3 key takeaways from Democrats’ big Election 2025 wins
Democrats are campaigning without apology, and Hispanics appear to be turning on Republicans
Voters gave Democrats a clean sweep in all the major political contests Tuesday, delivering a major morale boost to a party that has been despondent since Donald Trump won last year’s presidential election.
Elections are just as much about who turns out to vote as who voters choose, but overall, there are several key takeaways from Democrats’ big victories in Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, and California.
1) Campaigning without apology works. Ideologically speaking, Virginia governor-elect Abigail Spanberger and New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani are very different from each other. But one thing they had in common is that they were unapologetic about their stances—something that Trump is also known for.
From the beginning of his run, Mamdani proudly identified as a “democratic socialist,” and he kept true to his record Tuesday night by beginning his victory speech with a quote from 20th century socialist Eugene Debs and proudly reaffirming his ideological label.
For her part, Spanberger, has a long record of moderate positions, however she was still was unapologetic in her own right, particularly in regards to LGBTQ people. Implicitly rejecting advice from certain Democratic campaign consultants, Spanberger stood by her repeated votes for the Equality Act, a bill that would expand anti-discrimination protections in credit, employment, housing, and public accommodations. Spanberger also refused to buckle under millions of dollars in attack ads on the subject of trans rights, saying that she wanted sports leagues, not government, to decide who should be allowed to compete.
Mamdani and Mikie Sherrill, who won the governor’s race in New Jersey, were even more affirming in their support for trans rights. All three major candidates were laser-focused on affordability, telling voters in detailed ways how Trump has harmed them, and how they would build a broader society together rather than trying to tear it apart.
Democratic voters don’t seem nearly as interested in fomenting internal divisions about whether a more progressive candidate like Mamdani could win in Pennsylvania or a former CIA agent like Spanberger could triumph in Boston. They just want candidates who will work tirelessly and always punch back against Trump and his party.
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent summed up this takeaway well: “The factional grifters will hate this, but the Mamdani-Spanberger-Sherrill axis actually suggests the outlines of a broad, emerging Dem coalition organized around both anti-Trump and affordability politics, not a party bitterly divided against itself.”
2) Republicans may have lost Trump’s Hispanic gains. The biggest demographic story of 2024 was how much Trump had improved his share of the vote among Latin Americans. According to the national Edison Research exit poll, he won Hispanic men with 54 percent of their vote, which was enough to propel him to a 46 percent total share. That was a big jump from the 32 percent he received in 2020 and 29 percent in his first campaign.
Trump’s 2024 number was historic number for a Republican, above the 40 percent that George W. Bush received in 2004, or Ronald Reagan’s 37 percent in 1984.
On Tuesday night, however, Hispanic voters turned out overwhelmingly against Republicans. In New Jersey, 68 percent cast ballots for Sherrill. In Virginia, 67 percent chose Spanberger.
The Virginia numbers are most notable because we actually have older data we can compare them with. As you may know, Virginia’s governors overwhelmingly tend to be of the opposite party of the president because the state’s gubernatorial election takes place within just a few months of presidential inaugurations. What’s interesting about Latino residents of Virginia, however, is that they have been remarkably consistent across elections in voting for Democrats.
In the 2021 election, which took place while Joe Biden was president, 66 percent of Virginia Hispanic voters chose Democrat Terry McAuliffe even though Republican Glenn Youngkin won. In 2017, 67 percent went for Democrat Ralph Northam.
Since there was no Virginia exit poll in 2024, it’s advisable to exercise caution before saying for certain that Republicans have lost ground among Hispanics, however, general tracking polls since Trump returned to the White House have shown that his favorability and approval ratings among Latinos has declined, including an AP-NORC survey which found that Trump’s favorability has fallen from 44 percent in January to just 25 percent in early October. His favorability among Hispanic Republicans also fell from 83 percent in September of 2024 to 66 percent last month.
We’ll need more surveys with large enough Hispanic sub-samples to know for certain, but the statewide numbers from Tuesday do not portend well for Republicans as of now.
3) Republican gerrymandering could backfire. While biased congressional district boundary drawing can work out well for parties that do it, sometimes gerrymandering can backfire if you spread your own voters out too thin. Tuesday’s results suggest that the recent Trump-ordered redistricting could be one of those times. That’s because the proposed and enacted maps that state-level Republicans in places like Texas and Missouri seem to be largely based on the 2024 election results.
But, as even Trump himself now admits, he will not be on the ballot next year when control of Congress is up for grabs or in 2028. That’s a very big potential problem for Republicans because, as Trump noted on Tuesday night, his party does not do as well when he is not running for office.
Whether Trump is the only Republican some Americans (Latino and otherwise) will support or his “Kavanaugh stops” and other draconian immigration policies have driven Hispanics away is unclear. In any case, gerrymandering can go very wrong, and it’s something that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was very much aware of when he was first asked to redraw his state’s congressional boundaries. Owen Dahlkamp at the Texas Tribune reports:
Before he called lawmakers back to Austin to redraw Texas’ congressional maps, Gov. Greg Abbott was initially resistant to the plan pushed by President Donald Trump’s political team to pick up new GOP seats through a rare mid-decade redistricting, according to two people who have spoken to Abbott and the White House about the behind-the-scenes discussions.
The majority of Texas’s GOP congressional delegation was also wary of the idea, with many members concerned that Republican map-drawers could miscalculate and spread their voters too thin — thus putting their jobs in jeopardy — while trying to flip Democratic seats, six people involved in internal delegation discussions told The Texas Tribune.
Abbott told House Republicans from Texas that he was reluctant to take up the issue in Austin, where state lawmakers approve the new lines, if it would pit him against the delegation. In discussions with Abbott’s office, White House staffers attempted to assuage his worries but were unsuccessful, according to two people with direct knowledge of the developments.
Then, Trump placed a call to Abbott during which they discussed redistricting. The governor subsequently agreed to put it on his agenda for the special session, according to two people who spoke with White House officials about the call, one of whom also discussed the matter with Abbott’s office.
We’ll find out next year whether Texas Republicans were right to be concerned, but last night’s elections may give pause to other Republicans who are under White House pressure to rig their elections, especially those from less populous states where the margin of error is much smaller.
“You have fewer lines; you’re not going to be able to put them as far out of reach without creating opportunities elsewhere,” redistricting expert Moon Duchin told Associated Press reporter Margery Beck last month. “You have to do it really carefully because it can backfire.”
If Trump has driven away Latinos and they come out in droves against him in 2026, Tuesday’s Democratic sweep could be a preview of something much bigger.