Republicans Have Good Reason to Worry

By Jim Geraghty

Wednesday, November 05, 2025

 

We’re going to take yesterday’s elections in ascending order of importance, but first, the big picture.

 

We’ve all heard President Donald Trump offering his usual spiel — “I’m the greatest, I’m the most popular, everybody loves me,” etc. Well, as of this writing, the president’s job approval in the RealClearPolitics average is 43 percent. If you’re wondering about the range, CNN has it at 39 percent, Rasmussen Reports has it at 47 percent. On the economy, Trump’s job approval is at 41.4 percent in the RCP average.

 

Those are pretty lousy numbers, and they’re deadweight to any Republican candidate running right now. Yes, Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City are varying shades of Democratic blue. But when you have an omnipresent president and widespread economic pessimism — 74 percent of Americans describe economic conditions as only fair or poor — it’s just an enormous headwind blowing against any GOP candidate. There’s still a year between now and the 2026 midterm elections, but the Republicans have good reason to worry. Americans still feel like the cost of living is too high — and tariffs make retail prices go up.

 

In Virginia, 47 percent of exit poll respondents said the most important issue was the economy, 21 percent said health care, 12 percent said immigration, 11 percent said education, and 6 percent said crime. In New Jersey, 36 percent of exit poll respondents said the most important issue was taxes, 32 percent said the economy, 16 percent said health care, 7 percent said immigration, and 3 percent said crime.

 

Texas’ 18th District U.S. House race

 

You won’t hear me criticize Texas Governor Greg Abbott very often, but Houston-area Democratic Congressman Sylvester Turner died way back on March 5. The state could have held a special election to fill his seat well before yesterday, but Abbott chose to wait until this autumn because he claimed Harris County needed “sufficient time to prepare for such an important election.” Coincidentally and conveniently, that left House Democrats down a man for much of the year.

 

In Arizona, Democrat Raúl Grijalva died on March 13, and the special election to fill his seat was held on September 23. In Virginia, Democrat Gerry Connolly died on May 21, and the special election to fill his seat was held on September 9.

 

In a special U.S. House election in Texas, all candidates, regardless of party affiliation, run on a single ballot. If no candidate gets a majority of the top two vote-getters advance to a runoff. With 16 candidates running, one candidate winning a majority was never a likely scenario. Christian Menefee and Amanda Edwards, two Democrats, are slated to advance to the runoff. This was never a particularly promising district for Republicans, scoring a D+21 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

 

Where this election does matter is that the partisan margin in the U.S. House of Representatives, already tight, is gradually shrinking. The House currently has 219 Republicans and 213 Democrats. Democrat Adelita S. Grijalva, who won her father’s old seat in Arizona’s special election, is waiting to be sworn in, and so when the House reconvenes, it will be 219 to 214. When one Democrat wins that soon-to-be-scheduled runoff, it will be 219 to 215. Republicans are currently short one representative they would usually have; Mark Green of Tennessee’s 7th district resigned on July 20. The special general election will be held on December 2.

 

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Retention Elections

 

In 38 states, voters elect justices to the state Supreme Court. In Pennsylvania, Supreme Court judges are elected statewide and serve ten-year terms. The seven-member state Supreme Court has five Democrats and two Republicans.

 

This year, Democratic state supreme court justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht faced a retention election — meaning they faced no declared opponent; voters were just given the options of “yes” or “no” on another ten-year term. “If the vote is yes, the judge stays on. If it is no, the governor can appoint a temporary replacement subject to the approval of the state Senate. An election for a replacement to serve a full 10-year term is then held in the next odd year, which means that if a judge isn’t retained this year, voters won’t pick a long-term replacement until 2027.”

 

Defeating a state supreme court justice in a retention election in Pennsylvania is a tall order; it’s only happened once since the state constitution was last updated in 1968. Still, considering the long-term consequences of three state supreme court justices for a ten-year term in a key swing state, it’s a bit surprising that these retention elections were completely under the radar of the national press.

 

Last night, all three Democratic state supreme court justices won their retention races by comfortable margins, 61 percent to 39 percent. Knocking off one or more of the justices was never going to be an easy task for Republicans, but they didn’t really put much effort into it.

 

California’s ‘Gavinmander’ Passes Easily

 

There are currently 43 Democrats representing California in Congress, and just 9 Republicans. Under the “Gavinmander” mid-decade restricting, that would likely shift to 48 Democrats and just four Republicans. When you hear “mid-decade restricting,” your ears should translate that to “getting rid of competitive swing districts.”

 

In the 2024 election, some of those nine Republicans won in part because they had heavily Republican districts. Doug LaMalfa’s first district in the northeast corner of the state scores an R+12 in the Cook Partisan Voting Index.

 

But a bunch of those House Republicans were in swing districts and won because they were the better candidate, or were better funded, or out-hustled their opponent.

 

Kevin Kiley’s second district scores an R+2. Young Kim’s 40th district in Orange County is only R+1. Ken Calvert’s 41st district, encompassing Palm Springs, is just R+2. Even Darrell Issa’s 48th district is just R+7.

 

Democrats have been trying to win these districts for several cycles now. They’ve concluded that it is just easier to redraw the lines so that these districts don’t exist anymore.

