It was the wave election of 2025.
Democrats, furious about US president Donald Trump’s remaking of American government and society, turned out in extraordinary numbers for an off-year election to sweep virtually every competitive election on the map.
The results served as a rebuke of Trump and his Republican Party and a salve for Democrats who have not had many good nights in the past year. Next will come a fierce, yearlong fight, first in redistricting battles and then the midterm elections, for control of the House of Representatives and the fate of Trump’s agenda during the final two years of his term.
Here are six takeaways from the first major elections of the second Trump era.
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1. Democrats finally showed some fight
Democrats have spent the past year locked out of power in Washington, searching furiously but mostly in vain for ways to stop Trump from expanding his power.
They held protests, spoke all night in the Senate and organised “No Kings” rallies that drew millions across the country.
On Tuesday, they finally hit back in a more concrete way.
Democrats won statewide elections in Virginia, New Jersey, California and Pennsylvania. They flipped seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission. And they were on the verge of winning a near two-thirds majority in the Virginia House of Delegates, an extraordinary sweep of battleground districts in races that serve as a plausible stand-in for how voters view both parties given the anonymous nature of most of the candidates.
In New York City, Zohran Mamdani was hovering around 50 per cent of the vote in the mayoral race as he coasted past former governor Andrew Cuomo, who won support from Trump and other Republicans.
When Democrats roared to victory in 2017, during Trump’s first term, it foreshadowed a blue wave in the midterms a year later. On Tuesday night, House Democratic officials were crowing that this year’s results would help them recruit strong candidates to challenge Republicans next year
2. It was a bad night for Trump
In Virginia, Democratic nominee Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s race by focusing on Trump’s firing of federal workers and the impact of the government shutdown on her state.
In the New Jersey governor’s race, Democrat Mikie Sherrill finished her successful campaign by railing against Trump’s demand that a key Hudson river tunnel be “terminated.”
In New York City, Trump’s election-eve endorsement of Cuomo caused Republicans to swing toward the former governor, but failed to thwart Mamdani.
And in California, voters responded to calls to save the nation from Trump by approving a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional districts to shift five of them to Democrats from Republicans.
The president was not on the ballot in any of these places, but in each one, Democrats ran against his policies and yoked their opponents to him.
After similar results in New Jersey and Virginia eight years ago, Democrats nearly ran the table in the 2018 midterm elections. Democrats are already arguing that Tuesday was a harbinger for the 2026 midterms, while Republicans claim it was a blue-state blip.
3. Mamdani gives Democrats a new leader
In a year’s time, Mamdani has gone from searching for random New Yorkers to talk to him to becoming one of the biggest stars in American politics.
Now the New York City mayor-elect at 34 years old, he represents the vanguard of Democratic politics. He is an unabashed progressive and a self-described democratic socialist who is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.
He also offers a new strategic blueprint to a Democratic Party that has for a decade been defined primarily by its opposition to Trump.
Mamdani, in defeating Cuomo in both the primary and general elections, gave New York voters a clear alternative with a defined vision. He focused relentlessly on the cost of living, spoke endlessly about the prices of nearly everything and expressed an adoration for New York City that few other politicians show for the places they call home.
And he did it by blazing a creative, compelling path online, both through his own social media channels and his appearances with scores of influencers and podcasters.
Mamdani’s progressive politics may not play as well outside New York City, and Republicans have already signalled they will seek to tie the party’s candidates to a Muslim immigrant, but Democrats running in the midterm elections are likely to copy his tactics and message discipline.
4. Even Democrats will shrug at a scandal
In the final weeks of Virginia’s campaign for attorney general, it was revealed that Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee, had sent violent text messages about a political rival and had been caught driving 116mph.
But no prominent Virginia Democrat called for him to quit the race. Jones apologised, withstood a torrent of attack ads and rode huge Democratic turnout to victory.
The post-shame era continues apace.
Such was the antipathy toward Republican candidates in Virginia that Jones, even saddled with controversy, performed better than vice-president Kamala Harris did last year in Loudoun County, a key exurb of Washington.
Jones’s political future might have a ceiling because of his scandals in this election, but on Tuesday night, at least, he was as happy as could be.
5. No Trump on the ballot? Advantage, Democrats
Trump drives Republican voters to the polls – but only when he is on the ballot.
Democrats have overperformed in every nonpresidential election year since 2017. Their voters are now the ones who turn out for off-year and midterm elections, while Trump’s loyal Republican base turns out in big numbers only in presidential years.
This played out this year in Wisconsin’s supreme court race, when the liberal candidate prevailed by double digits, and in a series of special elections. It was again evident on Tuesday as Democrats prevailed easily in Virginia and New Jersey.
Trump will not be on the ballot in next year’s midterm elections, but it is a safe bet that Democrats will again try to make him the centrepiece of their campaigns.
6. Newsom helped House Democrats, and himself
Governor Gavin Newsom of California has been on a not-very-secret mission for national attention since before the 2024 presidential election.
And with a blowout victory in a ballot measure to redraw the state’s congressional map in Democrats’ favour, Newsom helped his party’s midterm chances and proved that he could turn out voters in a critical election.
In the short term, the nearly two-to-one margin for “yes” on California’s ballot measure may serve as fuel for Democrats in other blue states weighing their own redistricting plans. In his victory remarks, Newsom made an explicit call for other states – including ones with ambitious Democratic governors, such as Colorado, Illinois and Maryland – to follow California’s lead on redistricting before the midterm elections.
Before the next presidential contest, it provides Newsom with concrete evidence of what he did to combat Trump in an era when Democratic voters are hungry for fighters.
How he uses that platform remains to be seen, but it is not much of a mystery where his ambition lies.
– This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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