The Electorate Strikes Back

A brief 2025 Election Wrap-up

Voters from New Jersey to California sent a clear message yesterday to Donald Trump and the Republican party: change course or be cast aside.

Republican candidates and causes were thrashed by an off-year electorate deeply unhappy with the direction of the country. Yesterday’s blue tsunami was the opening salvo of the 2026 midterm election, which as of today is in full swing.

Democrats could not go into the midterms in better political shape.

The results should position them well as they recruit candidates and raise funds for next year’s contests. Republican candidates, in contrast, have some soul searching to do about the message they’re going to bring to the electorate next year—if they want to face voters at all.

Democrats swept every high-profile contest with national significance:

• In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger was easily elected governor with a 15-point victory over her Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears. Last year, Kamala Harris won Virginia by six points, so Spanberger’s victory marks a nine point shift to the left in the commonwealth. Democrats swept the other two statewide races as well, winning contests for lieutenant governor and attorney general. And according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, they were poised to gain at least 11 seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, giving them a majority of at least 62-38. As Spanberger aptly said in her victory speech, “Tonight, we sent a message.”

• Where Virginia was expected to be a blowout, the gubernatorial race in New Jersey was supposed to be close. But it wasn’t. Voters sent a Democrat to Trenton for a third consecutive term for the first time since 1961. Mikie Sherrill’s 13-point victory almost matched Spanberger’s in a state that Harris also won by six. Voters sent a message here as well.

• As expected, voters in California easily approved a measure to permit Democrats in the state legislature to gerrymander the state’s legislative map in response to the gerrymander effort undertaken by Texas Republicans. Voters waited in long lines to approve the measure, which passed by a margin so lopsided that the outcome was called as soon as the polls closed. The largest state in the union—which under ordinary circumstances utilizes a nonpartisan body to draw its congressional districts—will now counter the Texas effort in a play to prevent Republicans from holding on to the House by changing the rules of engagement.

• In Pennsylvania, three liberal justices elected ten years ago as Democrats will retain their seats on the state supreme court. Despite a well-financed effort to remove them, voters by a 3-2 margin opted to keep them in a retention election that could have shifted the balance of power on the court.

• In Georgia, in a race endorsed by Bowers News Media and Wolves and Sheep, Democrats flipped two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission. Both Democratic candidates won easily, with 59% of the vote.

And voters weren’t only sending a message to Republicans. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani defeated Andrew Cuomo for the second time this year in an election where over two million people voted—more than in any mayoral election since 1969. Cuomo, an avitar of nepotistic entitlement looking to make a political comeback after a fall from grace as New York governor, acted at times like New Yorkers would hand him the keys to Gracie Mansion if he demanded them. Instead, a majority of voters turned to a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist who promised to make the city affordable, riding a wave of youth turnout the likes of which New York has not seen in non-presidential years.

There is a case to be made that a party whose future rests with motivating young people seeking generational change can learn some lessons from what happened in New York. Mamdani now has a pretty large pulpit from which to make that case.

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I’ll have much more to say about the election on Friday. Our Wednesday Ask Us Anything column will return next week.