New Virginia Democratic governor, former congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. Photo / Win McNamee, AFP
Democrats swept key elections across the United States yesterday, delivering a rebuke of President Donald Trump’s second term so far and boosting the party’s hopes ahead of the Midterms.
In Virginia - traditionally a bellwether in the year after a presidential election - Democrats won every statewide contest, and Abigail Spanberger led the governor’s race by double digits with more than 90% of the vote tallied. In New Jersey, Democratic gubernatorial pick Mikie Sherrill easily beat back a strong Republican candidate she attacked for embracing Trump.
In California, Democrats won a ballot measure to redraw their congressional districts that they pitched as a check on Trump - a response to the President’s push to squeeze more GOP House seats out of red states.
“We were the barometer tonight for what the American public is feeling one year into Trump term two,” Senator Tim Kaine (Democrat-Virginia) said in an interview. “We basically sent a message that we can do a hell of a lot better than we’re doing.”
In New York City, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor after a race full of surprises that thrust him to the centre of Democrats’ debates about the direction of their party.
He clinched the Democratic nomination in an upset over former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who then ran as an independent and received last-minute support from Trump.
Mamdani impressed Democrats with his energetic, online-savvy campaign but worried others who are anxious about alienating moderate voters.
Republicans expected a tough political environment nationwide this year as polls showed voters souring on Trump, though some had been hopeful about springing an upset or two.
Democrats focused much of their marquee campaigns on the President, spending roughly US$18 million on general election ads mentioning Trump in Virginia and New Jersey, while just US$1.3m of Republicans’ ads mentioned the President, according to AdImpact.
Here are some top takeaways:
Polling heading into election day showed a more competitive race than Democrats would have liked. Sherrill wound up winning handily, just like Spanberger. Sherrill led by double digits with more than three-quarters of the vote counted.
Republicans had some reasons for optimism earlier. Their candidate, 63-year-old businessman Jack Ciattarelli, came within three points of defeating Governor Phil Murphy (D) in 2021. New Jersey shifted to the right more than any state besides New York last year.
Democrats have controlled state government for almost eight years, and Ciattarelli blamed them for the high cost of living while arguing his opponent would bring more of the same.
Trump endorsed Ciattarelli and held a tele-rally for him the night before the election. “Your state has been wrecked by radical-left Democrats … now it is time for a change,” he said on the call.
Ciattarelli’s failure to separate himself from Trump became a liability. Sherrill, a 53-year-old congresswoman and former Navy helicopter pilot, said she would stand up to the White House and attacked Ciattarelli for saying at a debate that Trump is “right about everything that he’s doing”.
One especially awkward moment for Ciattarelli came when Trump said his Administration “terminated” a multibillion-dollar rail tunnel project connecting New York City and New Jersey. Democrats blasted it as an example of Trump’s harm to the state.
Affordability was the central issue in the race. Sherrill said she would freeze utility rates on her first day in office, while Ciattarelli said he would lower taxes and also work to bring down energy costs.
Democrats were expecting a good night in Virginia - but it wasn’t clear that would extend to their embattled attorney-general nominee, Jay Jones. Jones won in the end as many voters unhappy with Trump set aside their concerns.
Jones’ campaign was upended by revelations that he fantasised in 2022 texts about killing a GOP legislative leader and former colleague. He imagined a scenario in which he had two bullets to fire at Adolf Hitler, Cambodian dictator Pol Pot or then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert.
“Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot,” Jones wrote in the texts. “Gilbert gets two bullets to the head.”
Democrats denounced the texts but mostly stood by Jones, hoping that backlash to Trump would pull him over the line. Most Virginia voters disapproved of Trump, and 85% of those voters supported Jones, early exit polls showed. While 43% of voters called Jones’ texts disqualifying in early exit polls some said they still voted for him.
In the governor’s race, Spanberger - a 46-year-old moderate who flipped a competitive US House seat in 2018 - will be Virginia’s first female governor.
