Election Primer 2025

My final observations as voters head to the polls tomorrow in key battles

Screen capture courtesy of CBS News

Tomorrow will mark the first general election since the disaster of 2024. Yes, indeed, it’s been a year since that fateful day—a long one, but still, a year.

The off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey are something of a time-honored tradition. Voters in two states get to collectively declare how upset or pleased they are with the current administration. This year, affordability is on the minds of many voters as grocery prices, utility bills and now insurance premiums soar, and that’s not great for the GOP.

This year, there are three other places besides Virginia and New Jersey where the electoral stakes are high.

In California, Prop 50 presents Democrats’ best chance to counter GOP gerrymanders requested by Trump. In Pennsylvania, voters will decide the future composition of their state Supreme Court. And in New York City, voters are deciding between a Democratic Socialist who would also be the first Muslim mayor of the city, and an established Democrat who resigned in disgrace over sexual misconduct.

But zooming out, the nation is waiting on a broader verdict from tomorrow’s outcomes. Will Republicans preserve their gains among Latino and young voters who swung hard for Trump in 2024? Or will Democrats deliver resounding defeats across the board, energizing their base in a harbinger of next year’s critical midterms?

There’s a lot on the line. And there’s a week’s worth more of data since I last checked in on these contests.

So where do things stand as we head into the home stretch?

No need to prop up 50

Last week, I wrote that polling for Prop 50 in California looked strong, with the polling averages showing “yes” leading by an average of 17 points. Opponents had also basically given up on ad spending.

The good polling has continued or even strengthened since. Wrote The Guardian yesterday,

Though it can be difficult to predict turnout in an off-year special election, several recent surveys showed it passing by more than 20 points.

Fueling this is a sense among California’s voters that they want to do something to stick it to Trump. In fact, a CBS News survey taken last week found 75 percent of those voting “yes” were doing so expressly to oppose Trump.

The anti-Trump messaging apparently worked. The closing pitch for Prop 50 made a national case for “yes” with top national leaders appearing in television ads, from Barack Obama to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez telling voters they had the power to “stand up to Donald Trump.” As The Guardian noted,

“Democrats have won the messaging war in California because they’ve successfully framed it as an anti-Trump campaign,” said Dave Wasserman, the senior elections analyst for Cook Political Report. “Republicans just did not cobble together the resources or the momentum to stop it.”

The success of the measure in California will lend weight to a similar ballot measure that Democratic state legislators hope to put to the voters in Virginia next year. If passed, that measure would draw a new congressional map, shifting between a couple to a few House seats from red to blue and further countering some of the worst gerrymandering by the GOP in red states.

And given its success in California, “Stand up to Trump” could become a clarion call, blasted on repeat, leading up to next year’s midterms.

Meet Virginia

In 2021, the sentiment in the governor’s race in Virginia cut against the Democrats. Then-candidate Glenn Youngkin ran on school closures from the pandemic and a culture war over “critical race theory” that seems quaint by today’s standards. Democrats lost the governor’s mansion that year, but in fairness, the incumbent party in D.C. has traditionally lost it.

That pattern looks likely to repeat on Tuesday. Most polls continue to show Abigail Spanberger far ahead of her opponent, Winsome Sears; in some polls, Spanberger has a formidable double digit lead. Early voting in the state has also favored Democrats. Turnout is relatively heavy: As the Washington Post notes,

“Since early voting began in September, more than 1.2 million Virginians have cast their votes either in person or by mail, compared with just over 945,000 votes at this point in 2021.

Likely Democratic voters are trouncing likely Republican voters in early votes cast. Here is a chart based on data analysis by the Virginia Public Access Project:

Notably, Democrats lead not only in mail-in ballots, where they have performed strongly since the pandemic era, but also in in-person early voting, where they have narrowly outperformed likely Republican voters.

Nearly all observers predict an easy win for Spanberger in Virginia, where federal layoffs have disproportionately affected employment and the economy, and her opponent comes off as too extreme. But as I have emphasized here, the state Attorney General race remains a toss-up, putting at risk a congressional redistricting plan to secure two to four new Democratic House seats.

Shoring up New Jersey

In New Jersey, a close governor’s race in 2021 had Democrats worried the state was tilting red. It still might, but that is looking less and less likely. Based on strong mail-in and early voting, Democrats have the advantage going into Election Day.

