Democrats channel Trump disapproval to sweep major races, from Mamdani in NYC to Prop. 50 in California

Democrats swept the four major races in Tuesday’s off-year elections as voters from New York City to California delivered a check on President Trump’s second term — along with some early clues about how the opposition party might mount a comeback in next year’s make-or-break midterms.

In New York, antiestablishment Democrat Zohran Mamdani defeated independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa in the race to succeed scandal-plagued incumbent Eric Adams as the city’s next mayor — with more than 50% of the vote.

“My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty,” Mamdani said in his victory speech. “I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the very few.“

A once obscure state assemblyman from Queens affiliated with the democratic socialists of America, Mamdani, 34, rocketed to prominence after upsetting Cuomo, New York’s former governor and scion of one of its most famous political families, in June’s Democratic primary.

Mamdani has been a national lightning rod ever since — and the debate over whether his unapologetically progressive agenda can serve as a blueprint for Democrats elsewhere will only intensify now that New Yorkers have chosen him to lead America’s biggest city.

On the other side of the country, California Gov. Gavin Newsom scored a signature political victory when Prop. 50 — his ballot measure that will allow the state to redraw its congressional districts in order to elect more Democrats to Congress — passed with overwhelming support.

The win could propel Newsom — and his form of brash, blue-state “resistance” — to the center of the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential sweepstakes.

At the same time, the bellwether contests for governor of New Jersey and Virginia — which are always held the year after a presidential election, and are always seen as something of a referendum on the new administration — ended in double-digit triumph for a pair of moderate, establishment-friendly Democrats: Rep. Mikie Sherrill of North Jersey, a former Navy helicopter pilot, and former Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Northern Virginia, who once served as a CIA officer.

So are Democrats now the party of Mamdani and Prop. 50 — or the party of Sherrill and Spanberger? Or does voter dissatisfaction with Trump 2.0 mean they don’t have to choose?

Here are four key takeaways from Election Day 2025.

Progressive populists have a place …

In the wake of Trump’s 2024 election victory, 2020-style progressive populism was largely dismissed as a thing of the past. Then came Mamdani, a particularly articulate and internet-savvy spokesperson for the Bernie Sanders-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wing of the party.

To a greater degree than in any recent local political clash, the arguments that Mamdani and Cuomo made during their heated battle for Gracie Mansion reflected the larger argument that’s currently raging among national Democrats about the best way to move forward — and regain power — in 2026 and beyond.

Mamdani’s case was straightforward: to beat Trump’s GOP, Democrats need new messengers who focus unapologetically on making life more affordable for working-class Americans — then actually deliver while in office.

Mamdani and his supporters dismissed Cuomo as part of the problem: a corporate, centrist Democrat who caves to the status quo and isn’t bold enough to beat back the MAGA movement. Trump’s late “endorsement” of the former governor helped make their case.

“New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change,” Mamdani said in his victory speech. “A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford, and a mandate for a government that delivers as exactly that.”

Meanwhile, Cuomo argued that candidates like Mamdani are too risky to represent the party: too young, too inexperienced, too “socialist.” The better option, Cuomo insisted, is to choose leaders — like him — who appeal to the middle and know how to work the levers of power.

On Tuesday, New Yorkers rejected Cuomo’s tried-and-true line of reasoning, choosing “change” instead. The question now is whether Mamdani’s politics, or at least a politics informed by his success, can connect outside the welcoming precincts of liberal New York City — or whether he is a phenomenon unto himself, much like Barack Obama before him.

… but so do mainstream Democratic moderates

To be sure, New Jersey and Virginia are “blue” states that tend to elect more Democrats than Republicans — and tend to swing away from the president’s party in their odd-year gubernatorial elections.

These deeper dynamics likely helped both Spanberger and Sherrill brush off their GOP opponents Tuesday night. But both Democrats also wound up fitting their respective states — and the current moment.

A former three-term U.S. representative from northern Virginia, Spanberger, 46, parlayed her experience as a CIA officer into a career as a moderate Democratic voice on Capitol Hill — or, as she often put it, “a passionate pragmatist.” Spanberger’s gubernatorial campaign stuck to a similar script, focusing less on Trump’s latest social media post than on the cost of living — an especially salient issue in a state where many residents have been affected by the president’s recent cuts to the federal government.

“Virginia’s economy doesn’t work when Washington treats our Virginia workers as expendable,” Spanberger said on Election Night. “And to those across the Potomac who are attacking our jobs and our economy, I will not stand by silently.”

