Democrats, knocked down by a Trump tsunami last year, rode a blue wave back to relevance Tuesday night. On an off-cycle Election Day, as voters hit the polls in a few states, the down-and-out party notched win after win and showed signs of life heading into next year’s midterms.
And President Donald Trump’s maximalist revenge tour of a second term ran headlong into its first electoral pushback, as voters in crucial off-year races registered their staunch opposition to him.
They opposed him in New Jersey, elevating Rep. Mikie Sherrill by a double-digit margin over three-time Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli — returning the same party to power three terms in a row for the first time since 1961. They opposed him in Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger flipped the governorship and retook the exurbs and suburbs. And they opposed him in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s redistricting ballot measure passed easily, perhaps vaulting him to the role of putative opposition leader.
Heading into the midterms, Democrats showed signs of rebuilding and shoring up their battled coalition following last year’s sweeping setbacks — almost every single county in New Jersey and Virginia trended leftward compared to the 2024 margins.
Here are seven takeaways from Tuesday’s elections:
Trump remains off-year gold for Democrats
In the blue states of California, New Jersey and Virginia, Newsom, Sherrill and Spanberger effectively used Trump as a foil for their electoral efforts.
Trump wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday — a fact he quickly trotted out on Truth Social to rationalize the wake of setbacks for his party.
One would be forgiven for thinking he was.
Yes, he did not campaign fulsomely for Republicans, distancing himself from off-year elections historically unkind to the party in the White House — let alone one controlling all major levers of power amid a historic government shutdown. But voters used the few races to send him a message, according to exit polls, which showed that more than half saw their vote as anti-Trump, according to CNN.
Trump found himself under water in New Jersey, where 55 percent disapproved of him, and in Virginia, where 56 percent gave him a thumbs down, according to NBC. In the blue bastions of New York City, amid its mayoral race, and California, amid its Proposition 50 campaign to redistrict its congressional maps, his disapproval rose to 69 percent and 63 percent.
Sherrill and Spanberger used Trump to motivate Democrats at every turn— with Sherrill’s Republican opponent Ciattarelli adopting the line, “If you get a flat tire on the way home tonight, she’s going to blame it on President Trump.”
It worked.
Black and brown voters swing back
Democrats went into this election fretting about Trump’s gains among Black and Hispanic voters. The returns made clear they’re reversing that trend ahead of the midterms.
Despite Ciattarelli’s attempts to match Trump’s inroads, Sherrill’s dominant performance extended to areas with large Black and Hispanic communities.
In one of the key battleground counties, Passaic — a typically Democratic area with a plurality of Hispanic residents that Trump flipped last year — Sherrill led by 15 points, according to preliminary results. She also mounted a commanding lead in Essex County — home to the state’s most populous city of Newark — which has a plurality of Black voters.
Exit polling also showed Sherrill with large margins among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters — demographics national Democrats spent millions of dollars to reengage during the campaign.
Sherrill’s campaign focused on economic messaging — blaming Trump for not delivering on his 2024 affordability promises that appealed to voters in Democrats’ coalition. Whether voters were rejecting Trump or just not interested in Ciattarelli, it worked out for Democrats.
Newsom’s big redistricting risk pays off
In the beginning, it looked like a gamble. But Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50 to counter Texas’ midcycle redistricting by netting Democrats as many as five congressional seats next year appears to have fully vaulted him into Democrats’ most dominant electoral figure heading into the midterms.
In the end, the result was not even close: Initial returns Tuesday night show nearly 65 percent of voters favoring the Newsom-backed measure. The result reflected the campaign: Republicans, divided in strategy over how to oppose the measure, lagged in fundraising and campaigning; Newsom led the charge with money and messaging from national Democrats.
“We stood tall and we stood firm in response to Donald Trump’s recklessness,” Newsom said in his victory speech. “And tonight, after poking the bear, this bear roared with an unprecedented turnout in a special election with an extraordinary result.”
At a moment when Democrats prize fighters, Newsom has positioned himself as the ultimate prizefighter.
