Why Democrats Won

If you want to know how sweeping the Democratic wins were on Election Night—from Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City’s mayoral race to Democratic wins for governor in New Jersey and Virginia and beyond—one need only see how President Donald Trump reacted with rare brevity. The president posted on Truth Social, “‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters.”

If the 47th president was rendered terse by the Democratic sweep in the off-year contests, the opposition party was positively giddy. “American voters just delivered a Democratic resurgence. A Republican reckoning. A Blue Sweep. And it happened because our Democratic candidates, no matter where they are or how they fit into our big tent party, are meeting voters at the kitchen table, not the gilded ballroom,” said Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin. 

In New Jersey, where Democrats have been nervous about Representative Mikie Sherrill, a former Navy helicopter pilot, being able to stick the landing in the gubernatorial race, she did so easily, beating Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 13 points. In 2024, Trump only lost the Garden State by 6 points, slashing the double-digit margins Democrats had become accustomed to in New Jersey in presidential races. He did so by making inroads among key Democratic constituencies, especially among Hispanics, even flipping Passaic County and shocking Democrats by coming close in Hudson County just across the river from New York City. An 18-point swing to Democrats in Passaic and a 22-point swing in Hudson County represented a dramatic reversal of Republican fortunes. Indeed, Democrats increased their margins in every county.

In New York City, Mamdani won a majority of the vote in a bitterly fought contest, buoyed by eye-popping turnout. He carried young people dramatically while older voters went with disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent after losing the Democratic primary to the young state assemblyman by 13 points. Mamdani’s campaign on affordability eclipsed his past statements about defunding the police, and while his years-long criticism of Israel—and his refusal to endorse it as a Jewish state—cost him the majority of Jewish votes in a city where one in 16 of the world’s Jews live, it was not enough to deny him a majority and becoming the first Muslim mayor of America’s most populous city and the youngest mayor in over a century. 

In Virginia, where former Representative Abigail Spanberger won by over 15 points, Democrats were on track to have a supermajority in the House of Delegates, flipping 13 seats in the state’s northern suburbs near Washington, D.C., where the federal government shutdown has been felt painfully. Ghazala Hashmi, the Virginia Lieutenant Governor-Elect, became the first Muslim-American to win a statewide contest, and the Democratic sweep pulled Jay Jones into the Attorney General slot, despite the revelation of texts he’d made calling for GOP politicians and their children to be murdered. 

Republicans tried to console themselves by saying the Democratic wins in blue states were no harbinger of next year’s midterm elections. However, Democrats easily held on to three state Supreme Court seats in battleground Pennsylvania and won two statewide slots on the important Public Service Commission in Georgia, a positive sign for the party. 

On television, GOP pundits, incumbents, and consultants pointed to Mamdani’s victory and tried to paint the Democratic Party as having embraced his Democratic Socialists of America vision for the country. While it’s true that the DSA’s Mamdani is now a leading light in the Democratic Party, given the centrist races won by Spanberger and Sherrill, depicting the Democratic Party as a quasi-Marxist project is a stretch. There is no question that voters embraced Mamdani’s charm and relentless focus on affordability and willingness to challenge the Democratic Party’s mainstream leadership and norms. The night could boost the determination, if not the fortunes, of progressive office seekers like Graham Platner, running for the U.S. Senate nomination in Maine.

Democrats were in a combative mood to take on the Trump administration. That was as true in Virginia as in New York City, where Spanberger was unflinching in her criticism of the administration. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom’s gambit to have voters approve a change in the state’s nonpartisan redistricting regimen so that the Democratic controlled statehouse could redraw the state’s Congressional districts to counter the mid-decade gerrymandering going on in red states paid off handsomely, easily winning at the ballot box, and setting up Democrats to pick up as many as five congressional seats in the Golden State in next year’s elections. Newsom, who has positioned himself as a leader of the Trump opposition, raised over $100 million to back the measure.

Underlying the night’s results was President Trump’s unpopularity and failure to live up to his promise to lower prices and end wars. Instead, the most notable events for the president in the last few months have been his destruction of the White House East Wing to make room for a new ballroom, the federal government shutdown, airstrikes on boats in Latin America allegedly running drugs, and a continued war in Ukraine, albeit with a high-profile but shaky ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war. 

If there was any solace for Trump, it was the truth in his statement that he was not on the ballot. Since 2016, Democrats have overperformed in years when he’s not on the ballot. Now that he’s a lame duck president, his coattails may be even shorter. Trump seemed to bow to reality last week: the Constitution prevents him from seeking a third term.

Despite worries that Democratic primaries have a way of producing weak nominees in closely fought elections, voters chose candidates who had remarkable strengths, including an ideology that matched the electorate’s concerns. By contrast, the GOP produced a series of flawed candidates, most notably Winsome Earle-Sears, the current Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, who never really had a chance to succeed Governor Glenn Youngkin, a private equity mogul, who projected a more moderate image and capitalized on and stoked the concerns of many suburban parents over transgender issues. By contrast, Earle-Sears could never shake her more combustible statements, like calling legal abortion “genocide.” 

Even Jesse Jackson used to say it takes two wings to fly, meaning the Democrats benefited from right-wing and left-wing factions. Democratic primary voters seemed to have had an uncanny sense of how to pick the right candidates this year. 

In Erie County, Pennsylvania, a swing region in a swing state, the GOP picked up the county executive position four years ago for the first time in decades. Last night, Democrat Christina Vogel, a small business owner and political newcomer, soundly defeated Republican incumbent Brenton Davis, a military vet who let inmates be released from the county prison to tend to snow removal, earning the ire of judges, prosecutors, and victims who weren’t informed, as is standard procedure. When the GOP is making rookie mistakes like that, it’s no wonder Democrats had such a remarkable night.