One year ago, Republicans led by President Donald Trump romped to a historic victory, sweeping every swing state and ushering in a GOP trifecta in Washington. But last night was undoubtedly a rebound for Democrats, who won all the major off-year races by wider margins than expected. However, it may not be as complete a victory as liberals would like to believe.
In Virginia, Democrat gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger soundly defeated Republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears, the incumbent lieutenant governor. Spanberger becomes the first female governor of Virginia. Spanberger outperformed Kamala Harris in key suburbs of Washington, D.C., in the northern part of the state as well as around the capital of Richmond, where incumbent Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin performed well four years ago.
Democrat Ghazala Hashmi also prevailed over Republican John Reid to become the next lieutenant governor, becoming the first female Muslim candidate elected statewide anywhere in the country.
But by far the most disheartening result came in the Virginia Attorney General race, where incumbent Republican Jason Miyares fell to Democrat Jay Jones. That contest had been rocked by a slew of scandals involving Jones.
First, it was revealed that Jones had been charged with reckless driving for speeding at 116 mph down a Virginia interstate. Jones struck a highly unusual plea deal to avoid jail time, promising to perform community service for the crime. He is now under investigation for potentially misleading the court by reporting that he did 500 hours of community service for his own political action committee.
But the real bombshell came in early October when National Review reported on a text message exchange between Jones and a former Republican colleague in the House of Delegates. Jones fantasized about murdering former Republican Speaker Todd Gilbert and said that he hoped Gilbert’s children would die in their mother’s arms.
Talk of the scandal – and the refusal of Spanberger, Hashmi, or any Virginia Democrat to call on Jones to drop out of the race – dominated the final weeks of the campaign. But ultimately it was not enough, as more than 1.7 million Virginians still cast ballots for Jones, helping him comfortably defeat Miyares 53 percent to 46.5 percent. That result sets an alarming new precedent for the type of violent rhetoric that is now tolerated within the Democrat Party – and by American voters.
Republicans also lost seats in the Virginia House of Delegates, which was already controlled by Democrats.
In New Jersey, Republican hopes that the momentum they saw in 2024 would carry over to this year were also dashed. GOP candidate Jack Ciattarelli, who came within four points of defeating incumbent Democrat Governor Phil Murphy in 2021, is projected to lose by about 13 points to former Democrat Rep. Mikie Sherrill.
In New York City, home to one of the most high-profile mayoral races in recent history, self-described socialist Zohran Mamdani soundly defeated former Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani, a Muslim Ugandan immigrant who has close ties to one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has pledged to freeze rent on more than a million homes, create city-run grocery stores, and make public buses free. With 91 percent of the vote in as of Wednesday morning, Mamdani has a slight majority, winning 50.4 percent of the vote.
Outside of contests for public office, the other key outcome last night was in California, where voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 50, clearing the way for Democrats to aggressively gerrymander the state and redistrict Republicans into an even smaller minority.
After Californians overwhelmingly chose to move to a nonpartisan redistricting model in 2010, Democrats successfully convinced a majority of voters (about 64 percent as of Wednesday morning) to reverse that decision and hand map-making power back to liberals in Sacramento. Republicans currently only hold nine of 52 U.S. House seats in California, despite GOP candidates regularly garnering 35-40 percent of the vote. Under new proposed maps, Republicans could be limited to as few as 1-2 seats.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats scored three more victories by retaining three incumbent state supreme court justices. The court will maintain its 5-2 liberal ideological split.
So, what to make of it all? There will undoubtedly be plenty of analysis and over-analysis in the weeks and months ahead, particularly as it relates to whether these contests were a “bellwether” for next year’s national elections. Democrats will undoubtedly call the results a strong rebuke of President Trump. The media will claim that Democrats have all the momentum heading into the midterms.
Republicans undoubtedly had a bad night – most polls were clearly wrong and predicted closer races than what actually played out. But the conclusion that this was a sweeping repudiation of Trump or the GOP is overblown.
In New York and New Jersey, the results were hardly surprising. As terrifying as it is that a literal Marxist will now be in charge of the country’s financial capital, Mamdani was ultimately the Democrat nominee in a heavily Democrat city. And should we really be shocked that the Democrat won in New Jersey, where only three Republicans have won statewide since the turn of the century?
Republicans were more optimistic about Virginia, but even here the optimism may have been unrealistic. The state now has an undeniably blue tint thanks to ever-increasing numbers of liberal-minded government bureaucrats in the D.C. suburbs. The president’s party has also historically struggled in Virginia the year after a general election, with the same party winning the White House and the Virginia governor’s mansion just once since 1980.
As for the notion that Trump cost Republicans in the Old Dominion, it’s worth considering that Earle-Sears hardly leaned into an association with the President. She notably criticized Trump following the 2020 election and called for the party to move on to a new candidate in 2024. She rarely mentioned his name on the campaign trail, and it now seems evident that many Trump voters stayed home this year. Just as he has been for the past decade, Trump remains the most important turnout factor for the Republican Party.
The notion of Virginia as a bellwether is itself somewhat questionable – it’s largely based on the fact that Virginia is the only somewhat competitive state that holds a major election in between general and midterm years. Virginia is also close to all the media hubs in D.C., so state politics there attract disproportionate national attention from the press. If Virginia held its elections in general or midterm years, it probably would be little more than an afterthought.
Even when Republicans have won in Virginia, it hasn’t always been a strong predictor of future success. After the GOP clean sweep in 2021, Republican hopes for a “red wave” in the 2022 midterms failed to materialize, with the GOP narrowly retaking the House and failing to win back the Senate.
But in 2024, after Virginia Democrats held the state senate and retook the House of Delegates in 2023, Trump and Republicans stormed to victory and even came within a few points of flipping Virginia. It stands to reason, then, that the Virginia results alone don’t portend certain doom for the GOP.
In short, 2025 was a reminder that political tides never stay still for long. Democrats may be celebrating tonight, but their victories came in states and cities that were already trending their way.
For Republicans, the task ahead is to study what went wrong, refine the message, and reignite the energy that drove record-breaking turnout just a year ago. With control of Washington in their hands and a clear policy record to defend, the GOP now faces a test of discipline and focus heading into 2026.
If Republicans can unify around Trump’s popular agenda while expanding their appeal in the suburbs, this year’s setbacks may yet prove to be the wake-up call they needed that could lay the groundwork for future victories.
B.C. Brutus is the pen name of a writer with previous experience in the legislative and executive branches.
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