Democrats storm back in the suburbs
In Trump 1.0, Spanberger rode 2018’s so-called blue wave into Congress as it crashed through suburbs. On Tuesday, she did it again, and by some measures the wave might just be bigger: In several Washington-area counties, Spanberger’s margins even surpassed former Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam’s 2017 performance.
Take Loudoun County, a wealthy enclave in northern Virginia: Northam won it by 20 points — a number no Democrat has beaten since. Spanberger won it by 29 points, according to preliminary results. Nearby Prince William County, which Northam won by 23 points, went for Spanberger by nearly 34 points.
Spanberger’s strong performance in northern Virginia may have been fueled by the large population of federal workers, for whom Trump’s second term has been particularly disruptive due to layoffs under the Department of Government Efficiency, and the more recent government shutdown that has left many federal workers without a paycheck. In exit polls, nearly three in five voters said federal cuts this year affected their finances; 68 percent of them went for Spanberger.
But her strong suburban performance was not limited to northern Virginia. She also put up sizeable numbers in the suburbs around Richmond. Henrico County, just outside the capital, went for Northam by 23 points in 2017, and for Spanberger by 38 points.
Jay Jones wins in a new post-cancellation era of politics
Democrat Jay Jones pulled off a stunning comeback, overcoming his party’s fears that his scandal of sending violent text messages about political rivals would drag the rest of the ticket and doom his chances of becoming Virginia’s first Black attorney general.
With his victory, Jones achieved a feat neither Spanberger nor Ghazala Hashmi, Virginia’s governor and lieutenant governor, could. He toppled the only incumbent in the race in Jason Miyares, who was the lone statewide nominee to receive Trump’s full endorsement, helping Democrats send a resounding message that Virginia, as it has in all three of his White House runs, rejects Trump.
Riding a wave of anti-Trump sentiment and Spanberger’s commanding lead in the polls, Democrats proved party loyalty and a desire for an attorney general who would sue the Trump administration for what he characterized as “illegal” firings of federal employees. Republicans tried to insist during the closing stretch the race had “become [a] referendum on decency,” but voters disagreed.
In what looks like the dawn of the post-cancellation era among Democrats, Jones’ win will likely be seen as a blueprint for Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has come under fire for his since-deleted online post advocating for violence as a necessary means to achieving social change. Democrats are hoping this proves they can overlook past indiscretions.
Mamdani is the GOP’s new face of the Democratic party
Judging by their gleeful reaction, Republicans found their only bright spot in Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral victory — one they believe will allow them to tie the national party to him at the hip.
Speaker Mike Johnson, for instance, said Mamdani’s “election cements the Democrat Party’s transformation to a radical, big-government socialist party.” The National Republican Congressional Committee sent press releases Tuesday night accusing House Democrats in swing districts of “taking orders” from Mamdani. And Rep. Elise Stefanik, running for governor in New York, was quick to jump on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s endorsement of Mamdani, calling her “owned lock, stock, and barrel by the radical Far Left Socialist takeover.”
Mamdani’s quoting of Eugene Debs, the avowed socialist who sought the presidency from a prison cell, in the opening seconds of his victory speech only made Republicans’ case against him easier to prosecute.
Democrats find a midterm message
Democrats emerged from Tuesday’s elections with a split decision in their progressives versus. moderate proxy battle, with lefty Mamdani winning New York City’s mayoral contest and moderate Spanberger delivering a double-digit margin of victory in Virginia.
Despite their differences, both emphasized cost of living, as did Sherrill. And voters approved: In New Jersey, 58 percent of respondents in exit polls identified electricity costs as a “major problem.” In New York City, 70 percent of voters pointed to housing costs. In his victory speech, Mamdani touted the “most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost of living crisis” since the days of former Mayor Fiorello La Guardia.
“Democrats are a huge tent but all over the country they showed two things: it’s not enough to just run against Trump, you need a positive, affirmative vision and you also need to meet the voters where they are on the issues that matter to them,” said the Democratic strategist Eric Koch. “It takes many poles to hold up our big tent but tonight we showed how we can do it.”
For as much as 2025 has dealt Democrats a series of intra-party proxy battles between progressives and centrists, on Tuesday night they coalesced around a message — affordability — that could bridge the divide ahead of the midterms.
Madison Fernandez, Brakkton Booker and Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.
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