Only months ago, observers had written off the chances of Democrat Pat Ryan winning the swing district that Donald Trump carried in 2016 and Joe Biden won four years later. Instead, he not only defeated Republican Marc Molinaro but performed better than Biden did there in 2020. It’s the third time a Democrat has overperformed Biden in special elections for Congress this year, following similar results in Nebraska and Minnesota. In addition, an anti-abortion ballot measure lost in deep red Kansas by nearly 20 points.

After the high court’s Dobbs decision, Ryan adjusted his campaign signs to make clear that “choice is on the ballot.” That message won in a district that had been a tossup before Dobbs.

Molinaro’s biggest pushback on the issue of abortion was that in such a deep blue state as New York that personal views on abortion didn’t quite matter. After all, as he told the Washington Post, “I had thought, like most Americans, that this was settled.”

It turns out that Molinaro may have been wrong. And, in a year in which Democrats have to defy the historic trend that the party who controls Congress and the presidency almost always loses seats in the midterms, that just might give them a chance.