Democrats Win Off-Off Year Elections They Were Expected to Win
And what it means for 2024 and beyond.
AP (“Democrats dominate as economic woes take a toll on Trump’s GOP. Takeaways from Election Day 2025“):
Democrats dominated the first major Election Day since President Donald Trump returned to the White House.
And while a debate about the future of the Democratic Party may have only just begun, there are signs that the economy — specifically, Trump’s inability to deliver the economic turnaround he promised last fall — may be a real problem for Trump’s GOP heading into next year’s higher-stakes midterm elections.
Democrats on Tuesday won governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, the only states electing new chief executives this year. They also swept a trio of state Supreme Court contests in swing-state Pennsylvania and ballots measures from Colorado to Maine.
Trump was largely absent from the campaign trail, but GOP candidates closely aligned themselves with the president, betting that his big win last year could provide a path to victory this time. They were wrong.
Democrats are hoping the off-year romp offers a new winning playbook, but some caution may be warranted. Tuesday’s elections were limited to a handful of states, most of which lean blue, and the party that holds the White House typically struggles in off-year elections.
My wife and I voted yesterday in a very blue district in Virginia, which has shifted from red to purple to blue in the 23 years since I moved back here. We were literally the only ones in the room other than election workers and our kids, who were off from school.
As I’ve noted before, the nominees for governor in both parties ran unopposed in their party primaries. The Democrat, Abigail Spanberger, has led the race by a pretty wide margin throughout. Not surprisingly, she won, 57.5% to 42.3%. The lieutenant governor’s race was almost entirely off my radar screen. It was notable only because the Democrat, Ghazala Hashmi, made history as the first Muslim woman to win a statewide election in any U.S. state. She won by a slightly smaller margin than Spanberger, 55.6% to 44.2%.
The only race in question was for attorney general. Republican incumbent Jason Miyares got a big break when his opponent, Jay Jones, was discovered to have sent texts advocating the murder of a political rival. It became the Republican talking point for the last month of the campaign, used against Democrats in all of the races. Jones only won 54.2% to 46.8%.
As was noted by Steven and me repeatedly four years ago, Virginia has a longstanding pattern of voting for the party that does not control the White House in these elections; indeed, there has been only one exception in the last 13 elections. Last cycle, Republicans swept these offices after Biden’s 2020 win. This cycle, Democrats swept them after Trump’s 2024 win.
We’ve learned time and again that these low-turnout, off-off-year elections don’t tell us much about subsequent congressional and presidential election cycles.
That does not, of course, stop pundits from punditing.
POLITICO (“Democrats didn’t just rebound. They dominated.“):
For Democrats, Tuesday night felt like 2017 all over again.
Umm, as noted,All across the country, Democrats won big, from the marquee races to the down-ballot contests. Counties that had shifted right a year ago veered back to the left, and the suburbs that powered Democrats’ massive wins in the first Trump administration came roaring back. Exit polls even showed Democrats improved their margins with non-college educated voters.
The strength of the wins hints at Democrats’ appetite to take on Trump as he ends his first year in office and voters’ concerns about cost of living.
Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill cruised to double-digit victories in Virginia and New Jersey. Two Georgia Democrats flipped seats on the state’s Public Service Commission, the first non-federal statewide wins for a Democrat in nearly two decades. Democrats flipped a pair of Republican-held state Senate seats in Mississippi, cracking the GOP supermajority in a deep-red state. And a successful California ballot measure delivered five additional seats for the party’s House margins ahead of the 2026 midterms, offsetting Texas’ redistricting push.
It was an injection of life into a depleted, depressed Democratic Party that had been cast into the political wilderness by Donald Trump’s decisive victory a year ago. Democrats, locked out of power in Washington, have spent the last year soul-searching and data-digging, as their brand sagged to historic lows.
But they also started to overperform in special elections, hinting that the tide was turning. And on Tuesday, their first big electoral test of the second Trump era, they didn’t just match the wins from eight years ago that had been a harbinger of a blue wave in the 2018 midterms — in several key races, they exceeded them.
“Virginians and voters spoke loud and clear that they’re pissed off at the Trump administration,” Christina Freundlich, a Democratic strategist who worked on the Virginia lieutenant governor’s race. “Democrats came out in record numbers, and this is a foreshadow of what we’re going to see next year.”
Democrats rode the traditional, party-out-of-power tailwinds, reenergizing its own base by pushing back on Trump’s second-term policies that have alarmed liberals. Spanberger’s and Sherrill’s messaging on the stagnant economy and affordability crisis helped their party bounce back in its first political test of the second Trump era — and by margins that even surprised some Democrats.
