Copyright The Atlantic
They dislike him, they really dislike him. Off-year elections are never quite the crystal ball for midterms that political junkies want, but one thing that last night’s results seem to convey clearly is that many voters are unhappy with President Donald Trump. Elections for New York City mayor, governors of New Jersey and Virginia, and gerrymandering in California had their own local dynamics, but voters in these heavily nationalized contests were united in their rejection of Trump and his priorities. The results give some reason to doubt Trump’s claim that his 2024 victory was “a historic realignment” of American politics. But although the success of Democrats running the spectrum from moderate to progressive may soothe the pre-2026 nerves of Trump’s opposition, it also means there are no pat answers to the question of how best to run against him. Zohran Mamdani, a charismatic Democratic newcomer, won the New York mayoralty by a wide margin. Mamdani captured roughly 50 percent of the vote in a three-way race, despite the president’s endorsement of his chief rival, Andrew Cuomo, and threats to cut off most federal funding to the city. Or was it in part because of Trump? The president is detested in his hometown, and although Mamdani relentlessly pivoted away from national politics toward issues of affordability in the city, the contrast between the young, cheerful immigrant and aging, cranky nativist president was unmissable. Mamdani was only too delighted to call attention to Trump’s late backing of Cuomo as a way of energizing his own voters. His victory immediately makes him one of the leaders of the Democratic Party’s left wing, alongside Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In Virginia, meanwhile, Abigail Spanberger staked a claim to leadership of the party’s moderate wing. The former U.S. representative and CIA officer trounced the Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points to become the commonwealth’s governor, replacing the term-limited GOP incumbent Glenn Youngkin. Spanberger’s victory was widely anticipated, but the margin is on the higher end of expectations. She carried to victory not only the lieutenant-governor candidate, Ghazala Hashmi, but also Jay Jones, the nominee for attorney general. Democrats gained at least 13 seats and maintained control in the House of Delegates as well. Jones’s campaign was shaken late by the publication of text messages from 2022 in which he wrote that if he had two bullets and had a chance to shoot Hitler, Pol Pot, or the then-Republican speaker of the House of Delegates, he’d shoot the Republican twice. In the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the messages caused a firestorm, but although Democrats condemned the messages, they did not seek to force Jones out of the race. On Election Day, the blue wave carried him over the incumbent Republican, Jason Miyares. Also winning was the New Jersey Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a current U.S. representative who ran a campaign focused squarely on Trump. The race gave Democrats jitters: Four years ago, the Republican Jack Ciattarelli came within three points of unseating Governor Phil Murphy, and polls in recent weeks showed Ciattarelli—once again on the ballot—close behind Sherrill. In the end, though, Sherrill won by some 13 points. Proposition 50, California’s referendum on redrawing U.S. House districts, scored an even larger win, with more than 60 percent of voters favoring it in incomplete results. The ballot initiative sought to bypass the state’s independent redistricting commission and create maps that would give Democrats a chance to pick up five more seats in Congress. Governor Gavin Newsom was the face of the gerrymander, arguing it was essential as a counterweight to several states, including Texas, Missouri, and North Carolina, adding Republican districts at Trump’s behest. The vote not only aids Democrats’ midterm hopes but raises Newsom’s profile as a Trump adversary—and 2028 presidential hopeful. It was that kind of night for Democrats: Up and down the ballot, races not only went their way but did so by wide margins. (In Pennsylvania, three Democratic justices on the state supreme court won elections to keep their seats.) That follows a run of successes in special elections. But drawing simple conclusions from these results is challenging, given the very different personalities, campaigns, and platforms that brought Democrats to victory. Perhaps the only unifying thread was former President Barack Obama, who campaigned for Spanberger and Sherrill, endorsed Prop 50, and reached out to Mamdani even as other national Democrats kept their distance. The big lesson may be that Democrats’ best bet is to run candidates who effectively represent and speak to the places they’re running, rather than pursuing a single ideology. These results have only limited ability to restrain Trump’s abuses of power right now, and although they are the best that Democrats could hope for, they also don’t guarantee success in 2026. What the returns do show clearly is that Democratic voters are highly motivated to vote against Trump, despite polls finding that they are disgusted with their own party. This may sound familiar. Trump has never been popular with Americans as a whole: He won a minority of the popular vote in 2016, led his party to defeat in 2018, and lost in 2020. In the 2022 midterms, his unpopularity was a major reason Republicans underperformed. But Trump’s victory in 2024 called that into question. Trump and his allies treated it as an “unprecedented and powerful mandate” for radical right-wing governance. A year later, this election suggests a different interpretation: that Trump’s victory was driven by high inflation, Joe Biden’s disastrous decision to try to run for reelection, an underwhelming Kamala Harris campaign, and an anti-incumbent mood. Americans still aren’t sold on the Democratic Party, but the anti-MAGA majority has reemerged.
