2025 Elections

Following a dismal performance in the 2024 US Presidential Election and congressional elections, the Democratic Party came to a relative consensus that it needed a reset. Electing a new party-chair, Ken Martin, in early 2025, leadership realized they needed to focus on the issues that pushed people out to the polls in droves to elect Donald Trump in 2024. The debate, however, lay in what was the best way to message it. The DSA-aligned progressive wing lamented the ineffectiveness of the establishment politicians in Congress, who seemed to take little concrete action against the Trump administration. The establishment politicians denounced the progressive wing as unelectable because of their more “radical” views on the economy and foreign policy. 

Yet, in spite of these divisions, the backdrop of the Trump administration gutting the Affordable Care Act, making it harder for Americans to receive SNAP, waging costly trade wars with foreign powers, rising unemployment, and the government shutdown overshadows the flaws of the current opposition party in Congress. In the November 2025 elections, the Democrats had their best performance since their electoral sweep in 2020. And any honest pundit would tell you that their victory boiled down to one key word: affordability. 

New York City Mayoral Race 

In October 2024, when NY State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani announced his candidacy to unseat New York Mayor Eric Adams, less than a percent of New Yorkers knew he existed. He picked up some initial media traction for his interviews with Trump voters, for his vocally pro-Palestine foreign policy, for self-identifying as a Democratic Socialist, and for the support he received from independent media figures such as Mehdi Hasan and Hasan Piker (later joined by popular leftist lawmakers such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez). Yet, in March, when former Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his candidacy, despite having resigned in disgrace three years prior, pollsters deemed it Cuomo’s race to lose. Through his clear and populist policy platform, his popularity on social media among young audiences, and the mass mobilization of over 100,000 volunteers, Mamdani surmounted the tens of millions of dollars in funding against him, the Islamophobia he had to face regularly, a complete lack of support from the Democratic establishment, and constant attacks from his opponents due to his stances on Palestine. He won the primary in June by 13 percentage points and the general election, which had the highest turnout since 1969, was won by 8 points. 

His meteoric rise has been attributed to a number of factors. Disillusionment with the neoliberal (i.e. ideologically centrist) Democratic establishment, which received most of the blame for the 2024 loss, empowered the progressive-leftist wing of the party to chart their own course. Socialism, once an ideology that would make any candidate a pariah, has become increasingly attractive to the Democratic base and young politicians, many of whom have deemed free-market liberalism as the source of economic inequality. Much of Mamdani’s electoral success in the early stages of his campaign can be attributed to the unrelenting grassroots support he received from the Democratic Socialists of America, which counts around 90,000 members nationwide and 10,000 in New York City. Many of his “socialist” policies became the focus of his policy platform, which was unapologetically centered on affordability. Freeze The Rent. Fast and Free Buses. Universal Childcare. Mamdani focused his campaign on easily understandable and concrete measures that were centered on addressing the issues materially affecting New Yorkers. His campaign further demonstrated that, while Democratic leaders claim to be fighting to regain the youth vote they lost to Trump, many are unwilling to do so by embracing an ideological shift in the Democratic base, leading to many Democrats resisting the popularity of Mamdani. Ultimately, he became too popular for the shrewdest of them to not endorse; first was DNC Chair Ken Martin, then Governor Hochul, and in the final days of the election, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries followed suit. Others, however, such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, NY Senator Gillibrand, and previous Democratic presidential nominees refused to endorse him. Since his election, he has been actively working to garner the support of leadership to make it easier for him to pass his agenda, going as far as to meet with President Trump in the White House. 

New Jersey Governor’s Election 

In the 2024 Presidential election in New Jersey, a once solid blue state, the Democrats went from winning the state by 16 points in 2020, to 5 points in 2024. In a poll released by well-known pollster AtlasIntel three days prior to the governor’s race, Democratic Nominee and congresswoman Mikie Sherrill was just a singular point ahead of her opponent, the Trump-endorsed state senator Jack Ciattarelli. On election night, Sherrill won by a whopping 14 points. 

Sherrill’s campaign capitalized on the growing unpopularity of the Trump administration. Centering her messaging on rising healthcare costs, rising grocery costs, and rising housing costs as the result of Trump policies, she painted her Trump-backed  opponent as someone unable to tackle the crisis of affordability. A large factor that contributed to Sherrill’s wide margin of victory was, in the words of the President, “Trump was not on the ballot.” Despite the unpopularity of the Republicans, Donald Trump is able to turn out a voter base that does not regularly show up to vote in non-presidential elections, or vote at all. Thus, polls overestimated the influence of much of the Trump base who ended up not coming out to vote for Ciattarelli. Trump received almost 2 million votes in New Jersey compared to Ciattarelli’s 1.4 million. A final factor contributing to Sherrill’s victory was the mobilization of notable democratic political figures who brought Democrats to the polls in droves. Senator Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Barack Obama all actively campaigned in New Jersey, letting their bases know how high stakes these elections were. 

Virginia Elections 

In a state with over 200,000 federal employees, the Virginia gubernatorial race grew in stakes as the government shutdown led to hundreds of thousands of federal furloughs. Virginia, a once purple state which turned blue in the 2010s just to elect a Republican governor in 2021, is a state that Democrats needed to regain their hold on after losing the governor’s mansion 4 years prior and only winning the state by 5 points in 2024. Yet, the matchup between Democratic House Representative Abigail Spanberger and her opponent, Republican Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears was not a close one from the start. Polls had Spanberger up by around 10 points the whole campaign, numbers which only improved after the Republicans were widely blamed for the government shutdown that commenced a month before the election, with Spanberger winning by 14 points on election night. However, the true momentum that the Democratic Party has currently was demonstrated in the Attorney General’s race. For months, Democratic Virginia State Assemblymember Jay Jones had been the favorite to unseat the Republican incumbent Attorney General Jason Miyares. That was until messages were released, indicating that he had once wished for the death of the children of one of his political opponents. These revelations made him plummet in the polls, and he was expected to lose. Nevertheless, the Republicans have become so unpopular that it did not end up mattering on election night, as he won by a whopping 6 points. 

Key Takeaways 

These elections have given the Democrats and the Republicans much to learn from as they prepare for the midterm elections in 2026. Both parties have realized that in order to win, they need to focus on affordability agendas that address the material needs of the voters. The gubernatorial races have made it clear that Republicans are incredibly unpopular among high propensity voters, who are dissatisfied with the actions of the Trump administration. For the Democrats, going forward, they still have much work to do, as their statewide wins were deemed less a show of support for the opposition party, and more an indictment of Republicans. This was not the case, h0wever, in the victory of Zohran Mamdani in NYC. In the upcoming primaries for the 2026 midterms, a showdown is shaping up within the Democratic Party: the DSA-aligned leftists versus the establishment-backed moderates. This is already shaping up in Maine where progressive oyster farmer Graham Platner is vying for the Senatorial nomination against the 77-year-old governor Janet Mills. This dynamic is also emerging from smaller races, such as in New York’s 8th congressional district where DSA City Councilman Chi Ossé seeks to unseat the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The question going forward

will be whether the Democrats are able to overcome these divisions to show a united front against the party currently holding the White House and Congress, or whether they implode due to internal divisions.