Republicans look for lessons

Post Reply New Topic

No one thought Tuesday was going to be Donald Trump’s election night, but there were even fewer silver linings than many Republicans had hoped.

Democrats attacked Trump’s agenda to help score victories in Virginia, where former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger quickly defeated Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. They also prevailed in the attorney general’s race — where their candidate had been wrapped up in a texting controversy — and made double-digit gains in the state Legislature.

nd Democrats also scored much needed victories in nearly every major state-level contest, a helpful night as they try to build on a data-based narrative that Trump and Republicans have tanked the nation’s economy and gone too far right ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Off-year elections are often examined for clues about larger trends that will be at play in the midterms. And Tuesday was the beginning of the Republican Party’s future without Trump on the ballot, leaving Democrats riding high.

“At long last, it’s a fantastic night to be a Democrat. The wins everywhere were big, deep, and meaningful,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way.

The counterpunch for Republicans is the fact that off-year elections, those held in odd years not during traditional general elections, get less attention and are often poor measures for the overall mood of the electorate. That’s amplified by the fact that Democrats' biggest wins, the governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey, were in states that generally lean Democratic and Trump lost.

“Anyone who is telling you they know exactly what will happen based off tonight is lying,” veteran Republican strategist Matt Gorman said.

But for both political parties, Tuesday night will remain a predictable Rorschach Test: You see what you want to see.

Democrats can take away from the night results that they won. Their preferred candidates in significant races secured success. Republicans, meanwhile, can brush aside the elections as aberrations and point to the fact that even though they may have lost the short-term battle, they won the war. The win by Mamdani offers Republicans a messaging victory as they will now make Democratic candidates in key House and Senate seats nationally answer for his policy positions considered outside of the mainstream.

“If I am a Republican in New York, I did not want him to win because he will be a horrific mayor,” said Jason Thielman, a Republican strategist and former executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “But if you’re like me and your job is to win races, it’s a no-lose scenario.”

Republicans were quick to distance the president from the results. Indeed, there were indications that Trump was unhappy with the quality of some of the party’s candidates and did little to get heavily involved in the races, which were in blue-leaning states.

“We did what we needed to do,” said a Trump adviser, who, like others, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “We got in late, but understood the dynamics. It was a lose-lose for Republicans if he became a main driver of the election cycle.”

Trump said part of the reasons Republicans lost was because he wasn’t on the ballot, and that there was a government shutdown — which, he seemed to indicate, is hurting his own party the most.

“‘TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” he wrote.

A plurality of voters in the races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, and a majority of voters in the New York mayoral contest, said Trump was not a factor in their decision, according to the NBC News Exit Poll. But among those who said their choice was motivated by the president, more cast their vote to oppose Trump rather than did to support him.

Most voters in those elections, as well as in California, also are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country, and they continue to express concern about financial issues and the economy, according to the exit poll.

In New Jersey, for example, Sherrill won 60% of voters who ranked the economy as one of the most important issues. And in Virginia, Spanberger won over voters who expressed concerns about their personal financial wellbeing — one of the most important issues in that race.

“Hopefully some folks get the clue that we need to be talking about and doing something about the economy,” said one Republican strategist who has worked on presidential and congressional campaigns.

“I’m hearing the president is getting it, the outstanding question is if his team does,” this person added. “I just know he’s asking a lot of questions, the right ones, as to why more wasn’t done and why adjustments haven’t been made.”

Democrats quickly heralded the results as a harbinger for the 2026 midterms.

“My fellow Virginians, tonight we sent a message, a message to every corner of the commonwealth — a message to our neighbors and our fellow Americans across the country,” Spanberger said in her victory speech. “We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our commonwealth over chaos. You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe and strengthening our economy for every Virginian.”

Early in the night, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called it a “rout for Democrats across the country” that foreshadows his party’s takeover next year.

“What we said from the very beginning of this year is that we need to relentlessly focus on driving down the high cost of living and fixing the broken health care system that Donald Trump and Republicans are making worse by the day,” Jeffries said in an interview with NBC News.

“As long as we stay on these kitchen table pocketbook issues — while, of course, addressing the extremism that Donald Trump and Republicans continue to unleash on the American people — what we’re seeing tonight, is going to be replicated a year from now when Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives,” Jeffries added.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., told NBC News that any Republican in a district Trump won by single digits is “highly vulnerable.”

“After tonight’s results any House Republican in even a somewhat competitive district should be petrified of next year’s congressional elections,” Boyle said.

Others, however, were more cautious about reading into the broader implications for off-year elections.

Michael Ceraso, a Democratic strategist, said the results are a small sample size and that the party shouldn’t get too comfortable.

