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Democrats seized the momentum they were seeking as they head into 2026.

Voters in California blessed a redistricting effort intended to partially neutralize a push by President Trump to draw up more safe Republican House seats before next year’s election, according to The Associated Press, after Democrats rolled up a series of wins to build momentum toward next year’s midterms.

Two Democratic women, Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and former Representative Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, won closely watched races for governor, notching victories for a party desperate to show it still knows how to harness anger against Mr. Trump nearly a year after he won back the White House and secured unified control of Congress.

The main contests were mostly unfolding in states lost last year by Mr. Trump, who avoided campaigning in person alongside the major Republican candidates. But as Democratic victories piled up on Tuesday night, he pushed back on the notion that the races were seen as a repudiation of his policies. “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,” he wrote, attributing that thought to “Pollsters.”

The governors’ race in New Jersey was hard fought, particularly after Mr. Trump’s better-than-expected performance there in 2024. Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican, emulated aspects of the president’s rhetoric in an effort to recreate his coalition there, and the loss may reflect the challenge of getting Mr. Trump’s supporters out to vote when he’s not on the ballot.

Ms. Spanberger, who will become the first women governor in Virginia, chose a bipartisan message for her victory speech. “My goal and my intent is to serve all Virginians,” she said.

Her win, while not a major surprise, came in a state that is home to scores of federal workers, contractors and others whose lives are intertwined with the federal government. It could reflect a rebuke of the president’s downsizing of the federal government in his backyard — and potentially result in fresh pressure on his party to end the shut down of the federal government.

In California, voters approved a redistricting plan that would strengthen Democrats’ numbers in the House, a high-profile effort to counter similar efforts in Republican-led states that Mr. Trump has pushed for ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Other contests around the country will also shape future elections. In Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state, voters decided to retain three Supreme Court justices. In Maine, voters decided against new voting restrictions, including requiring photo IDs for in-person voting and tightening rules on absentee voting.

Zohran Mamdani won New York City’s mayoral election; follow our live coverage here. Read more on other races around the country:

California ballot measure: Mr. Trump this summer called on Texas to redraw its congressional map to gerrymander five districts toward the Republican column. Mr. Newsom, who is weighing a 2028 presidential run, pushed for a ballot measure that would redraw California’s congressional map to counter Texas: five districts toward the Democrats. Polls suggest the measure, Proposition 50, is likely to pass. The question may be how many more blue states will answer the governor’s August call that “blue states need to stand up.” — Reid J. Epstein

**Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court: Three justices who were elected as Democrats to the State Supreme Court in Pennsylvania will keep their seats for additional 10 year terms (or until they reach mandatory retirement age). The outcome means Democrats will hold on to their 5-2 advantage on the court through the next presidential election, a critical victory for Democrats in the biggest swing state in the country.— Nick Corasaniti

**Virginia attorney general: **Jay Jones, a Democrat whose candidacy was roiled by a texting scandal, won the state’s attorney general race, defeating Jason Miyares, the Republican incumbent. When early voting began in September, Mr. Jones was expected to win alongside the other Democratic nominees for top statewide offices, but the race tightened considerably after the revelations in early October.

**Mayoral contests, ballot measures and more: **There were plenty of other questions and contests being decided Tuesday. Mayor Andre Dickens won re-election in Atlanta and Detroit elected its first new mayor in 12 years. Miami, Minneapolis and Seattle also had mayoral races. In Jersey City, N.J., a disgraced former state governor, Jim McGreevey, is seeking a comeback in his bid to lead the city. In Maine, voters backed a red flag law for firearms.

McGreevey’s bid for political comeback moves to a runoff.

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Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey has spent much of the past two decades running job-training programs for people who have been released from prison.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

For Jim McGreevey, who is trying to make a political comeback after resigning in disgrace as New Jersey’s governor 21 years ago, redemption will have to wait — if it is to come at all.

The mayor’s race in Jersey City, N.J., where Mr. McGreevey was among the candidates, is headed to a runoff after no one in the crowded field managed to win more than 50 percent of the votes cast in the nonpartisan election.

As of late Tuesday, Mr. McGreevey was in second place and trailing James Solomon, a two-term City Council member, by about 1,200 votes in the contest to decide who will lead New Jersey’s most diverse and second-largest city for the next four years.

