A Big Democratic Night

National Review Online

Wednesday, November 05, 2025

 

It was hard to find any bright spot for Republicans in a near-comprehensive wipeout on Tuesday.

 

This shouldn’t be overinterpreted, since in the normal course of things Republicans are hard-pressed to win statewide in Virginia and New Jersey — especially in off-year elections when the GOP holds power in Washington — and they have no chance in New York City.

 

The margins in Virginia and New Jersey were stunning, though. Abigail Spanberger’s crushing double-digit win was enough to get attorney general candidate Jay Jones over the top, despite his loathsome texts. We trust we haven’t heard the last from the defeated incumbent Republican attorney general, Jason Miyares, an exemplary officeholder who couldn’t overcome a Democratic tide that included big gains in the state legislature.

 

In Virginia, the top of the GOP ticket, Winsome Earle-Sears, was underfunded and underwhelming. But in New Jersey, Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli ran a spirited campaign that got close in the polls, and it didn’t matter. He got shellacked, too.

 

President Trump attributed the tough night, in part, to his not being on the ballot. That is clearly an element of the problem; other Republicans can’t turn out his voters the way he can. But Trump left out the other part of the equation, which is that the unrelenting Democratic message linking every Republican on the ballot to him clearly worked and the vote share of Earle-Sears and Ciattarelli about matched Trump’s low-40s approval rating in their states. All things being equal, these are bad signs for next year’s congressional midterms.

 

Meanwhile, Zohran Mamdani comfortably won a three-way race for New York City mayor. Mamdani is fresh, new, and left, which allowed him to vanquish the stale, unlikable, and less left Andrew Cuomo in both the primary and general. But Mamdani’s ideas are radical and unworkable. His attitude seems to be that socialism has never failed; it just has never been tried by Zohran Mamdani. As Ed Koch once put it, the voters have spoken . . . and now they must be punished.

 

With California handily passing Gavin Newsom’s redistricting referendum, the parties will continue their fight to squeeze more House seats out of the states they control. Republicans may net more seats from this competition, but no amount of gerrymandering will be able to withstand this kind of Democratic surge if it materializes again in a year’s time.