Republican Amy Romano cruised to victory in a special election for a vacant state House seat in the deep blue stronghold of Connecticut on Tuesday night.

Roamno declared victory not long after polls closed in the race to fill the seat in Connecticut’s 113th Congressional District. The seat was previously held by former State Rep. Jason Perillo, another Republican, who left a vacancy when he was elected to the state Senate.

Perillo was also elected in a special election after former State Senator Kevin Kelly was appointed to the state’s judiciary by Governor Ned Lamont.

Romano was able to keep the seat red by defeating Democrat challenger Michael Duncan, who called to concede shortly after 8:30 p.m. local time. Romano’s victory will need to be formally certified by the Secretary of the State before she is sworn in as a member of the General Assembly, which will bring the Republican caucus in the state to 49 members.

Democrats still hold a firm hold on both chambers of the state legislature, however, with 102 members in the state House.

“I am honored and grateful for the support from Shelton tonight,” Romano said after her victory. “In a little over a month, we met with thousands of residents who have proven that Shelton wants an affordable, safe and sustainable place to live. I look forward to being their voice and fighting for local values. Thank you to all who volunteered, donated and came out to vote.”

While the district has historically graded as solid Republican and had been held by Perillo since 2007, the race created some level of anxiety for Republicans due to a number of underperformances in special elections since November. The most disastrous result came in Pennsylvania, where Republican State Rep. Josh Parsons was defeated by a couple hundred votes in a district President Trump by 15 points in the 2024 presidential election.

Such races often draw low turnout, which was the case in Connecticut’s 113th Congressional District election on Tuesday night. In total, Romano secured 52.6 percent of the vote compared with 47.4 percent for Duncan, a rather close result considering the fact that Perillo ran unopposed in multiple elections throughout his State Assembly career.

A number of political analysts pointed to the result as a positive one for the Republican Party when considering turnout, which was expectedly low at 20 percent, however.

“20% turnout and not really a huge underperformance either,” elections analyst Red Eagle Politics wrote in an X post. “If Dems see this level of shift in the average house seat in 2026 they won’t even have a ten seat majority.”