The mere fact that Mr. McGreevey, who was born in Jersey City but did not grow up there, is even in a position to proceed to the Dec. 2 runoff is something few political observers would once have imagined given the spectacular collapse of his once-ascendant career in 2004.

A former state lawmaker and mayor of Woodbridge, N.J., he stepped down as governor less than two years into his first term after announcing, with his second wife at his side, that he was “a gay American” who had had an affair with a male staff member.

Mr. McGreevey had hired the man, Golan Cipel, as a homeland security adviser at an annual salary of $110,000. Mr. Cipel later quit the job and threatened to expose Mr. McGreevey’s double life and to sue him for sexual harassment.

After resigning, Mr. McGreevey studied to become an Episcopal priest but was not ordained. He has spent much of the past two decades running job-training programs for people who have been released from prison.

The available polling had showed a tight race between Mr. McGreevey, whose campaign was by far the best funded; Mr. Solomon, who represents the city’s Downtown area and was backed by the Working Families Party; and Bill O’Dea, a Hudson County commissioner.

With about 70 percent of the ballots counted late Tuesday, Mr. Solomon was the clear leader and Mr. O’Dea was in third place. The others in the crowded field were Joyce Watterman, the City Council president; Mussab Ali, a former president of the city’s school board; Christina Freeman, a Jersey City police officer; and Kalki Jayne-Rose, a musician.

Jersey City, a predominantly working-class community, has drawn a substantial number of New York exiles in search of cheaper housing. Roughly 40 percent of the city’s roughly 300,000 residents were born outside the United States; nearly three out of four identify as Asian, Black or Latino.

As in the mayor’s race across the Hudson River in New York City, affordability was a top issue in Jersey City. The leading candidates all pledged to take steps to attract people and housing development to the city while ensuring that longtime residents were not priced out.

The stage was set for a wide-open race when the current mayor, Steven Fulop, decided against seeking a fourth term after running an unsuccessful campaign to be the Democratic nominee in New Jersey’s governor’s race this year.

Mr. Solomon, 41, sought to cast himself as part of a younger generation of Democrats eager to shake up their party’s entrenched leadership and battle President Trump more aggressively.

The outgoing governor, Philip D. Murphy, endorsed Mr. McGreevey, as did a number of local Democratic leaders. Their support, along with Mr. McGreevey’s fund-raising prowess, helped give him an apparent edge as voting began.

But the whiff of scandal he continued to carry made him unpopular with some voters and gave others, especially Mr. O’Dea and Mr. Solomon, an opening.

Mr. O’Dea, 66, is a lifelong Jersey City resident who once represented his West Side neighborhood on the City Council and has ties to Hudson County’s vaunted Democratic machine. In assessing his career versus Mr. McGreevey’s, he told The New York Times, “I’ve spent my entire life in public service without any scandals.”

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Scenes From Election Day

East Brunswick, N.J.

Associated Press 1.

East Brunswick, N.J.

Supporters of Mikie Sherrill

Bryan Anselm for The New York Times 1.

Virginia

Abigail Spanberger

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times 1.

Detroit

Mary Sheffield

Emily Elconin for The New York Times 1.

Philadelphia

Justice Kevin Dougherty

Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times 1.

Bridgewater, N.J.

Jack Ciattarelli

Karsten Moran for The New York Times 1.

Bridgewater, N.J.

Karsten Moran for The New York Times 1.

Sacramento

Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times 1.

Portland, Maine

Ryan David Brown for The New York Times 1.

City of Industry, Calif.

Philip Cheung for The New York Times 1.

Hacienda Heights, Calif.

Philip Cheung for The New York Times

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The fast race call for Proposition 50 in California means it will most likely be an early night for Gov. Gavin Newsom, though he may wait for Zohran Mamdani to finish speaking in New York before stepping in front of the cameras here in Sacramento.

A cheer erupted briefly at the California Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento when The A.P. called Proposition 50 a winner.

In California, polls had shown Proposition 50 passing by a sizable margin, and Democrats were hoping for an early call tonight. This may have even exceeded those optimistic expectations.

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Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

California’s Proposition 50 has passed, according to The Associated Press. The ballot measure, which temporarily approves new congressional districts favoring Democrats, was pushed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a response to Republican gerrymandering in Texas and other red states.

