Analysis Alabama Republicans kept their supermajorities. Tuesday still exposed cracks.

It was only a five-seat legislative loss for Alabama Republicans on Tuesday night, but it felt worse.

There were a couple of stunning defeats, a rare independent victory and a historic win for a transgender candidate. And up and down the ballot, Democrats turned in their most competitive election night in two decades.

Still, at the end of the night, Democrats had managed to pick up just two seats in the House—lessening the ALGOP supermajority to 74-31—and two more seats in the Senate, where an independent candidate also won, shrinking the Republican supermajority to 24-10-1.

“It was a very good start,” House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels said late Tuesday night. “We’ve shown that voters in this state want candidates who listen to them and focus on real issues, and they’re willing to ignore party affiliation. We plan to build on things from here.”

Perhaps the most surprising victory of the night came in Madison County, where Allison Montgomery became Alabama’s first transgender elected official, beating incumbent Republican state Representative Phillip Rigsby, 53 percent to 46 percent.

Rigsby outspent Montgomery by a wide margin and took repeated shots at her in the closing days of the campaign—most of them about her sexuality. But she remained focused on talking about issues and repeatedly rebuffed the insults by pointing out Rigsby’s refusal to offer solutions for the problems ailing Alabama families.

In the end, voters who have heard endless boogeyman stories about transgender athletes, transgender bathrooms and transgender surgeries at schools overlooked it all and voted for Montgomery’s policies and preparation.

Hers was not the only surprising win in Madison County, however.

Two-term Republican state Senator Sam Givhan lost a close race to political newcomer Jared Sluss. That race was close through the final weeks and likely turned on a late story about Givhan, an attorney, handling the real estate closings for Huntsville’s first data center. That revelation came just after Givhan, without any real prompt, publicly proclaimed that he was always against data centers.

Unofficial results showed he lost by fewer than 600 votes.

Two other close state House races in Madison County went to Republicans, with incumbents James Lomax and Rex Reynolds picking up narrow victories.

A third flip came in the seat vacated by longtime Republican Senator Tom Butler, who retired. Democrat Rudolph Drake won what became an ugly race, as his opponent, John Roberts, prominently featured allegations from Drake’s past in a number of commercials. Drake, a military veteran, won by 12 points.

The only other flipped seat came in House District 15, where Nell Brown knocked off perhaps the most centrist Republican, Representative Leigh Hulsey, in a district in southern Jefferson County that has been trending more progressive.

Elsewhere, both Democrats and Republicans were able to fend off challenges to incumbents, and Democrats made it clear that they could protect their turf around the state’s major cities. Races around Madison, Jefferson and Montgomery counties, which might have been close in the past, were suddenly not so for Democrats.

Representative Marilyn Lands, who won a Republican-held seat just four years ago, won on Tuesday by 20 points in a race some believed would be competitive. Jasmyne Crimiel, a newcomer vying for the Montgomery-area seat left vacant by lieutenant governor candidate Phillip Ensler, cruised to a 47-point win over Alva Lambert.

At the end of the night, though, it might very well be Democrats walking away wondering what could have been. In several races, particularly around Madison and Jefferson counties, Democrats came within a handful of points of pulling off more upsets. Most of those races were not focal points for the party, and very little money was spent to try to win them.

Still, Republicans will walk away from Tuesday’s midterms knowing that the solid 15- to 20-point advantage that they’ve enjoyed statewide is now under 10 points, and they’re bleeding voters in the state’s most populous counties.