Democrats have swept the first major elections since President Donald Trump returned to office, a sign that they’re heading into next year’s crucial midterm elections with the wind at their backs as economic concerns drag down the president’s party.
The party flipped all three of Virginia’s statewide offices from the GOP, held the governorship in New Jersey, won two statewide races in Georgia – the first time the party has won state-level races there in two decades – retained a trio of liberal supreme court judges in swing-state Pennsylvania, and scored victories from New York City to California.
The margins in many of these races show the depth and breadth of Democratic strength one year after President Trump’s 2024 victory. It’s a long time until the 2026 midterms, but these states’ elections are always looked to for early signs of the mood of the electorate – and these results look at least as strong for Democrats as in 2017, which presaged a big wave election one year later that handed Democrats control of the U.S. House of Representatives and a check on Mr. Trump.
Why We Wrote This
The sweeping victories in states from Virginia to California show the depth and breadth of Democratic strength one year after President Donald Trump’s 2024 victory – and provide a glimpse into the mood of the electorate one year out from the 2026 midterm elections.
“What a night for the Democratic Party, a party that is in its ascendancy, a party that is on its toes, no longer on its heels, from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said. Mr. Newsom was celebrating the passage of a referendum in his state that will allow Democrats to draw new congressional maps, potentially giving them five more U.S. House seats in next year’s midterm elections.
Tuesday’s results may strengthen Democrats’ resolve and potentially push Republicans to consider a compromise in the ongoing government shutdown fight, where in recent days some moderate Democratic senators had shown signs of wavering. Polls show that more voters blame President Trump and the GOP for the shutdown than Democrats. Virginia is more directly impacted by the shutdown than most states because of the huge number of federal employees there, and Tuesday’s results suggest that it may have been a drag on the GOP. Virginia exit polls showed voters who had a federal worker or contractor in the household broke for Democrats by a 24-point margin.
President Trump seemed to acknowledge that the shutdown might be hurting his party as well. “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” he posted on social media Tuesday night.
A number of candidates made history Tuesday night. Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger will be Virginia’s first female governor. Democrat Ghazala Hashmi won the race for lieutenant governor in Virginia, making her the first Muslim woman to win statewide in any state in U.S. history. Zohran Mamdami will be the first Muslim mayor of New York City, and at age 34 the youngest mayor elected in the city since 1899.
But the sweeping victories won’t solve Democrats’ internal battle about the future of their party. Ms. Spanberger and Rep. Mikie Sherrill, who won New Jersey’s governorship, are moderate-leaning Democrats with national security backgrounds, while Mr. Mamdani is an avowed democratic socialist. While Ms. Spanberger didn’t mention Mr. Trump once by name during her victory speech, Mr. Mamdani took a much different tone, touting the city’s immigrants and declaring to Mr. Trump, “To get to any of us, you’ll have to get through all of us.”
Here are some key takeaways from Tuesday’s elections:
Big margins for Democrats across the country
In Virginia, Ms. Spanberger’s victory was significantly larger than Ralph Northam’s nine-point gubernatorial victory in 2017, the last time Democrats rode a wave of voter fury at President Trump a year into his first term to win the governor’s mansion. She led Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by a 15-point margin with nearly all votes counted.
Her coattails helped carry Democrat Jay Jones across the finish line in the race for Virginia Attorney General, in spite of a scandal about violent text messages he’d sent and even though Republicans outspent Democrats on advertising by a wide margin, the only statewide race where they had the financial edge in the state this election. Mr. Jones led by a five-point margin with most votes counted – a larger edge than outgoing Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s margin of victory four years ago.
Representative Sherrill’s New Jersey victory marks the first time in a half-century that candidates from the same party won three straight gubernatorial races in that state. She led Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 13 percentage points with 92% of votes counted.
That’s a much larger margin than four years ago, when Mr. Ciattarelli came within three points of winning the governorship. It’s also greater than Kamala Harris’ six-point New Jersey victory in 2024, and more in line with Joe Biden’s 16-point victory there in 2020 and outgoing Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s 14-point win in 2017, the last time the race was contested with Mr. Trump in office.
Virginia and New Jersey are both blue-leaning states, though Republicans have won statewide races in both states in recent years and Mr. Trump lost each state by only six points last year. But Democrats scored some major swing-state victories on Tuesday as well.
In Pennsylvania, a state President Trump won last year, voters opted to retain three liberal state supreme court judges by roughly 20-point margins. Georgia Democrats’ victories in a pair of races for seats on the Public Service Commission gave them their first statewide wins in state-level races in two decades. And in Maine, a Democratic-leaning state where Democrats are looking to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins next year, a ballot measure backed by conservatives to limit mail voting lost by a wide margin, while a gun-control measure passed by a wide margin.
Economic issues dominated
New York Mayor-elect Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won by a big margin, is an ideological outlier from the other Democrats who won on Tuesday. But his campaign had something in common with those of Governors-elect Sherrill and Spanberger, a pair of avowed moderates – all three won races with electorates who named economic issues as their biggest concerns.
Ms. Sherrill hammered hard on utility costs in her campaign, closing with a “driving down costs” bus tour. In her victory speech, Ms. Sherrill brought up New Jersey’s motto of “liberty and prosperity,” calling both “essential in our democracy” before accusing Mr. Trump of hurting the state’s economy.
Virginia voters listed the economy as the number one issue in exit polls, with nearly half saying it was the top issue. Ms. Spanberger led by a 20-point margin with that group. One-third of New Jersey voters listed the economy as their top issue in exit polls, just behind taxes. Ms. Sherrill won that group by a 24-point margin.
In New York City, 55% of voters listed the cost of living as the top issue, by far the number one issue; Mr. Mamdani won 63% of those voters. He centered cost-of-living and affordability issues in his skillfully messaged campaign, helping him upset former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary earlier this year and beat him again Tuesday night. More than 2 million people cast a ballot in New York City, the highest turnout in a mayoral race there since 1969. Mr. Mamdani turned out a ton of new voters, many of them young. Nearly one-fifth of people who cast votes in this race were first-time mayoral voters, and he won nearly two-thirds of their votes.
Democrats got two concrete boosts in the 2026 fight for Congress
California Democrats delivered their party its most concrete victory in the 2026 fight for Congress, passing a statewide proposition to suspend the map created by the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission and let Democrats gerrymander a new map that will likely hand them five more congressional seats in the next election.
The victory is a feather in the cap of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is widely expected to run for president, and will help offset a push led by President Trump for Republicans to gerrymander more seats for their side. That includes a new map in Texas, where Republicans hope to pick up five more seats, as well as in Missouri, Ohio, North Carolina, Indiana and other states.
Democrats’ Virginia victory may play nearly as big a role in the gerrymandering wars. In recent weeks, Democrats there have moved to take similar steps as California – and their dominant wins on Tuesday mean they’re well-positioned to put a proposition in front of voters that could let them suspend their own state’s anti-gerrymandering rules and deliver potentially three more House seats for their party.
