Democrats swept key elections across the country Tuesday night, sending a message of rejection of President Donald Trump's second term so far and bolstering the party's hopes for the midterm elections. In Virginia—traditionally a political bellwether in the year following a presidential election—Democrats won every statewide office, and Abigail Spanberger was leading the gubernatorial race by double digits with more than 90 percent of the vote counted. In New Jersey, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikey Sherrill easily defeated a strong Republican candidate whom she attacked for supporting Trump.
In California, Democrats won a ballot measure to redraw their congressional districts, which they presented as a check on Trump, in response to the president's attempt to gain more Republican seats in the House of Representatives from conservative states. “Tonight we were the barometer of how the American public feels one year into Trump’s second term,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) said in an interview. “We basically sent the message that we can do so much better than we are doing.”
Meanwhile, in New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor after a surprising race that placed him at the center of Democratic debates about the direction of their party. He secured the Democratic nomination after a stunning victory over former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who then ran as an independent and received a last-minute endorsement from Trump. Mamdani impressed Democrats with his energetic campaign and savvy social media presence, but worried others who feared alienating moderate voters. Republicans were expecting a challenging political environment across the country this year, as polls showed voters becoming disillusioned with Trump, though some remained hopeful of pulling off an upset. Democrats focused much of their core campaigning on the president, spending roughly $18 million on general election ads that mentioned Trump in Virginia and New Jersey, while only $1.3 million of Republican ads mentioned the president, according to AdImpact.
These are some of the main conclusions:
- 1. Democrats won easily in New Jersey.
Polls before Tuesday showed a closer race than Democrats would have liked. But Sherrill ended up winning comfortably, as did Spanberger. Late into the night, Sherrill was leading by double digits with more than three-quarters of the votes counted. Republicans had some reason for optimism earlier. Their candidate, 63-year-old businessman Jack Ciattarelli, came within three points of defeating Democratic Governor Phil Murphy in 2021. New Jersey swung to the right more than any other state except New York last fall. Democrats have controlled the state government for nearly eight years, and Ciattarelli blamed them for the high cost of living, arguing that his opponent would bring more of the same.
Trump endorsed Ciattarelli and held a phone rally for him the night before the election. “Your state has been destroyed by the radical left Democrats… now is the time for a change,” he said on the call. But Ciattarelli’s inability to distance himself from Trump became a liability. Sherrill, a 53-year-old congressman and former Navy helicopter pilot, said he would challenge the White House and attacked Ciattarelli for saying in a debate that Trump “is right about everything he does.”
A particularly awkward moment for Ciattarelli came when Trump said his administration had “canceled” a multi-billion-dollar rail project that would have connected New York City and New Jersey. Democrats criticized him as an example of Trump’s damage to the state. Affordability was a central issue in the race. Sherrill said she would freeze utility rates on her first day in office, while Ciattarelli promised to lower taxes and also work to reduce energy costs.
Democrats were hoping for a good night in Virginia, but it was unclear whether that would include their attorney general nominee, Jay Jones, who ultimately won, as many voters disillusioned with Trump set aside their concerns. Jones's campaign was rocked by revelations that in 2022 he fantasized in text messages about killing a Republican legislative leader and former colleague. He imagined a scenario in which he had two bullets to shoot Adolf Hitler, Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, or then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert.
“Gilbert, Hitler, and Pol Pot,” Jones wrote in the messages. “Gilbert gets two bullets in the head.” Democrats condemned the messages but mostly backed Jones, hoping the backlash against Trump would propel him to victory. A majority of Virginia voters disapproved of Trump, and 85 percent of those voters supported Jones, according to early exit polls. Forty-three percent of voters considered Jones’s messages disqualifying in the early exit polls, but some said they still voted for him.
In the gubernatorial race, Spanberger—a 46-year-old moderate who won a competitive seat in the House of Representatives in 2018—will be Virginia's first female governor. “We sent a message… We chose our state over chaos,” Spanberger said in her victory speech.
