Some notes on Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger’s victory in Virginia from Kyle Kondik at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Loudoun County, Virginia, whose early reporting suggested Donald Trump was on the way to a significant national win in 2024, pointed the way to Abigail Spanberger’s (D) big gubernatorial win and Jay Jones’s (D) attorney general victory…A year ago, the near-complete vote from early-reporting Loudoun County, Virginia was the first major signal that Donald Trump was on the way to victory in the 2024 presidential election. Last night, Loudoun was the signal that the 2025 election, both in Virginia and elsewhere, was becoming a rout in favor of Democrats…Wealthy, highly-educated, and diverse, Loudoun had zoomed toward Democrats throughout the 2010s, punctuated by Ralph Northam (D) winning the county by 20 points in his 2017 gubernatorial victory and Joe Biden winning it by 25 in 2020…But by 2021, the Democratic margin in the county had contracted to 11 points, helping Glenn Youngkin (R) win the governorship. Three years later, Kamala Harris only won it by 16 points, another 9-point Democratic contraction from four years prior. The shift in Loudoun was emblematic of the overall results, in which Trump improved to varying degrees in all 50 states…But the pendulum has swung again. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) won Loudoun by an eye-opening 29 points. And Attorney General-elect Jay Jones (D) won it by 19 points—nearly matching Northam in the county and running ahead of Harris, and giving the clearest indication that he was on the way to winning. Despite the bombshell revelation of violent, outrageous text messages from Jones that rocked the race a month ago, Jones ended up winning easily, riding Spanberger’s coattails to a 6.5-point statewide win over state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R). Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi (D) won by 10.5 in what was the sleepiest of the three statewide races, and Spanberger won by 15. Polls were correct in the sense that there would be variation in the three races, but they all ended up just being different shades of blue. Democrats also made a massive gain in the state House of Delegates, pushing their majority to 64 seats, a massive 13-seat gain in which they flipped all 8 Harris-won Republican districts and an additional 5 that Trump had carried by small margins last year.”

Some insights from “A Big Night for Democrats,” in which Ruy Teixeira notes at The Liberal Patriot: “It was a good night for Democrats, which confirmed that their coalition, now tilted toward educated, engaged voters, is likely to overperform in non-presidential elections where their coalition’s turnout advantage has the most effect. Granted that the marquee 2025 elections in Virginia and New Jersey were in blue states and President Trump is not popular, Spanberger’s and Sherrill’s easy victories show that their coalition can be mobilized in off-year elections to deliver strong victories given competent, well-run campaigns…Beyond that, one should not read too much into the Democrats’ performance given the historically poor power of these elections to predict future ones. The 2026 and 2028 elections will be fought on a much, much wider playing field with different electorates and a political terrain that is difficult to predict. Still, Democrats can take heart that their coalition has passed an initial test that, had they not done well, would have further demoralized an already demoralized party. Of course, now they’ll have the reverse problem: clearing this low bar will make many Democrats too confident that their problems have been solved when such optimism is not merited…One such problem is the class gap in support. Democrats now do far better among college-educated voters than among the working-class (noncollege) voters. This election was no exception. Indeed, comparing the 2024 and 2025 elections in Virginia and New Jersey using the preliminary AP/NORC VoteCast results indicates you can account for almost all of Democrats’ overperformance in 2025 relative to 2024 (both Spanberger and Sherrill ran ahead of Harris) by (1) a larger class gap (college vs. working class) in both states primarily because both candidates did way better among college-educated voters than Harris did in 2024, and (2) a greater share of college voters in both states (especially VA) relative to 2024.” Teixeira adds, “Moderates will point to the triumphs of Spanberger and Sherrill as giving the party a mandate for moderation; progressives will point to democratic socialist Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral election, where he exceeded pre-election polling and broke 50 percent of the vote, as a clear signal the party needs to be more robustly progressive and exciting…I think the moderates have a better case and more persuasive evidence on their side. But the debate will continue. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. In truth, neither side has really cracked the case of how Democrats can rebuild their working-class support in a populist age, and these election results just do not provide a clear answer. Democrats would be well-advised to approach them with humility as they attempt to chart a course forward.”

Alicia Civita writes at The Latin Times that “Democrats celebrated a clean sweep in Tuesday’s elections across Virginia, New Jersey, New York City and Cincinnati, powered by a dramatic shift among Latino voters who have turned sharply against Donald Trump’s economic results andhis immigration and deportation agenda…Early AP VoteCast exit polling cited by The Atlantic‘s Ronald Brownstein shows Hispanic support for Republican candidates collapsing to about one-third in states that Trump carried nearly two-fifths of just a year ago, a sign that the political pendulum among Latinos is swinging back toward the Democrats…In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, while in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill secured a second term as governor. Both victories came with notable margins among Hispanic voters…According to the AP VoteCast data shared by Brownstein, each Democrat held her GOP opponent to roughly one-third of the Hispanic vote, compared with the two-fifths or more Trump won in both states during the 2024 presidential race. Even more striking, about three-fifths of Hispanic voters in New Jersey and three-quarters in Virginia said Trump has gone too far with deportations, highlighting a deep disapproval of his enforcement policies…The numbers suggest that the administration’s recent mass-deportation initiatives and rhetoric about “removal quotas” are eroding what had been a rare area of growth for the GOP in 2024. Latino voters in both states cited fears of family separation, economic disruption, and anti-immigrant sentiment as motivating factors for their Democratic votes…In New Jersey, 64% and 81% of the Hispanic and Black vote (respectively) went for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate…According to the first numbers from exit polls, majority of Hispanics say that Trump “has gone too far on deportations.”

Harold Meyerson writes at The American Prospect that “Democrats connected with broad public discontent over Trump and the Republicans’ mishandling of the economy and ignoring the public’s resulting discontent. Compare, for instance, the difference between the salience in the public’s mind of Trump’s signature issues and the issues that actually mattered to them. When Virginia voters were asked what issue mattered most to them, 47 percent said the economy, 21 percent said health care, 12 percent said immigration, 10 percent said education, and 6 percent said crime. In New Jersey, 36 percent said taxes, 32 percent said the economy, 16 percent said health care, 7 percent said immigration, and 3 percent said crime. In New York City, 55 percent said the cost of living, 24 percent said crime, 9 percent said immigration, and 6 percent said health care. (And Mamdani voters ranked immigration much higher than the other voters; clearly, they were referring to ICE sweeps against law-abiding immigrants.).” Meyerson adds, “Newsom has managed to win, for now, the pole position in the party’s 2028 presidential contest in a way that has uniquely enabled him to avoid being boxed into the moderate or leftist camps.)..If every Democrat on the ballot yesterday was in touch with the public’s anxiety about the economy, a number of them—Newsom and Mamdani loudly, Spanberger and Sherrill quietly—were also in touch with the Democrats’ fury at the ICE sweeps and Trump’s attempted assumption of monarchial power. Those two themes powered the Democrats to victory yesterday; they should power them to victory next year as well. More here.