Axios (“A big blue wave for Democrats, and two paths forward“):
Democrats delivered a resounding rebuke to President Trump in all five of the most-watched races in Tuesday’s elections, as voters responded to candidates’ promises to address frustrations with high prices and Trump.
It wasn’t just that Democrats, as predicted, won key races in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California and New York City. In race after race, the margins of victory — including double-digit wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races — were what resonated. County after county moved blue.
“The Democratic Party is back,” declared House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist elected New York City’s mayor, told supporters his victory represented “a mandate for a new kind of politics, a mandate for a city we can afford.”Even as Democrats celebrated late Tuesday, it was clear the results didn’t settle the Democratic Party’s civil war over the best way to move forward after its crushing losses in 2024. Progressive and moderate Democrats both emerged with genuine measures of victory Tuesday — and they’re already wielding it as evidence that it’s their side that should lead the party out of the wilderness in 2026 and 2028. Progressives in New York City and California fired up their base to elect Mamdani, and to redraw California’s congressional map to help Democrats’ push to flip five U.S. House seats next year.
[…]
For the Democratic Party, the dueling narratives will continue into 2026 and 2028. Left-wing elected officials and strategists argue that the party has become so unpopular that it needs young outsiders like Mamdani running on an unapologetic progressive vision — a mirror image of what Trump and his allies did in the Republican Party over the past decade. Moderate and establishment Democrats argue that it was progressives who made Democrats unpopular in the first place, thanks to their embrace of slogans such as “defund the police.” They say the party needs more center-left, practical candidates with appealing biographies.
Clearly, there is substantial dissatisfaction with President Trump and some of his policies. We’ve seen that in poll after poll. I fully expect that, to the degree our elections reflect the will of the voters, Democrats will retake the House after the 2026 midterms.
But I thought that Monday morning. And six months ago. I take very little from yesterday’s results.
Midterms have different electorates than presidential cycles. And off-off-year cycles have different electorates still.
In Virginia, with 97% of the votes in, Spanberger got 1,961,990 votes. Her Republican opponent got 1,442,817. That’s 3,404,807. Bump it 3% to account for uncounted votes, and you get 3,506,951. Last November, by contrast, Kamala Harris got 2,335,395 votes to Donald Trump’s 2,075,085. That’s 4,410,480. That’s more 1,005,673 votes.
That people are typically more motivated to vote in presidential elections than in gubernatorial elections is not shocking. That’s doubly true when the presidential election is expected to be close* and the gubernatorial election isn’t. Still, the 3.4 million who showed up for both elections are not a normally distributed sample of the 4.4 million who showed up for the presidential election. They’re likely older, wealthier, and more educated. Not so long ago, that favored Republicans. Now, it favors Democrats.
*Virginia isn’t considered a swing state anymore, and the Democrat carrying it in presidential elections is no longer surprising. But people vote on the national vibe, not the Electoral College reality.
A little tangential but our grandkids were also off from school. Don’t know why in Virginia but, in Texas, it is because of guns. Voting sites were typically schools. Now, because of school shootings and out of control guns, it is unsafe to have hundreds of strangers entering the schools. So school districts make it a school holiday. And next week, the national holiday, Veterans Day, is no longer a school holiday. Thanks, NRA, for making the nation less safe.
Did you miss this, Dr Joyner?
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-gops-bad-night-in-red-states-too/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=first
Last night was a BFD in the minds of lots of people.
Trivia time!
Spanberger’s 15-point victory is the largest for a Democrat since 1961.
Sherrill’s victory is the first time since 1965 that a party has won the NJ gubernatorial race for the third time in a row (and it was the Dems back then as well).
Ms. Earle-Sears, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in Virginia, went all-in on trans hate. And she got her ass kicked by a 15 point margin. That is not nothing. It suggests that trans hate has lost potency. She clearly thought it was a winning issue, but it quite clearly was not. She underperformed her Republican predecessor, Youngkin, who won with 51%. Ms. Earle-Sears got 42%.
That hot button seems to be cooling. Today there are fewer aspiring Republican candidates thinking, ‘let’s hit the trans!’
The California turn-out my be dismissed as, oh it’s just Leftie California, but lines outside of polling stations long past poll closing time, for an obscure but partisan issue, with no candidates involved, shows that Democrats are motivated as hell. That, too, would worry me if I were MAGA.