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California approves new House maps in a major win for Democrats and Newsom.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom led the effort to put Proposition 50 on the ballot as a response to Republican gerrymandering in Texas.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

California voters agreed Tuesday to aggressively redraw the state’s congressional district lines to wipe out as many as five Republican seats, according to The Associated Press, delivering a major victory for national Democrats hoping to wrest control of the House of Representatives in 2026.

Gavin Newsom, the state’s Democratic governor, had championed the ballot measure, successfully selling it as an emergency response to President Trump’s efforts to press Republican states across the country to redraw their own boundaries for political advantage.

It’s now possible that Democrats could hold as many as 48 of California’s 52 seats after 2026, up from the party’s current 43 seats.

Redistricting wars have spread nationwide since the summer, when Republicans carved as many as five new congressional seats for the party in Texas. The passage of new maps in California represents the first and most significant swing back in favor of Democrats.

Republicans currently hold a mere three-seat majority in the House, and control of the chamber is the Democratic Party’s best chance to take any power in Washington next year and thus thwart Mr. Trump’s agenda in the second half of his second term.

Mr. Newsom and a parade of national Democrats had pitched the redistricting measure as a necessary maneuver by the left to counteract Mr. Trump’s bending of the typical rules of political engagement. They called it the Election Rigging Response Act, purposefully naming it Proposition 50 in reference to the 50 U.S. states, symbolizing the nationwide scope of the fight.

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California voters agreed Tuesday to aggressively redraw the state’s congressional district lines.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

But even more than that, Mr. Newsom aimed to turn the redistricting campaign into more of a partisan referendum on Mr. Trump than on gerrymandering, successfully taking advantage of California’s political tilt to the left.

There are now legal, legislative and political fights over redistricting in more than a half-dozen states, including Indiana, Virginia, New York, Ohio, North Carolina, Missouri, Illinois and Florida.

Congressional maps are typically reconfigured each decade, only after the census. But Mr. Trump has pushed Republican-controlled states to adopt partisan new maps that erase Democratic seats this year to improve Republican chances to keep power in the House. He has succeeded so far in Missouri, Texas and North Carolina. Democrats control fewer statehouses, and in some of those places, including California, they had previously ceded mapmaking authority.

More than a decade ago, California voters had stripped politicians of partisan mapmaking powers, handing control to an independent citizens commission. But Mr. Newsom persuaded state legislators in Sacramento this summer — and ultimately the public on Tuesday — to roll back those reforms. Voters agreed to rewrite the California Constitution, installing the heavily gerrymandered maps favoring Democrats until the next census in order to offset congressional Republican gains elsewhere.

Supporters of the independent commission lamented the outcome, saying it was a mistake for the state to revert to partisan map-drawing after embracing a reform that created more competitive races.

“For what looms for the people of California, I am saddened by the passage of Proposition 50,” said Charles T. Munger Jr., a longtime champion of independent redistricting and the largest donor against the measure, in a statement.

Mr. Munger, a Republican, added that Californians must ensure that the state will revert to having maps drawn by its independent commission after the 2030 census.

Mr. Newsom raised more than $100 million in three months for a campaign that cemented his status as one of the nation’s leading antagonists to Mr. Trump, and his position as a serious potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028.

His office’s all-caps social media posts that mocked Mr. Trump’s caustic style with dripping sarcasm went viral. And Mr. Newsom’s full embrace of battling — and baiting — Mr. Trump became a comforting salve for a Democratic base that has been crying out for a more full-throated response to a president seen by the left as fraying the basic fabric of democracy.

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More than seven million ballots had already been cast before Election Day, and there was high voter enthusiasm in California, recent polls found.Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

Early on, the redistricting ballot fight was expected to be highly competitive.

Mr. Munger, a physicist and heir to a business fortune who had supported the initial redistricting reforms in the state, poured more than $30 million into stopping Mr. Newsom. But his donations mostly dried up soon after Labor Day, and so did other funding against the measure.

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who had counted stripping politicians of their map-drawing powers as one of his administration’s major accomplishments, publicly spoke out against the measure but did little else to mobilize opposition.

By October, Mr. Newsom and his allies mostly had the airwaves to themselves in a state where television ads are still king. All told, proponents spent roughly $99 million on advertising online and on television compared with nearly $39 million in opposition, according to data from AdImpact, an ad-tracking service.