In the race for lieutenant governor, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi became the first Muslim woman elected statewide anywhere in the country. She led Republican candidate John Reid by about 10 points at the end of Tuesday. Trump repeatedly ignored the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Winsome Earle-Sears, 61, who would have been the first Black woman elected governor in any state. The president refused to formally endorse her and avoided mentioning her name at his pre-election phone rally for Virginia candidates, focusing instead on Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares, who was seeking reelection.
“Get out and vote tomorrow for Jason Miyares, it’s very important, and for Republicans across the entire ballot,” Trump said.
California's Proposition 50 was the clearest opportunity for voters to respond to the Trump administration, and it passed overwhelmingly. Democrats put it on the ballot as a counterweight to Trump's unusual effort to gain more Republican seats in the House before the 2026 midterm elections, ahead of the normal census-linked redistricting schedule. Proposition 50 asked Californians to temporarily suspend their independent redistricting commission and redraw the House map with five more seats tilted toward Democrats. That's the same number of Republican-tilted seats that Republicans gained in Texas this year.
Democrats, led by California Governor Gavin Newsom, focused the fight over the ballot measure entirely on Trump. Adding five Democratic seats could make all the difference in their bid to regain control of the House next fall, though Republicans still have more opportunities across the country to redraw the maps in their favor. Republicans struggled to respond in a state so opposed to Trump and ended up being significantly outsold in fundraising. Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member who participated in the effort against Proposition 50, said the spending gap became “overwhelming.”
“It’s like the San Andreas earthquake,” he said. “The fault finally opens up, and you see this vast chasm right beneath your feet, and it’s widening.”
Mamdani, a 34-year-old state legislator, was widely considered the frontrunner to win the New York City mayoral race. But the results offer more insight into how Democrats feel about him. Mamdani garnered two-thirds of the vote among those under 45 in early exit polls, while Cuomo led him by 10 points among voters 45 and older. The polls also revealed an educational divide: College graduates supported Mamdani by 55 percent, while voters without a college degree narrowly favored Cuomo.
Two million votes were cast in the New York City mayoral election with 15 minutes remaining before the polls closed, according to the New York City Board of Elections, which noted that it was the first time two million New Yorkers had voted in a local election since 1969. Mamdani's candidacy has been divisive within the Democratic Party. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the Brooklyn House of Representatives, waited until the final weeks of the race to endorse Mamdani, while Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer—another New Yorker—never endorsed him. Laura Gillen, a Democrat from a contested House district in the state, called him"unfit" after he refused to say that Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group, should disarm.
Other Democrats have endorsed Mamdani as a compelling new voice in a party struggling to energize its voters. They praised his focus on voters' economic hardships—even if some disagree with his solutions, such as government-run supermarkets—and his creative use of social media. Republicans see Mamdani's democratic socialism as a valuable antagonist and are eager to make him the face of the Democratic brand. Trump has called Mamdani “one of the greatest things that ever happened to our great Republican Party” and threatened him with “trouble with Washington like no mayor in the history of our once-great city.”
Mamdani's victory sets the stage for a likely confrontation with Trump. The night before the election, the president encouraged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo and said that if Mamdani won,"it is highly unlikely that I will contribute any federal funds, other than the bare minimum, to my beloved first home."
Democrats tried to turn the election into a referendum on Trump and hope that strategy will also serve them well in the midterm elections. A majority of voters in Virginia and New Jersey disapproved of Trump, and at least 9 out of 10 of those people supported Democratic gubernatorial candidates, according to exit polls. In the Virginia gubernatorial race, roughly twice as many voters said their choice was to oppose Trump compared to those who said it was to support him.
An encouraging sign for Democrats: They appeared to be performing much better with voters of color than in last year's presidential election, when Trump won nearly half of the Latino vote and roughly doubled his support among Black voters to 15 percent. Sherrill on Tuesday garnered more than 90 percent of the African American vote and led by more than 30 points among Latino voters in early CNN exit polls. Spanberger posted similar numbers.
Strategists were watching Passaic County, New Jersey, a formerly Democratic area with a large Latino population that voted for Trump last year. Sherrill held a comfortable lead late Tuesday with most of the votes counted.