 

As of this writing, with an estimated 71 percent of the votes counted, the “Gavinmander” passed, 63.8 percent to 36.2 percent.

 

Virginia Veers Hard to the Left

 

If you’ve been listening to the Three Martini Lunch podcast, you’ve heard Greg Corombos and me lament this all autumn long. Whether it was YouTube, streaming services, or regular broadcast television, I felt like, since September, I was seeing Abigail Spanberger commercials morning, noon, and night. Meanwhile, only in the past few days did I see ones for Winsome Earle-Sears. I wondered if that reflected my living in Fairfax County.

 

Apparently not, because Earle-Sears got shellacked last night; with more than 95 percent of the votes counted, Spanberger leads, 57.5 percent to 42.3 percent.

 

Shortly after 7 p.m. last night, Virginia Republicans got comfortable openly stating what had been obvious for a while: Earle-Sears was a weak candidate, radioactive in vote-rich northern Virginia, running a campaign far too focused on the issue of men in women’s bathrooms. (While that worked for Trump nationwide, it didn’t win him the state of Virginia, which was the state Earle-Sears was supposedly trying to win.) Remember those exit poll numbers above indicating nearly half the electorate thought the economy was the most important issue? Earle-Sears didn’t seem interested in talking about it.

 

Note that a late October Roanoke College poll found Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin, limited to one term, with a 50 percent approval rating and a 36 percent disapproval rating. If you’ve got a Republican governor whose approval is 14 percentage points ahead of his disapproval, you want to have that guy all over your advertising and doing every event possible.

 

Down ticket, it turns out all those yard signs are incorrect; hate does indeed have a home here. Jay Jones won the state attorney general’s race with 53.1 percent, as of this writing. Yearning to see the children of your Republican colleagues murdered cost Jones a couple of percentage points.

 

The Virginia House of Delegates currently has 51 Democrats, 48 Republicans, and one vacancy. As of this writing, in the next session, it will have at least 61 Democrats and at least 31 Republicans. This was a blowout, and one with serious consequences for how Virginia is governed for the next four years.

 

New Jersey

 

GOP gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli kept it really close against Phil Murphy four years ago, so lots of Republicans hoped Ciattarelli’s floor would be comparable to that result.

 

Instead, the floor collapsed under Ciattarelli’s feet. We get used to Republicans over-performing their final averages in the RealClearPolitics average, and the final RCP average had Ciattarelli trailing by 3.3 percentage points. As of this writing, with more than 95 percent of the votes counted, Ciattarelli is losing to Democrat Mikie Sherrill by 13 percentage points.

 

Once again, the top-of-the-ticket landslide will have down-ticket consequences, but the silver lining for the GOP is that the state legislature was already heavily Democratic. Heading into last night, the New Jersey state assembly had 52 Democrats and 28 Republicans. As of this writing, Democrats will start the next session with at least 49 Democrats and at least 18 Republicans.

 

Escape From New York, Debuting in January

 

We can argue whether the New York City mayoral race is really the most important, but indisputably, Zohran Mamdani made himself a national figure over the course of this campaign. He is likely to become the new Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Nancy Pelosi, a figure used to represent the furthest left wing of the Democratic Party in GOP attack ads.

 

And with more than 2 million votes cast in the mayor’s race — the highest voter turnout since 1969 — Mamdani will argue he has a mandate. As of this writing, Mamdani is still above 50 percent. The “Curtis Sliwa should drop out” argument was moot; even if every Sliwa voter could have been convinced to vote for Andrew Cuomo — an extremely unlikely scenario — Cuomo would have fallen short.

 

Exit polling indicated that if you were a New York City voter under 40, you were extremely likely to vote for Mamdani. If you were 50 or older, you were extremely likely to vote for Andrew Cuomo (with support for Curtis Sliwa in the mid-teens). You will see many theories for this, but I will note that if you are younger than 45, you likely have no memory of the Cold War, and thus “socialism” and “communism” are just abstract concepts to you.

 

I don’t want to soft-pedal the amount of damage Mamdani can do as mayor. But in the coming months and years, he is likely to be frustrated with how little unilateral power he has as mayor.

 

The mayor cannot unilaterally raise taxes in the city. The New York City Council sets property tax rates, and the personal income tax rates are set by state law and administered and collected by the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance. Any tax hikes will have to be approved by the state legislature in Albany. Mamdani gets sworn into office on New Year’s Day; Governor Kathy Hochul and members of the New York state senate and state assembly are up for reelection in November 2026. None of them will be particularly eager to raise taxes in an election year.

 

Mamdani wants to make it free to ride city buses. Bus fares are controlled by the Metropolitan Transit Authority board. The MTA structure is . . . complicated, but the bottom line is that the mayor has limited influence over it:

 

Legally, it is an independent corporation, run by a board of directors. As the MTA told its bond investors as recently as February, it is “a corporate entity separate and apart from the state, without any power of taxation.” The MTA board has 14 voting members — six recommended by the governor directly, including the MTA’s chairperson and CEO, and four recommended to the governor by the mayor (the remainder come from other downstate New York counties) and approved by the state senate.

 

For Mamdani to establish his city-run grocery stores, he can use the city’s Economic Development Corporation, which already runs six New York City public markets.