The one-sided deluge caused Mr. Newsom to tell small donors to stop giving any more money more than a week before the election, an unusual declaration that showed how confident his team had become.

The closing ad in support of Proposition 50 distilled much of the strategy from Mr. Newsom’s team: rallying Democrats to the polls in a Democratic state to stand up to Mr. Trump.

It featured former President Barack Obama, Mr. Newsom, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and even Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a firebrand who has become a favorite of the progressive base.

The new maps approved by voters will significantly scramble California’s congressional delegation, which is the nation’s largest, with 52 members.

For three Republicans — Representatives Kevin Kiley and Doug LaMalfa in Northern California, and Representative Ken Calvert in Southern California — the political complexion of their districts has completely changed from safe Republican redoubts to relative Democratic strongholds.

The districts of two other Republicans, Representatives David Valadao in the Central Valley and Darrell Issa in Southern California, will become more competitive seats that Democrats hope to flip.

But all of that does not capture how thoroughly the new map favors Democrats.

The new lines also simultaneously strengthened the party’s position in a half-dozen other potentially competitive seats held by Democrats: Representatives George Whitesides, Mike Levin, Dave Min, Derek Tran, Adam Gray and Josh Harder.

The new congressional lines approved under Proposition 50 will be in place for elections in 2026, 2028 and 2030. After the next census, California’s independent redistricting commission will again be charged with drawing the state’s maps.

Ama Sarpomaa

Polls have closed in California, where voters are deciding on a ballot measure to let the state redraw its congressional map. The measure, called Proposition 50, is an effort to counter Texas’s redistricting push.

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Credit...Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

Among the New Jersey counties that have reported most of their votes so far, all have voted more Democratic than they did in the 2024 presidential race. Gloucester County, outside Philadelphia, voted for Ciattarelli in 2021 and Trump in 2024, but flipped back to the Democrats this year.

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Taylor Robinson

Reporting from New Jersey

Mikie Sherrill is doing a victory lap through the crowd at her watch party. She can barely walk a foot without being asked for a hug or a selfie.

Sherrill will take over in January from Phil Murphy, a Democrat who has been governor of New Jersey since 2018. She plans to declare a state of emergency on electricity costs on Day 1. Electricity rates in New Jersey climbed this summer by 22 percent, faster than all but one state, Maine. Driving down costs is a complex issue, but politicians running in the 36 states with races for governor next year will most likely be watching to see if her emergency declaration works.

Mark Bonamo

Jack Ciattarelli took the stage to loud cheers at his watch party, followed by almost total silence. He then broke the news of his loss to his supporters, telling them he had spoken to and congratulated Representative Mikie Sherrill. “Life is not always fair. Nobody is more disappointed than I am in the result,” he said. “But I’m proud of the message that we communicated each and every day.”

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Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

President Trump just weighed in on the commanding Democratic victories tonight with a one-line, mostly all-caps post on his Truth Social account: “‘Trump wasn’t on the ballot, and shutdown, were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight,’ according to Pollsters,” he wrote.

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Mark Bonamo

At Jack Ciattarelli’s watch party in Bridgewater, N.J., word went through the crowd that his Democratic rival, Mikie Sherrill, had been declared the winner. A woman in a Trump hat with a matching red dress looked down at her drink at frowned. “My victory champagne just went flat,” she said, her eyes moist with tears. Nick Bruno, a police officer who is a council member in Clinton in Hunterdon County, said the advantages the Democrats have in statewide party organization were too hard to overcome. “This is a blue state. People vote the party line,” he said.

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Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Taylor Robinson

Reporting from New Jersey

Mikie Sherrill just gave her victory speech, flanked by her husband and four children. “I know that not everybody voted for me,” she said. “But I’m working for everybody,” she said. As she wrapped up her speech, a cloud of confetti punctuated the air.

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Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

Jay Jones defeats the incumbent, Jason Miyares, for Virginia attorney general.

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Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for state attorney general, at the October debate.Credit...Pool photo by Mike Kropf

Jay Jones, a Democrat, was elected attorney general in Virginia on Tuesday, defeating Jason Miyares, the Republican incumbent, according to The Associated Press.

His victory, fueled by anger at the Trump administration, completed a Democratic sweep of Virginia’s three top statewide races.

