EVEN though Donald Trump has spent the first five months of his presidency mired in self-sabotage, Democrats still seem unable to win. Because Mr Trump poached four Republicans from the House of Representatives to fill senior posts in his administration, their successors must be decided by special election. But Democrats have lost all four races, including two held last night in South Carolina’s fifth district and Georgia’s sixth—the most expensive House race in American history (see article). Still, not all is lost for the party.

In each special election, Democrats significantly dented the Republican win margins. In the most recent presidential election, held in November 2016, each district re-elected its Republican representative with an average of 62% of the two-party vote share. In the special elections, those margins shrunk to 52.5%. A ten-percentage-point gain in less than a year is not to be sneezed at.

Democrats had hoped to capitalise on Mr Trump’s historic unpopularity by actually winning seats. No president has been so poorly regarded by the public this early in their administration in the modern era. A few timely seat snatches might have built momentum ahead of mid-term elections due in 2018, when Democrats hope to take control of the House by flipping 24 seats. Democrats have little chance of taking the Senate because the third of seats up for election happen to be in unfriendly territory.

It may be that voters are already souring on Mr Trump, and punishing fellow party members at the ballot box as a result. National-level polling on congressional elections shows that Democrats currently hold a seven-point advantage over the Republicans—a sharp increase since Mr Trump took office. But without the fillip of incumbency, the neophyte Republican candidates vying to fill seats are sure to do a bit worse anyway. And turnout, never good in America, is even worse in special elections. Despite the bonanza of advertising targeting Georgia’s sixth district, for example, turnout was down 17 percentage points compared with the presidential contest in 2016.

More special elections will help to clarify how much the president’s unpopularity is hurting his party; the past four have been slightly bizarre. The eventual winner in Montana’s at-large district, Greg Gianforte, is doing community service after assaulting a reporter from the Guardian newspaper. Archie Parnell, the Democratic candidate in South Carolina, took to spoofing “House of Cards”, a political drama featuring a fictional monomaniacal congressman from the same district. Jon Ossoff, the losing Democratic candidate in Georgia, raised an eye-popping $30m for his campaign—more than was donated during Britain’s entire general election. Luckily for Democratic party bosses, the most helpful campaign boost—Mr Trump’s penchant for self-made crisis—comes free.