Dr. Joyner’s attempt to be the reserved voice after a “Trump Thump’n” just sets him apart as an old fuddy-duddy. Instead, let the up and coming young whippersnappers have their moment!
What stood out for me is the way that the Latin vote did a 180 in New Jersey. The numbers between last November and now was night and day. Apparently kidnapping people and memory holing them tends to piss people off.
Also, no one does the numbers like Steve Kornacki. Not only can he break down election returns in a way that is understandable like he does, but he can also explain the NFL post season rubric.
I am also loving this…
https://buckscountybeacon.com/2025/11/bucks-countys-ice-loving-maga-sheriff-fred-harran-got-what-he-deserved-a-pink-slip-from-voters-on-election-night/
Last night sent a big message.
Democratic voters are being reached. Republican voters are softening support. Independents have turned.
Our better angels are gaining ground.
@Kylopod:
You beat me to it.
The significance of both Spanberger’s and Sherrill’s victory is the margin. Acknowledging all of @james caveats, last night was good for Dems
@Sleeping Dog:
Sherrill’s 13-point margin of victory was especially eye-opening for a race that had been widely anticipated to be close. The reasons could be many, but one possibility is a shift in Hispanic voting—New Jersey’s Hispanic share of the population is twice that of Virginia’s.
Edit: I hit refresh and see that @Rick DeMent: covered this.
Can agree it is more a rebuke than a revolution, but the shift in the VA house is quite impressive when you consider past GOP redistricting in VA. It does reinforce Steven’s posts as well on the polarization of parties, as Jones would have likely been forced out in prior years, but now people don’t care. James, you here in NVA, if you watched YouTube, radio, TV…the Jay Jones ads were ad nauseum as well as the “Woke Left”, “Boys changing next to your daughters” scare ads ridiculousness. Yet with all of those on constant 24/7 The gap between the GOV race vs. The AG race was around 125k votes…reinforcing the fact that candidate character does not really matter anymore. And unfortunately the furloughs in our area contribute to what you see at the polls, so many can vote whatever time of day they like, where normally you know the rush in NVA is before and after work.
If you had, “Not MAGA enough” on your GOP excuses card – BINGO! Trump and his apologists are shifting blame, noting he wasn’t on the ballot and inadvertently confirming that the Republican party is indeed a cult. Otherwise, they echo Dr. JJ….off year, no one cares, blah blah blah.
@Scott: Yes. We passed a law in 2019 closing the schools during elections, citing “safety.”
@becca: I agree there were some down-ballot surprises in a handful of places. I just tend to dismiss them as meaningful because off-off-cycle elections are so wildly unrepresentative.
@Michael Reynolds: Maybe! But she’s an awful candidate, so the trans thing was a desperation gambit. She was a non-entity as lieutenant governor and, frankly, not all that bright.
There were a lot of telling downvote ballots. Anti-trans school boards were replaced entirely in Penn. A MAGA/ICE supporting sherrif was ousted unceremoniously.
@Sleeping Dog:
@Eusebio:
This. These kinds of margins can’t just be waved-away as merely incidental.
Sherrill is nearly doubling up her polling lead. Dems flipped sleepy red state races, in Mississippi and elsewhere, that weren’t expected to not stay red. Dems won statewide in Georgia by 26-points (63%-37%), their statewide Pennsylvania court races by 22-points (61%-39%). Moms For Liberty incumbents and local candidates went down in flames. VA Dems swept delegate races, will have their largest majority in nearly four decades.
Yes, Dems were supposed to win — but not by this much, and not everywhere all at once. Even within the frame of general midterm backlash, these margins are historic. In a normal midterm, a bad candidate like Jay Jones and his mean texts would’ve either lost or barely survived, as polls suggested. He’s up by 7-points. It suggests a political environment more hostile to Republicans than previously understood. Polling might be even underestimating Trump’s unpopularity.
No, this guarantees nothing for 2026+. But it seems Trump’s 2024 coalition is inordinately demotivated, if not unraveled. Dems appear to stand on ground stronger than known yesterday morning.
Politico:
National Review:
Some laughed at anti-Trumpers harrassing MAGA about egg prices and his broken pledge to lower prices “on day one.” But that’s basically what Spanberger, Sherrill, and Mamdani ran on. No money for healthcare and food aid but billions for Argentine billionaire bailouts and Trump’s gold-plated Epstein Memorial Ballroom is not good optics for the right.
No small thing —
Democrat Johnny DuPree Flips GOP-Held Mississippi Senate Seat – breaking the 13 year GOP supermajority
Mississippi’s population is nearly 40% black, the most of any state, yet their political representation is woefully lagging. This is a shameful blotch on America’s aspirations of individual freedom.