“Donald Trump, MAGA and those corporate special interests believe that Virginia’s government should be beholden to them,” Mr. Jones said on Tuesday night, after the election had been called in his favor. “But tonight we sent a loud message to them and to every single person across this country: Virginia belongs to the people.”

Mr. Jones, a former Virginia State delegate, won despite revelations about violent text messages that almost derailed his campaign. The closely fought race started out as a referendum on President Trump’s record, and when early voting began in September, Mr. Jones was expected to win along with Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee for governor, and Ghazala Hashmi, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor.

But the race tightened considerably after the revelation in early October that he had sent a series of violent texts in 2022 that suggested the Republican speaker of the State Assembly deserved to be killed and also mused about the speaker’s children dying.

The messages, which came to light at a time of rising political violence in the country, were widely condemned across the political spectrum. And Mr. Miyares pivoted his campaign in the final weeks to focus largely on his opponent’s texts, encouraging voters who supported Ms. Spanberger to split their tickets.

Questions about Mr. Jones’s character were further fueled by accusations that after a reckless driving conviction, he had fulfilled his community service obligations by working at his own political action committee.

Mr. Jones apologized several times for the texts but resisted calls to end his campaign.

And he tied Mr. Miyares to Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in the state, especially as his administration has carried out mass firings of federal workers, many of whom live in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

Mr. Jones called Mr. Miyares a Trump “cheerleader” who hung out at MAGA rallies and was “too scared and too weak to stand up” to the president. He also criticized Mr. Miyares for not joining most of the lawsuits challenging Trump administration policies that have been filed by attorneys general in states around the country.

In the end, Mr. Jones won, though with a margin of victory narrower than Ms. Spanberger’s.

Democrats had other conditions working in their favor. Virginia’s odd-year elections typically tilt toward the party that is out of the White House. And Ms. Spanberger staked out moderate positions that enhanced her appeal to swing voters in the purple state.

From 2018 to 2022, Mr. Jones held the Virginia House of Delegates seat previously held by his father, Jerrauld C. Jones. He also served as an assistant attorney general in Washington, where he worked on consumer protection issues. On the campaign trail, he spoke often about protecting consumer rights, encouraging cleaner and more affordable energy sources and protecting families from unfair utility costs. Democrats now have another statewide platform from which to challenge Trump administration policies.

With his victory, Mr. Jones becomes Virginia’s first Black attorney general. He succeeds Mr. Miyares, who was the first Hispanic person to serve in statewide office. Virginia attorneys general often see the post as a steppingstone to the governorship.

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Maine voters rejected a plan backed by conservatives to tighten voting rules.

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The measure, backed by conservatives, would have limited drop boxes to one per town.Credit...Sarah Rice for The New York Times

Voters in Maine rejected a proposal backed by conservatives that would have created a raft of new restrictions to voting in the state, according to The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The proposal would have eliminated two days of early absentee voting, required photo identification in order to vote, banned prepaid return envelopes for absentee ballots and limited drop boxes across the state. The outcome is likely to be seen as a setback for Republicans in their quest to rein in the nation’s voting laws in states where they do not have complete control of state government.

The debate over voting procedures that followed President Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud after his loss in the 2020 election has escalated nationally. Mr. Trump, now back in office, has sought to overhaul voting procedures through executive orders, though courts have largely blocked those orders, and he has repeatedly stated a desire to end voting by mail across the country.

But voters in Maine came out in support of greater access to the polls. The state, which has the oldest population in the country, according to census figures, relies on multiple methods of voting, and many of the proposed changes would have especially affected older voters. The proposal, for example, would have eliminated the permanent absentee ballot list, which many older Mainers support.

Maine is also one of the more rural states in the country, with vast expanses of protected wilderness mixing with rural areas and far-flung coastal stretches. The proposal would have limited drop boxes to one per town, leaving some to have to drive many miles to access a drop box, and others, such as the city of Portland, restricted to a single drop box to service the roughly 40,000 voters who turn out for presidential elections.

In the 2024 election, about 160,000 Maine Democrats cast their absentee ballots by mail, compared with about 105,000 Republicans, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab. In total, more than 360,000 voters in Maine cast a ballot by mail, or more than 40 percent of the overall turnout in the state for the 2024 presidential election.

