Democrats hope to get back into the win column in Tuesday’s elections, even if the party’s brand hasn’t recovered since last year’s defeats.
Based on the polling, Democrats have a decent shot. They are favored in the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey and heavily favored in the New York City mayoral election, where the main alternative to their party’s nominee is former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing the primary earlier this year.
Virginia Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares has a reasonable chance to resist this blue trend, taking a slight lead in the polls since text messages revealed Democratic challenger Jay Jones’s violent fantasies about political opponents just weeks after the assassination of influential conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
The Democrats’ lead in New Jersey is hardly insurmountable. Mikie Sherrill was up over Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 3.3 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average as of the end of October. While Fox News and Quinnipiac released surveys last month giving the Democrat a 7-point edge, most other pollsters found her leading by 1 to 3 points.
Outgoing Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) led by 7.8 points in the final RealClearPolitics polling average of 2021, but only bested Ciattarelli by 2.8 points on Election Day. But in recent years, New Jersey has been something of a white whale for Republicans. The GOP has come close but has fallen short.
In the other gubernatorial race on the ballot Tuesday, Democratic former Rep. Abigail Spanberger enjoys a more robust lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. Spangberger is up 10.2 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Some Republican-leaning pollsters have projected the race to be a close one. These outlets were often accurate in 2024, but less so in the midterm elections two years prior, when they made a few Senate races appear more competitive than they ultimately turned out to be on Election Day. It’s also worth noting that Echelon Insights, a GOP firm, has Spanberger ahead by 12 points, and Trafalgar shows the Democrat leading by 7. All the polls included in the RealClearPolitics average for the past month show Spanberger breaking 50%.
President Donald Trump is unpopular in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., which often determine the outcome of statewide elections. From the days of Elon Musk and DOGE to the current, Democratic-initiated government shutdown, federal workers have felt uneasy during Trump’s second term. Trump has thrown more weight behind Miyares than Earle-Sears in the waning days of the campaign.
The biggest referendum on the national direction of the Democratic Party may be the New York City mayoral race. The party’s nominee, socialist Zohran Mamdani, is up 14.3 points over Cuomo in the RealClearPolitics average, with Republican Curtis Sliwa still taking 16.3%. Sliwa’s numbers would likely have to come down significantly for Cuomo to have any chance at pulling off the upset.
One late poll by Atlas Intel showed Mamdani’s lead down 5 points, receiving 44% of the vote to Cuomo’s 39%. Another by the Hill-Emerson found Mamdani besting Cuomo by 25 points, 50% to 25%, even as Sliwa clung to 21%. If the electorate looks significantly different from the Democratic primary electorate, pollsters may have missed something. However, the early voting trends that initially seemed to favor older voters have shifted toward younger voters who might be inclined to support Mamdani in recent days. High turnout is expected.
The off-year elections have a mixed track record when it comes to predicting the midterm elections, which in turn aren’t always predictive of the following presidential race. The Virginia gubernatorial contests foreshadowed Republican wins in 1993, 2009, and 2021. However, the 2022 red wave was less than anticipated. It had the same effect on Democrats in 2005 and 2017.
Republicans Christine Todd Whitman (1993) and Chris Christie (2009) were elected governor of New Jersey the year before the GOP wave elections. Ciattarelli’s close call came the year before Republicans won control of the lower house of Congress, though no Republican has won the governorship there since Christie’s 2013 reelection. Trump held former Vice President Kamala Harris to a single-digit margin of victory last year, which was closer than the public polling predicted.
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Rudy Giuliani was twice elected mayor of New York City in the 1990s, with his first win coming before the 1994 red wave. But he had been competitive in the 1989 mayoral race, and his 1997 reelection was sandwiched between two fairly good years for Democrats nationally. Giuliani was succeeded by Michael Bloomberg, who ran as a Republican, but he did not stay in the party for long. Bloomberg is backing Cuomo over Mamdani this year.
Even if Tuesday’s results consist mainly of Democrats winning in Democratic-leaning areas, party leaders hope that will be enough to generate momentum in their favor and against Trump.