@James Joyner:
Interestingly, I give more significance to our school board elections because in our conservative, most Republican and middle class school district, full of mega churches, the far right whack jobs that pounded culture war issues were trounced. People were just fed up.
I think state Republicans sensed something because outside money was being poured in at the last moment. Gov Abbott came down to visit the local Republican Party officials and told them how important they were to keep going far right.
Well, they lost.
I’m pretty sure we saw something similar in the 2017 elections, albeit they felt less crucial than this year’s elections. Then the 2018 midterms were a small blue wave. Then in 2020 Biden won. Then in 2022 the red trickle was enough to take the House. And then in 2024 America attempted suicide.
A short time ago I ran into the notion of thermostatic politics. I forget the details, the gist is that no matter which side wins, the victory and subsequent implementation of the policies they advocated or ran on, causes a backlash favorable to the other side.
This strikes me as simplistic, and too rigid for human behavior. And yet it seems to hold up most of the time.
Journalists just can’t help themselves accepting Trump’s framing, huh?
On the other hand, he took the hottest economy and lowest unemployment in my lifetime and turned it into a defacto recession. So, honestly, promise made promise kept.
Maine voters said no to changing voter registration laws, and overwhelmingly supported a new red flag law.
The margins are the real story. I posted this last night, but the fact that every single county in Virginia shifted blue is a story. That Democrats when from the barest of majorities to nearing a supermajority is a story.
Dems need to fundraise like this happened, and campaign like it didn’t.
All elections are now national and all votes are a referendum on the President. That helped D’s yesterday as not even the right wing media machine could cover up the failures enough.
The problem is most voters start from a base of ignorance and team cheering.* They know they are pissed off and frustrated but can’t really say why. And because our government is so fundamentally broken (and has been for at least 15 years) we just keep veering back and forth between parties and candidates promising to fix things because it’s all the other teams fault. Neither the House or Senate are functional institutions any longer, and there is little sign they ever will be–look at the continued non-sensical resistance to getting rid of the damn filibuster! Even Trump can’t get those otherwise spineless twits to do so, any more than D leadership could in 2021-2022. Almost of them in both parties would prefer to avoid actually voting on much of anything rather than govern. And so power continues to devolve down to the executive and judicial branches, at the whim of idealogues, and no one can actually FIX anything without legislative action that isn’t coming. A dozen other examples can be cited but a republic without a functioning legislature for so long is doomed to fail, regardless of the President or the party in (nominal) control of the legislature. The systems are just broken and have left us with a mix of evil a-holes at worst, and ineffective blowhards (looking at you, Schumer) at best.
* A thoroughly depressing example I hit this morning. Someone I know well, who hates politics but is strongly pro-Democratic party and anti-Trump at this point, and is generally an intelligent and successful adult, told me “I’m fine with Trump asking to get rid of the filibuster as long as they keep the requirement for 60 votes.” I can’t…I don’t…ARGH!
I keep coming back to how hard it is for people at this blog to understand just how appallingly ignorant the average American voter is.
Enjoy the win–a good day for the side almost all of us are on here. It bodes well for next year and 2028 (assuming we have free and fair elections, which is an assumption I’m still not entirely confident in, ESPECIALLY because these results will encourage even more attempts to screw with the vote). But it doesn’t mean Americans are turning against Trump or MAGA and some new stable anti-Trump majority is forming. All it really means is Americans are still pissed (and getting more pissed every year regardless of who’s in charge) and directing their anger towards the President and his party everywhere.
@Just Another Ex-Republican:
My sympathies.
Reminds me of a near peasant revolt in the USSR, where protestors chanted “Long live Lenin! Death to the Bolsheviks!”
Back on topic, I’d favor keeping the filibuster with all the 60 votes, so long as debate on the floor is ongoing and not otherwise. Even if it’s a generic senator reading the phonebook, ok, that requires 60 votes to end. But if there’s no active debate, not even a generic senator reciting The Iliad, then a vote has to take place.
Hard to keep that up, even with relays, for a week, let alone 35 days and counting.
Or change the rules so that everything requires 60 votes to pass. all legislation, approval of nominations to all posts, including the fixer court, and even reconciliation bills. Everything.
You’d either get some form of compromise and more sensible nominees for office (ie no Tulsis or Jrs or Hesghets), or the chamber would revert to suspended animation for two years.
And I’m afraid the latter is far more likely.