“We sent a message … We chose our commonwealth over chaos,” Spanberger said in her victory speech.
In the lieutenant-governor’s race, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi became the first Muslim candidate elected statewide anywhere in the country. She led Republican nominee John Reid by about 10 points.
Trump repeatedly snubbed Republican gubernatorial nominee 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 saying her name on his election eve tele-rally for Virginia candidates, focusing instead on GOP Attorney-General Jason Miyares, who sought re-election.
“Get out and vote tomorrow for Jason Miyares, so important - and Republicans up and down the ballot,” Trump said.
California’s Proposition 50 was voters’ clearest opportunity to push back on the Trump Administration, and it passed decisively.
Democrats put it on the ballot as a counterweight to Trump’s unusual effort to draw more Republican-leaning House seats before the 2026 Midterms - ahead of the normal redistricting schedule tied to the census.
Prop 50 asked Californians to temporarily over-ride their independent redistricting commission and draw a House map with five more blue-leaning seats. That’s the same number of red-leaning seats Republicans added in Texas this year.
Democrats, led by California Governor Gavin Newsom, made the ballot measure fight all about Trump.
Adding five Democratic seats could make the difference in their bid to retake control of the House next year - though Republicans still have more opportunities nationwide to redraw the maps in their favour.
Republicans struggled to fight back in a state so opposed to Trump and wound up badly out-raised. Shawn Steel, a Republican National Committee member who was involved in the effort against Prop 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 below your feet, and it’s getting wider.”
Mamdani, a 34-year-old state lawmaker, was widely expected to win the mayoral race in New York City. The results give more insight into how Democrats feel about him.
Mamdani won two-thirds of voters aged under 45 in preliminary exit polls, while Cuomo led him by 10 points with voters 45 and older. The polls also showed an education divide: graduates backed Mamdani by 55%, while voters without degrees narrowly favoured Cuomo.
Two million votes were cast in New York’s mayoral race with 15 minutes remaining until the polls closed, according to the New York City Board of Elections, which said this was the first time two million New Yorkers voted in local elections since 1969.
Mamdani’s candidacy has been divisive within the Democratic Party. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader from Brooklyn, waited until the last weeks of the race to endorse Mamdani, while Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer - another New Yorker - never backed him.
Laura Gillen, a Democrat from a battleground House district in the state, called him “unfit” after he declined to say that Hamas, the Gaza-based militant group, should disarm.
Other Democrats have rallied behind Mamdani as a compelling new voice in a party struggling to excite its voters. They praised his focus on voters’ economic struggles - even as some disagreed with his solutions, such as government-run grocery stores - and his creative use of social media.
Republicans see Mamdani’s democratic socialism as a valuable foil and are eager to make him the face of the Democratic brand.
Trump has called Mamdani “one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican Party” and threatened him with “problems with Washington like no Mayor in the history of our once great city”.
Mamdani’s victory sets up a likely showdown with Trump. The night before the election, the President encouraged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo and said that if Mamdani wins, “it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required, to my beloved first home.”
Democrats tried to make the election a referendum on Trump and hope that strategy will serve them well in the Midterms, too.
Republicans, anticipating a tough night, argued even before the results that it was hard to draw conclusions.
Most Virginia and New Jersey voters disapproved of Trump, and at least nine in 10 of those people supported Democratic candidates for governor, exit polls showed.
In the Virginia governor’s race, about twice as many voters said their choice was meant to oppose Trump as the share who said their choice was meant to support Trump.
One encouraging sign for Democrats: They appeared to fare far better with voters of colour than they did in last year’s presidential election, when Trump won close to half of Latino voters and roughly doubled his support among black voters to 15%.
Sherrill won more than 90% of black voters and led by more than 30 points with Latino voters in preliminary CNN exit polling. Spanberger posted similar numbers.
Strategists were watching New Jersey’s Passaic County, a once-blue area with a large Latino population that flipped to Trump last year. Sherrill led comfortably with most of the vote counted.
- Theodoric Meyer, Alec Dent and Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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