The ballot initiative was backed by a conservative outside group known as Dinner Table Action, and the campaign broke down along party lines, with the Democratic Party opposing the ballot measure and the Republican Party supporting it.

Democrats and their allies proved far more successful at fund-raising for their effort, which largely came from out-of-state organizations, including the Democratic Governors Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. With one week until the election, more than $1.5 million had been spent in opposition to the proposal, compared with roughly $250,000 in support of it.

Maine voters approve ‘red flag’ gun law.

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Handguns at the Kittery Trading Post in Kittery, Maine.Credit...Charles Krupa/Associated Press

Voters in Maine approved a “red flag” law on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, giving families the option to petition a judge to order weapons removed temporarily from a troubled relative.

The ballot measure, known as Question 2, passed two years after a gunman in Lewiston used an assault rifle to kill 18 people at a bar and a bowling alley. It was the worst mass shooting in Maine history.

Both supporters and opponents ran forceful campaigns, in a state with a strong hunting tradition and high rates of gun ownership. The opponents included Gov. Janet Mills, who argued that such a law would create confusion and put family members “on the front lines of a dangerous situation.”

Maine already had a “yellow flag” law, which allows law enforcement officers to ask a judge to order weapons removed from a person found to be a danger. But the law requires that the person be taken into custody and undergo a mental health evaluation before the police can seek such an order.

In the wake of the Lewiston shooting, legislators made changes to the yellow flag law that they said had made it easier to use. Maine police agencies have used it much more frequently over the last two years.

But many people in the state remained convinced that giving families the power to seek court intervention might have prevented the mass shooting. The new law, expected to take effect in January, will not require that a person’s mental health be evaluated before firearms are seized. About 20 states have similar laws.

Last year, family members of the Lewiston gunman, Robert R. Card II, testified before a state commission about their repeated efforts to get him help as his mental health deteriorated in the months before he opened fire at the bar and the bowling alley. Mr. Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound two days later.

“It’s on all of us to make sure the next time we need to get help for someone, we do better,” Cara Lamb, Mr. Card’s ex-wife, said at a hearing.

Relatives sought help from law enforcement officers and from Mr. Card’s Army Reserve supervisors. The Army sent him for a mental health evaluation and treatment, but no one removed his weapons, even after he had made explicit threats. Following a failed attempt at intervention, the local sheriff’s department asked his family to take away his firearms — a request that the state commission called an “abdication” of responsibility.

Anne Jordan, a former state commissioner of public safety who led the commission that reviewed the shooting, said the law would be an important tool for preventing suicides. Maine has one of the highest suicide rates in the eastern United States.

Arthur Barnard, whose son, Artie Strout, 42, was among Mr. Card’s victims, said the new law would give families a needed “shortcut to a judge.” He was playing pool with his son that night and had left the bar minutes before the shooting started.

“Something has to change,” Mr. Barnard said. “There were so many red flags in this case, for so long. Who knows better than family if someone is not doing well?”

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In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill said she got a call from her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, after she had won the race. “I want to recognize him for stepping up,” she said.

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CreditCredit...Associated Press

Former President Barack Obama, who held rallies for Mikie Sherill and Abigail Spanberger, congratulated all the Democratic candidates who won tonight. “It’s a reminder that when we come together around strong, forward-looking leaders who care about the issues that matter, we can win,” he said on social media. “We’ve still got plenty of work to do, but the future looks a little bit brighter.”

Both the Sherrill and Ciattarelli campaigns were paying close attention to Gloucester County in the southern part of the state as a potential bellwether, a largely rural area with some Philadelphia suburbs. Gov. Phil Murphy won the county in 2017 by 13 points, but Ciattarelli won it by 10 points four years later, and President Trump carried it by three points in 2024. Now, with 94 percent of the vote in, it appears Sherrill will win the county by three points.

Democrats will keep their majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

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Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justices David N. Wecht, Christine Donohue, and Kevin M. Dougherty in September. Historically, sitting justices are often successful in retention elections.Credit...Michelle Gustafson for The New York Times

The Pennsylvania State Supreme Court will keep its 5-2 Democratic tilt, as voters in the state opted to re-elect three incumbent justices for additional 10-year terms, according to The Associated Press.