The final figures from this past weekend have been tallied and added to the overall totals, and it’s looking decent for Democrat Mikie Sherrill. New Jersey tracks votes by party, and Democrats lead Republicans not only in Vote-by-Mail (+239.2K) but also in In-Person early voting (+27.6K) for a total blue firewall of 266.8K, not counting how unaffiliated votes will break.

By comparison, in 2021, the Democrats’ lead for in-person early voting was 21.5K, while their lead for Vote-by-Mail was 220K, for a total blue firewall of 241.5K.

Many unaffiliated voters are new younger voters and independent voters who have soured against the GOP. These numbers indicate that, should Election Day turnout be consistent with 2021 levels, Mikie Sherrill will perform as well or better than Phil Murphy did that year and win the election.

I should note there is one poll out there that many on the right have pointed to. It’s from Atlas Intel, which has had a strong track record of predicting election results in the Trump era, and it shows a dead even race. I have doubts about this poll, however. Without engaging in excessive cross-tab diving, this poll indicated that Republican Jack Ciattarelli would win the Black vote in the state by around 60 to 40, while actual results from 2024 were closer to 85/15 the other way.

Yeah, so that’s not happening. Even the conservative election analysts agree.

Spinning the Supremes in PA

There hasn’t been a lot of national attention on the election in Pennsylvania. At issue is an up or down vote on whether to retain three liberal Pennsylvania state supreme court justices once their 10 year terms are up. The outcome of this vote could determine key civil rights and the state’s future congressional maps. And as we learned in North Carolina, losses at the state Supreme Court level can impact voting rights and representation generally throughout the state.

Barack Obama decided it was worth weighing in. Late last week, he urged voters there to turn out:

Pennsylvania has an important Supreme Court race coming up on Tuesday, November 4. If you live in the Keystone State, or know someone who does, vote YES to retain three justices who will protect your fundamental rights and freedoms. It’s never been more important to support men and women who respect the Constitution and the rule of law.

The GOP should be worried. If Democrats prevail on the Supreme Court question, it’s unlikely the GOP can achieve a majority on the court before 2029.

But how are things looking, given the lack of any real polling on the question? We can only draw some inferences by extrapolating based on early votes compared to 2024 levels.

Here, there’s cautiously good news. It’s now looking like, at least from that data, Democrats in the Keystone State have built a sizable blue wall in mail-in ballots. These ballots are skewing many points more heavily Democratic than in the prior election.

As Daniel Nichanian of Bolts Magazine noted,

We got an unusual Sunday update on who has voted so far in Pennsylvania! The latest update:

—824,284 ballots have been cast.

—66.9% by Democrats, and 25.1% by Republicans.

(At this time in 2024, it was 55.9% Dem, 32.9% GOP.)

Note that this doesn’t mean the GOP will lose. They could still come back and snatch victory away through a huge turnout on Election Day. It simply means that it will be a lot tougher for the Republicans than in past elections.

It also likely means there is just far less baseline enthusiasm among Republicans around this election than there is among Democrats, who have something to prove and something to protect.

Start spreading the news

New York City, my own hometown, is poised to elect its second Democratic Socialist to the mayor’s office (the first was David Dinkins—and let’s all hope Mamdani fares better than Dinkins did as the city’s chief executive).

Zohran Mamdani leads the other contenders, including former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, by double digits in most polling. But here’s what I am watching: Mamdani appears to be energizing new and younger voters who are registering in huge numbers as Democrats.

That’s a blast of much-needed fresh air for a party that many in the base believe has lost its way.

There’s a tendency among pundits to ascribe New York’s extremely liberal politics to some kind of nationwide trend. I would caution against this. What happens in NYC can inspire and motivate nationwide, but the true tests of Democratic strength are in Virginia and New Jersey, where fairly middle-of-the-road Democrats are running against Trump-friendly MAGA politicians.

The GOP will seek to portray a Mamdani victory as evidence that the party has gone extreme and is now run by communists and Marxists. That, of course, is a gross distortion. The fact is, the Democratic Party is focused on achieving affordability, preserving the social safety net, protecting the rule of law, and keeping our Republic from falling to a clear and present fascist threat. Progressives and moderates in the Democratic Party are in agreement on these priorities.

Tomorrow’s elections are a huge test of our strength. They will measure whether, after all we’ve been through this year, we still believe in and are determined to take back our country.

We must all vote like our nation’s future depends on it. Because in every conceivable way, it does.