much better. Democrat Dan Ahlers, who lost to Rounds by 31.5 in 2020, lost to Gov. Larry Rhoden by 27, with 36.5%. Bengs' 39.5% put him 3 points above Ahlers.

Kevin Kiley | California 6th District | Independent

Kiley is the mirror image of the other three. They ran in Republican states without a Democratic nominee, while he ran in a Democratic-leaning seat without a Republican. He is the only one ahead of the benchmark, and the only one the wave ran against. He trails by 15 in the latest count, 8.4 points better than the benchmark.

"The headwinds in this election year were just too strong to overcome," he said.

Dropping his party registration appears to have limited the damage faced by other congressional Republicans, but not enough to hold a seat gerrymandered by Democrats to replace him with one of their own.

What The Margins Say

Osborn, Achilles, and Bengs all finished behind the national benchmark, by 1.2 to 6.8 points. The national figure likely overstates what was available to them: early estimates show the largest shifts among Latino and young voters and in the South. The Democratic nominees for governor in these states finished only 2.2 to 12 points better than Trump's margin, not 15.

The governor's races are the clearer test. Facing incumbent Republicans in the same states on the same day, the three independents ran 1.2 to 3 points of vote share ahead of the Democratic nominees, and 1.7 to 6 points ahead on margin.

That edge is real, since each independent outran the Democrat, but it is modest, and these were the best cases for the label: no Democratic nominee to split the vote and a strong national wave against the party in power. Most independents don't get those conditions. And it’s important to note that Osborn's edge over a same-ballot Democrat fell from 18.5 points to 1.8 in two years.

Democrats, meanwhile, won under the label independents treat as a liability in red states, flipping Senate seats in Kansas, Iowa, and South Carolina. Those wins came in somewhat less Republican territory: Trump's average 2024 margin in the nine states Democrats flipped or could flip was 12 points, compared with about 21 in Nebraska, 29 in South Dakota, and 37 in Idaho.

In 2024, the independent label looked like a way to reach voters a Democrat couldn't. In 2026, when voters wanted to punish the party in power, a Democrat was often the most direct way to do it.

That doesn't make this cycle a dead end, because the country keeps swinging between the parties. Control of the White House or a chamber of Congress changed hands in every election from 2006 through 2024 except 2012, and this year's projected Democratic House majority would be the chamber's third flip in five cycles, something not seen in 75 years.

If voters keep swapping one party for the other, someone will need to offer the country something steadier than the next swing back. This group of candidates is building the case that independents can be that option.

Osborn laid the groundwork with his run last cycle. His 6.7-point loss in 2024, in a state Trump carried by 20.6, showed that a working-class independent could run far ahead of the top of the ticket. He then started the Working Class Heroes Fund to mentor and finance candidates with similar profiles, saying, "We already have the framework and the blueprint for them to do it."

Future independent candidates will start with a playbook, a donor network, and a record of results that Osborn didn't have.

The test of the independent lane will need to come when this year's anti-Republican tailwind fades and candidates will have to win in a climate where the incumbent president isn’t sitting in the low-30s for his approval rating. 2028 might see more independents challenging Democrats, and if the number that challenge Republicans continues to grow as well, we can get a better sense of how the label can do outside of a cycle where the electorate’s animosity toward one party overcomes their unwillingness to vote for the other at such a high rate.