Retaining the three justices — Kevin M. Dougherty, Christine Donohue and David N. Wecht — ensures that the court’s Democratic lean will hold through the next presidential election, a critical victory for Democrats in the biggest swing state in the country.

They were re-elected on Tuesday through a process known as a retention election — they had no Republican-backed opponents. Instead, voters in Pennsylvania simply voted “yes” or “no” on whether to retain the justices for 10 more years.

Historically, sitting justices are often successful: Only once this century has a Supreme Court justice in Pennsylvania not been retained. But the races drew outsize interest this year, as control over state supreme courts has become a vital part of both parties’ quest for electoral power.

Litigation in election matters has surged in recent years and state court systems have played an increasingly important role in refereeing legislative maps and voting laws. And the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has already played a significant role in such matters.

Last year, the court weighed in on numerous voting challenges in the weeks before the presidential election, including the right of voters to cast provisional ballots after their mail ballots were rejected for procedural reasons.

In 2022, it upheld the state’s mail-in voting law. In 2020, the Democratic justices ruled that ballot drop boxes were permitted in the state. And in 2018, the court ruled that the state’s congressional district map was a partisan gerrymander that “clearly, plainly and palpably” violated the state’s Constitution.

The importance of the court was evident in the amount of money that poured into what are normally overlooked down-ballot elections: More than $16.5 million was spent on advertising for the Pennsylvania races in this cycle, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. The vast majority of that spending came from the “yes” side, whose backers spent roughly $13.7 million on ads, compared with just $2.8 million for the “no” side, according to AdImpact.

But the quirky nature of retention races makes tracking spending exceptionally difficult. Douglas Keith, the deputy director of the Democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, has estimated that more than $20.5 million has been spent on the contests, with about $15 million being spent in favor of keeping the justices and about $5.5 million being spent against them.

The flood of money into Pennsylvania followed a growing trend of these otherwise sleepy judicial elections seeing a surge of money and attention — spending on such races has reached into nine figures nationally. In April, a race for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court drew more than $100 million in spending, with both Republicans and Democrats acknowledging that flipping the court in the critical swing state could sway congressional and state legislative maps, as well as abortion access.

Despite the hyperpartisan political atmosphere and the flood of outside money, the justices are limited in how they can campaign. They can expound on their judicial philosophy, but they cannot divulge specific feelings on a case or issue that could come before the court.

The three victories on Tuesday will ensure that Democrats control the court through the next presidential election, but not necessarily through the round of redistricting scheduled to take place after the 2030 United States census. Justice Donohue is 72, and the court has a mandatory retirement age of 75.

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Trump administration chooses a critic of California elections to monitor them.

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Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general, is one of the Justice Department’s election monitors in Orange County in California. He has previously questioned the county’s voting procedures.Credit...Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group, via Orange County Register, via Getty Images

When the Justice Department announced a week and half ago that it would send monitors to watch California’s elections, it didn’t say who exactly would be doing the monitoring.

For Orange County, a populous and ethnically diverse area south of Los Angeles, the administration tapped Michael Gates, a lawyer with a history of questioning the county’s voting procedures.

For years, Mr. Gates worked as the city attorney for the Orange County community of Huntington Beach, where in 2024 he helped pass the first local voter identification law in the state. When the California attorney general and secretary of state sued, saying that the city’s law conflicted with state election laws, Mr. Gates defended the city in court.

In February, Mr. Gates was appointed deputy assistant attorney general in the federal Justice Department’s civil rights division. Shortly afterward, the department sued election officials in Orange County, alleging that noncitizen immigrants were receiving mail-in ballots and voting. The Department of Justice filed the lawsuit after the county registrar refused to release unredacted voting records and registration information for alleged noncitizen voters.

Local election officials said this week that the Justice Department had informed them that Mr. Gates and an assistant U.S. attorney, Cory Webster, would be serving as election observers in Orange County. Mr. Webster was hired as a U.S. attorney late last year.

“The D.O.J. representatives are permitted access to view publicly observable election and voting activities in accordance with California laws and regulations,” Bob Page, the Orange County registrar of voters, wrote in a letter to other officials.

He said that Mr. Gates and Mr. Webster would be observing election activity from Nov. 2 to Nov. 6.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Orange County is one of five counties in California, including Los Angeles, that the Justice Department said it would monitor for this election.

Orange County, which has a large Latino and Asian American population, has had several close congressional races in the last several years. Those races have been crucial to deciding the House majority.