Likewise, Sherrill — a 53-year-old former pilot and prosecutor who has represented North Jersey’s 11th Congressional District since 2019 — has long positioned herself as a mainstream alternative to the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. She emphasized kitchen-table concerns as well: declaring a “state of emergency” for public utilities, imposing a freeze on spiking electric bills.

In contrast, their Republican rivals — former state assembly member Jack Ciatarelli in New Jersey; Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears in Virginia — stuck to Trump’s 2024 playbook by putting culture-war issues (such as transgender rights) front and center.

Last year, Trump lost both blue states by significantly smaller margins than he did during his previous presidential runs. But his momentum didn’t transfer to Ciaterlli and Earle-Sears, and exit polls showed that affordability was still voters’ biggest concern.

“Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” Spanberger said in her victory speech. “We chose our commonwealth over chaos. You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian — leadership that will focus on problem-solving, not stoking division.”

At a time of trade and tariff tumult, Spanberger and Sherrill’s decision to pitch themselves as safe, relatively centrist stewards of the economy seems to have paid off.

Trouble ahead for Trump?

Reducing the cost of living was the common thread in all three of Tuesday’s marquee Democratic wins — a result that suggests voters aren’t happy with the president’s economic leadership.

On the campaign trail last year, then candidate Trump repeatedly vowed to “bring prices down” and “end inflation” starting “on day one” of his presidency.

But the latest Yahoo/YouGov poll shows that 60% of Americans now disapprove of how Trump is handling the economy — while just 33% approve. That is the president’s most negative rating to date.

A clear majority of Americans (56%) now think the U.S. economy is getting worse, up 9 points since March, and more than three-quarters of Americans (76%) say grocery prices are rising, up 10 points over the same period. A majority of Americans (56%) also say Trump’s recent tariffs are having more of a negative than positive effect on the current U.S. economy — a number that has climbed 5 points since July.

Tuesday’s results suggest that if Trump doesn’t correct course, Democrats could capitalize at the ballot box next November.

In New York City, Mamdani proposed a slate of ambitious policies to lower the cost of living: creating a network of government-owned grocery stores that aim to keep prices low rather than make a profit; freezing rent for lower-income tenants; permanently eliminating the fares on public buses; implementing free child care for all children ages 6 weeks to 5 years; raising the minimum wage to $30 by 2030; and raising taxes on corporations and millionaires to pay for his plans.

Sherrill and Spanberger’s proposals weren’t as bold — but their emphasis was similar.

“I think there are a lot of people in this state that feel as if they have not been listened to and their needs haven’t been addressed and that they have been promised that someone is going to focus on those kitchen-table issues,” Sherrill recently told New York magazine. “The latest iteration of that is Trump saying he is going to address affordability and bring prices down on day one, but prices have skyrocketed and show no signs of abating.”

The redistricting arms race has only just begun

U.S. House redistricting efforts typically take place every 10 years, after each new census reveals changes in population distribution. But this summer Trump pushed GOP state legislators to pass new congressional district boundaries five years earlier than normal. The goal? To help Republicans win additional House seats in the 2026 midterms.

Texas was the first red state to bite — and Newsom, who is reportedly eyeing a 2028 presidential bid, was the first blue-state governor to bite back, introducing California Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, in August.

Prop. 50 was designed to counteract Texas’s redistricting effort. The latter could net the GOP as many as five more U.S. House seats if it survives a court challenge, while the former could turn as many as five red California congressional districts blue.

On Tuesday, Prop. 50 passed by roughly 30 percentage points. The real question is whether Newsom’s latest campaign has changed the way Democrats plan to counter Trump’s GOP in 2026 and 2028 — and what role Newsom himself might play in that shift.

“[Trump’s] changing the rules,”  the governor told NBC News last week. “He did not expect California to fight fire with fire.”

“We want to go back to some semblance of normalcy, but you have to deal with the crisis at hand,” Newsom continued. “It’s time for us to change if we want things to change. … That’s why Prop. 50 has shifted the conversation here in California. And I think we’ll shift the debate going into 2026 as a consequence of our success.”

Already, Democrats in Virginia have voted to take the first step toward a spring redistricting that could flip a few of the state’s five Republican seats — and similar efforts are underway in Illinois, Maryland and New York.

“We need the state of Virginia, we need the state of Maryland. We need our friends in New York and Illinois and Colorado,” Newsom said Tuesday night. “We need to see other states with remarkable leaders that have been doing remarkable things meet this moment head on as well. To recognize what we’re up against in 2026.”

He added that Democrats “can de facto end Donald Trump’s presidency as we know it the minute Speaker [Hakeem] Jeffries gets sworn in as speaker of the House of Representatives.”