Once again, the media is hyper-promoting fictitious political spin on the results from a year with primarily local elections.
Three months ago, or even one month ago, anyone could have confidently predicted the results that occurred last week because these were mostly city elections. Even though the Democrat Party is currently in disarray nationally, its voters overwhelmingly still control urban U.S. politics.
The only two statewide elections this year were in New Jersey and Virginia, both solidly blue states. It was true that four years ago, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, had won the governorship in Virginia, but he was term-limited and could not run for re-election. Youngkin was also the first Republican to win statewide in the Old Dominion since 2009. Virginia, however, remains a blue state.
A California referendum, Prop 50, was also on the ballot. It enables the state legislature, which has a Democrat supermajority, to redraw the state’s congressional districts, likely resulting in the elimination of five Republican-held seats. Since liberal voters greatly outnumber conservatives in California, the success of Prop 50 was almost certain from the day it was put on the ballot.
The most-watched single local race was for mayor of New York City. Slightly more than 10 percent of voters there are Republican. There was a GOP candidate, Curtis Sliwa, but he obviously could not win, even with the ranked choice voting the city used in its elections.
The controversial current mayor, Eric Adams, was no longer popular, and he eventually bowed out of the race. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had years before resigned in disgrace, was an obviously flawed candidate.
Zohran Mamdani, a self-described “democratic socialist,” entered the race a year ago, and trailed Cuomo in the polls until just before the primary, which he won. His candidacy, unthinkable a few years ago, resonated in New York City in 2025, especially his rhetoric of solving the city’s problems by taxing the rich and providing something for free to everyone else. This redistributionist pitch has been tried and failed before, but it has an understandable appeal to idealistic young voters and to those who think optimistic rhetoric can overcome economic realities.
Although not much featured in the liberal mainstream media, another radical socialist, Omar Fatah, ran against an unpopular liberal mayor, Jacob Frey, in Minneapolis. But the voters of Minnesota’s largest city, also overwhelmingly liberal, rejected Fatah’s neo-socialist candidacy and re-elected mainstream liberal Frey for a third term.
Also countering the media trend, the very progressive mayor of St. Paul, who had been an advocate of rent control, was defeated by a more moderate Democrat in a major upset. Having passed rent control a few years ago, the mayor discovered it caused all new affordable housing construction to stop in the city, and he had to lead the effort to rescind it.
The mainstream media has also featured other individual cases of self-proclaimed socialists winning elections this year, including a narrow win by a leftist in the Seattle mayor’s race after mail-in ballots continued to be counted days after Election Day.
Media distortion and bias will no doubt continue in the upcoming midterm elections in 2026. But there are signals already appearing that the results may not fit the media’s preferred narrative. In the contest for control of the U.S. Senate in particular, Republicans now have a legitimate chance to defy historical precedent and increase their majority, despite the fact that Democrats had as recently as only a month ago been favored to retake power.
What has changed?
The most important new dynamic has been the retirement of Democrat incumbents. Incumbent Senators Gary Peters (Michigan), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire), and Tina Smith (Minnesota) hold what were considered safe blue seats. Their impending exit, however, has been met with strong GOP challengers in two of the races already (Michigan and New Hampshire), and likely one in Minnesota.
One Republican retirement (Thom Tillis in North Carolina) gave Democrats hope of a pick-up there, but a strong Republican has emerged, and liberal prospects are now not so bright.
Some incumbents, including Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff and Maine Republican Susan Collins, face potential serious challenges in 2026. Other retirements could occur in states where pickups are unlikely.
But with a 53-47 majority, plus Vice President J.D. Vance to break any ties, the prospects for Republicans have been recently enhanced, and the results of the 2025 off-year elections have not changed those prospects.
What will occur in next year’s U.S. House races has been obscured for several months by various efforts of a few states to change some of their congressional districts before the 2026 elections. Both parties have done this, or plan to do this, and so predictions are virtually impossible. In those cases where the redistricting has already occurred or is already set to occur, finalized maps will face challenges in the courts, so this uncertainty will persist into the new year.
But there was little meaningful takeaway from the 2025 local elections to apply to 2026 congressional elections. Even if they fail to take control of the U.S. House, Democrats will continue to win in most urban districts because they have large majorities there.
It is, of course, possible that the traditional historical advantage of the opposition party will persist, but if it does, it will not be because of the results of the 2025 elections just concluded. It would happen due to political and economic conditions and events next year.
One of those conditions might be the performance of the new Mayor of New York City, who has promised to implement radical and socialist policies. Most conservatives consider those policies doomed to controversy and failure — as similar ones have already turned out in Chicago, Seattle, St. Paul, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Either way, Mayor Mamdani will be the poster boy of the new Democrat Party in 2026.
The division of the Democrat Party will also continue into 2026, when voters in many more races in many different locations will be asked to choose their leaders for governorships, other statewide races, and U.S. House and Senate seats. More progressive or socialist leaders will be pitted against more moderate voices.
With so much at stake, the Republican Party, its donors, and activists will be dramatically more involved than they were in 2025. The language and substance of these many campaigns will be evaluated by a much wider spectrum of opinion in rural areas, small towns, and suburban communities, as well as isolated pockets of the large cities.
All in all, we can expect a much different electoral landscape next year than the one we just saw on November 4.
Barry Casselman is an AMAC Newsline contributor.
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