SWinxy, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elections as newstainment became a “we need to release a statement about this” situation for Kentucky’s Secretary of State yesterday.

Wait, you say, the big ticket election action of 2025 involves the near 24/7 coverage of the New York City mayor’s race, Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, Prop 50 in California, and so on. What does Kentucky have to do with anything?

Welp…

We’re getting calls about polls being closed. They are closed because we do not have elections today. Kentucky votes next year. You cannot vote today in Kentucky for the mayor of New York City or the Governor of Virginia. Sorry. https://t.co/O71e7asXaW

— Michael Adams, KY Secretary of State (@KYSecState) November 4, 2025

“Low information voter” has been a universal pejorative for all sorts of things by the commentariat for a long while now, but at least those folks – however they are designated – managed to actually vote. The individual so ate up with news coverage that they can name three candidates for New York City mayor but cannot name three elected municipal officials that actually are on the ballot for their location are always going to be the lowest common denominator in a free people self-governing. Curated news feeds just supercharge and amplify that process.

The morning after reactions to the elections badly need that filter. Reactions are based on expectations, expectations based on consumed information, and modern American news consumers only consumer what they want to. Thus, it is no surprise that some poor soul in the Bluegrass State that only hears, sees, and reads what they want to hit up Michael Adams wondering why the great State of Kentucky isn’t getting its say in who will occupy Gracie Mansion.

Bless their hearts.

Mayor-elect Zohran Kwame Mamdani has dominated news coverage of late. For all the inroads new media has made, New York City still has more gravitational pull than any other place across the fruited plain, especially in off-year elections. Mamdani’s charisma and well-run campaign will get plenty of deserved credit, while folks who have spent years screaming about socialism and socialists finally have and actual one in an elected office. Great content for all.

Mamdani’s team deserves credit; however, the unique environment of this campaign must be noted to mute the sweeping “face of the new Democratic Party” hyperbole. The New York Democratic Party set itself up for a hard fall in an absurd sequence of events. Having to run Andrew Cuomo out of the governor’s office in disgrace for being an accused harasser, then having the dead electoral weight of laughably corrupt NYC Mayor Adams to deal with, only to have sex pest Cuomo run in a primary, lose said primary, Adams stay in the race, Cuomo runs as independent anyway…

Let us pause here for a moment. If you are blaming Curtis Sliwa for doing Curtis Sliwa things, you are wasting your time and effort. Curtis Sliwa’s spoiler/gadfly candidacy was heightened by the loathsomeness of Cuomo. Blaming him for this mess is like complaining about how bright the house fire is as it burns down around you, you are missing the point.

The truth for the New York Democratic and Republican Parties is clear from this election: If you don’t clean your own house, someone else is going to do it for you, and you never like how someone else cleans your house. Politicos who cannot bring themselves to banish the Andrew Cuomo’s of the world to private life, or excuse away the comically inept corruption of an Eric Adams, deserve the belt-to-ass elections results they got, socialist or not.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, Virginia took a hard blue turn, NJ recommitted themselves to being not-GOP, and California passed Prop 50 to allow redistricting/gerrymandering.

While “what does this mean for the 2026 midterms” will be the chyron du jour, and most of the wordy word that accompanies will be marginally meaningful, taking these results with a little dose of historical context allows us to glean a few things.

We have a decade now of data that Trumpism only works for Trump, and Trump has to be on the ballot to get even that effect. Places like Bucks County, PA, a data nerds bell-weather favorite, saw voters running not walking to elect Democratic candidates for DA and sheriff, and took total control of school boards which had seen GOP takeovers in the run up to the 2024 elections. Culture warring can get you elected, but it can’t keep you in office.

If one must try to make a sweeping conclusion for the 2026 midterms with President Trump as the main character of the day, perhaps the Virginia House is a good place. Governor Youngkin came to power in a strange election where the big story was Donald Trump staying out it allowing Youngkin to take advantage of an inept campaign from Terry McAuliffe. Now the Youngkin-era GOP has been mostly swept away. How much of a role another four years of Trump played in that might be a measuring stick going forward.

But mostly the lessons of this election, like all elections, is candidate choice matters. Matching the right candidate to the right circumstances is the primary ingredient to an election. Run old, corrupt, cringy candidates in NYC while trying to finagle the system, don’t be surprised when a young progressive makes them look foolish. Sure, historically the 2026 midterms should be very good for Team Blue. Yes, Trump is doing absolutely whatever he wants with little restraint and that power trip paired with being a lame duck means the decade of Trump might finally be wearing out folks. Still, elections — and last night’s results prove it once again — it is the candidates that matter. Trends or not, the better candidate usually wins. If the 2026 midterms are going to be a blue wave, or a GOP bloodbath, or whatever other trending narrative you want to go with, it will be because of the candidates involved. Pay attention to how that develops, so that when you read the “About Last Night” post on November 4th, 2026, you are not one of the shook ones who didn’t see it coming.

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