It was unclear precisely how Mr. Gates and Mr. Webster were observing the election in a county with nearly two million voters. But Democrats questioned Mr. Gates’s ability to be a fair and impartial monitor.

Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, said he planned to send his own monitors to guard against any voter intimidation. And the state Democratic Party sent out more than 2,000 of its own observers — a record number of volunteers in the role — and had about 150 lawyers stationed around the state. While some Democratic officials were worried about voter intimidation, several said that they were more concerned about what the federal officials would say after the election.

“If they so much as blink at anything like voter interference, they will find themselves in parking lot or in jail,” said Justin Levitt, who served in the Justice Department’s civil rights division during the Biden administration. “But I think they will continue to sow doubt without any evidence.” Mr. Levitt said that as a political appointee, he would not have taken such a role in monitoring elections.

There were no reports of any incidents at the polls by Tuesday afternoon, according to Mr. Page, the Orange County registrar. He said that federal monitors would be allowed the same kind of access as anyone from the general public in the vote counting center, where aisles were roped off for observers.

After the presidential election last year, there were as many as 200 people at a time trying to observe the vote counting. The county then devised a system to allow people access in two-hour shifts.

Historically, upward of 70 percent of voters in Orange County have voted by mail. Officials said that number could be even higher this year.

Here’s what to know about New Jersey’s next governor, Mikie Sherrill.

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Representative Mikie Sherrill had a career as a Navy helicopter pilot, which she highlighted during her campaign.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

Representative Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey on Tuesday by a convincing margin. She will take over in January, replacing Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a Democrat who has been in office for nearly eight years and was barred by term limits from running for re-election.

She and her lieutenant governor, Dale Caldwell, the president of Centenary University, will arrive in the state capital of Trenton at a perilous time for New Jersey.

The affluent state has both a structural budget deficit and some of the highest property and business taxes in the country. The Trump administration continues to prioritize deportations in New Jersey, which has an estimated 475,000 undocumented residents. And the state is bracing for an eventual $2.5 billion annual reduction in federal aid for Medicaid, the health care program that 1.7 million residents rely on.

But before Ms. Sherrill starts selecting department heads or tackling problems, she must introduce herself to the state’s 9.3 million residents.

Here’s what we know about Ms. Sherrill:

She has four children, and a dog named Goose.

Ms. Sherrill, 53, was raised in Virginia, the eldest of three daughters.

She and her husband, Jason Hedberg, purchased a seven-bedroom home in Montclair, N.J., in 2010. Mr. Hedberg, an investment banker who recently started a new job at Royal Bank of Canada, said he welcomed his role as first gentleman. “I like the sound of that,” he said last month.

The couple has four children: Margaret and Lincolnare first-year students at the U.S. Naval Academy; Ike is a sophomore at Montclair High School; Merritt is in middle school at Montclair Kimberley Academy.

Their dog, a golden retriever, is named Goose.

Margaret, who is known as Maggie, introduced her mother the night Ms. Sherrill won the Democratic primary by 13 points. “It wasn’t until Roe getting overturned that I ever really considered that maybe my country doesn’t love me as much as I love it,” Maggie Sherrill said, referring to the Supreme Court decision eliminated the constitutional right to abortion.

Ms. Sherrill said that not all of her children are equally intrigued by her life in politics. She laughed as she described the first thing her youngest daughter said in New Brunswick, N.J., after watching her debate the Republican candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, for the second and final time last month: “ ‘Mom, have you gotten me a hair appointment yet?’ ”

She was a Navy helicopter pilot.

Ms. Sherrill, a helicopter pilot, spent more than nine years in the Navy after graduating from the Naval Academy in 1994. She served active-duty missions in Europe and as a Russian policy officer. While in the service, she studied Arabic in Cairo and Global History at the London School of Economics.

She attended law school at Georgetown University after leaving the Navy and worked for several years at a law firm in New York City. In 2012, she joined the U.S. attorney’s office in Newark as a community outreach specialist. In 2015, she was hired as a prosecutor, working for the then-U.S. attorney in New Jersey, Paul Fishman. She remained in the job for just about a year.

“She’s doing this while raising four kids,” former President Barack Obama said Saturday during a rally in Newark. “And then — because apparently that wa