Democrats swept a trio of races on Tuesday in the first major elections since Donald Trump regained the presidency, giving the beleaguered party a shot of momentum as it looks ahead to the congressional midterm elections next year.
In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, won the mayoral race, capping a meteoric and unlikely rise from an anonymous state lawmaker to one of the country’s most visible Democratic figures. And in Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won the elections for governor with commanding leads, respectively.
Tuesday’s contests offered a barometer of how Americans are responding to Trump’s tumultuous nine months in office. The races also served as a test of differing Democratic campaign playbooks ahead of 2026, with the party locked out of power in Washington and still trying to forge a path out of the political wilderness.
That said, the midterm elections are a year away, an eternity in the Trump era. And the contests on Tuesday all unfolded in Democratic-leaning regions that did not support Trump in last year’s presidential election.
All three Democratic candidates emphasised economic issues, particularly affordability. But Spanberger and Sherrill hail from the party’s moderate wing, while Mamdani used a viral video-fueled insurgent campaign to present himself as an unabashed progressive and a new generational voice.
Mamdani, who will become the first Muslim mayor of the biggest US city, outlasted former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67, who ran as an independent after losing the nomination to Mamdani earlier this year. Cuomo, who resigned as governor four years ago after sexual harassment allegations that he has denied, portrayed Mamdani as a radical leftist whose proposals were unworkable and dangerous.
In a sign of how Mamdani’s campaign had energised many voters, more than 2 million ballots, including early voting, were cast across the city, according to the board of elections, the most in a mayoral race since at least 1969.
Mamdani has called for taxing corporations and the wealthy to pay for ambitious left-wing policies such as frozen rents, free childcare and free city buses. Wall Street executives have expressed concern about putting a democratic socialist at the helm of the financial capital of the world.
Republicans have already signalled they intend to present Mamdani as the face of the Democratic Party. Trump has incorrectly labelled Mamdani a “communist” and vowed to cut funding for the city in response to Mamdani’s ascension.
In a social media post on Tuesday night, Trump blamed the losses on the fact that his name was not on the ballot and on an ongoing federal government shutdown.
Spanberger, who beat Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, will take over from Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. New Jersey’s Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli and will succeed Democratic Governor Phil Murphy.
Both Sherrill and Spanberger had sought to tie their opponents to Trump in an effort to harness frustration among Democratic and independent voters over his chaotic tenure.
“We sent a message to the world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship,” Spanberger said in her victory speech. “We chose our Commonwealth over chaos.”
Trump gave both candidates some late-stage grist during the ongoing government shutdown.
His administration threatened to fire federal workers — a move with an outsized impact on Virginia, a state adjacent to Washington, D.C., and home to many government employees. He froze billions in funding for a new Hudson River train tunnel, a critical project for New Jersey’s large commuter population.
In interviews at Virginia polling stations on Tuesday, some voters said Trump’s most contentious policies were on their minds, including his efforts to deport immigrants who entered the US illegally and to impose costly tariffs on imports of foreign goods, the legality of which is being weighed by the US Supreme Court this week.
Juan Benitez, a self-described independent, was voting for the first time. The 25-year-old restaurant manager backed all of Virginia’s Democratic candidates because of his opposition to Trump’s immigration policies and the federal government shutdown, for which he blamed Trump.
Separately on Tuesday, California voters were deciding whether to give Democratic lawmakers the power to redraw the state’s congressional map, expanding a national battle over redistricting that could determine which party controls the US House of Representatives after next year’s midterm elections.
In an echo of his false claims about the 2020 election, Trump called the California vote a scam on social media, suggesting the vote was rigged without providing evidence.
For Republicans, Tuesday’s elections served as a test of whether the voters who powered Trump’s victory in 2024 will still show up when he is not on the ballot.
But Ciattarelli and Earle-Sears, both running in Democratic-leaning states, faced a conundrum: criticising Trump risked losing his supporters, but embracing him too closely could have alienated moderate and independent voters who disapprove of his policies.
Trump remains unpopular: 57% of Americans disapprove of his job performance, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. But Democrats are not gaining support as a result, with respondents evenly split on whether they would favour Democrats or Republicans in 2026.