“There is no clear ideological path for this party and this is a huge challenge for us,” Ceraso said. “These elections tonight are more about who we are than about President Trump. And, Trump is like a bad relationship. When it’s all you know, you stick with it. I don’t trust voters want to break up with him yet. I trust they want to complain about him. But they may still believe he’ll come through for them.”

Trump kept himself mostly scarce during campaigns. He endorsed Ciattarelli in New Jersey, but not Earle-Sears in Virginia. During a Monday night tele-rally for Virginia candidates, he never mentioned Earle-Sears. Those among Trump’s inner circle expressed no regrets Tuesday about his arm’s length — or further — approach.

“The demographics on New Jersey are what they are,” said a top outside Trump adviser, who noted that the president’s political machine spent more than $1 million on Ciattarelli’s behalf. Democrats, this person added, “have a larger pool of voters to draw from.”

Another person familiar with the White House’s strategy said Trump “endorsed to give [Ciattarelli] a shot, because he got close last time,” but acknowledged that Trump “did not go all-in.”

“Don’t try to fix what you can’t,” this person added. “Play for the team but be realistic and ruthless when it comes to resource deployment. Just like the [2024 presidential] campaign.”

As for Earle-Sears, the outside ally was more blunt, saying she was a "horrible candidate."

Trump had spent months warning about Mamdani, but he endorsed Cuomo’s independent bid only on the eve of Election Day, arguing that a vote for Republican Curtis Sliwa was a “vote for Mamdani.”

A person close to the White House described Trump’s last-minute nod toward Cuomo as more of a Hail Mary pass in a game already lost.

“That race was gone three weeks ago,” this person said. “He knew it.”

A former Trump campaign official offered a silver lining — that Trump and the Republicans could now make Mamdani a millstone for Democrats in next year’s elections.

Between the two gubernatorial elections on Tuesday, Virginia was supposed to be the lopsided one — and it was, with Democrat Abigail Spanberger crushing Republican Winsome Earle-Sears by 15 points.

But New Jersey looked like it was going to be a different story. The polling was competitive, and Republicans had nominated a battle-tested candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, who’d nearly won the governorship four years earlier. Recent momentum was on the GOP’s side, too, with President Donald Trump coming within 6 points of Kamala Harris there last year — a giant improvement from the 16-point Jersey drubbing he’d suffered in 2020. And Democrats were privately sharing alarm that their nominee, Mikie Sherrill, seemed to be wilting under the spotlight.

At the very least, this was going to be a close race, one that Republicans would be able to point to as proof that the national political climate wasn’t that bad for them. There was talk of New Jersey shifting away from blue bastion and into swing-state status. An outright Ciattarelli win didn’t feel out of reach.

But it was all a mirage. When the polls closed, the rout was on, and Sherrill walked away with a 13-point win, nearly matching Spanberger’s margin in Virginia.

It’s a concerning outcome for Republicans, because the two main ingredients in the Sherrill landslide have potential ramifications that extend well beyond the borders of New Jersey.

First, there are the well-to-do suburbs and bedroom communities. These are traditionally Republican areas populated with college-educated, white-collar professionals who are deeply uncomfortable with Trump. When he nearly won four years ago, Ciattarelli clawed back many of the suburban voters his party had been shedding in the Trump era. This time around, with Trump back in the White House, they were cross-pressured, but their verdict was decisive: They wanted to vote against the party of Trump.

Consider Hunterdon, Morris and Somerset counties, which have the highest median incomes and the highest concentrations of white residents with college degrees in New Jersey. In each one, Ciattarelli’s margin was 12 to 14 points worse than in his 2021 campaign. But his numbers in these counties were in line with Trump’s showing last year:

In fact, Ciattarelli fared worse than Trump in Morris, although some of this could be due to it being Sherrill’s home county.

But what about Ciattarelli’s home base of Somerset, where he was buried even worse than Trump? It demonstrates the motivation of anti-Trump suburbanites now that he’s back in office, and it suggests that further GOP erosion is possible — in New Jersey and in similar areas around the country.

Simply put, there were a lot of suburbanites who were comfortable with Ciattarelli when Trump was an ex-president but who look like they will shun anyone in the GOP column as long as he’s president.

The other ingredient in Sherrill’s win involves nonwhite voters. It was with these voters — Hispanic and Asian American voters in particular — that Trump made his biggest gains in 2024. These voters had not backed Republicans in the past, but Trump’s surprising inroads raised hope among Republicans — and trepidation among Democrats — that a broader shift might be underway, not just in New Jersey but nationally.

In this way, Ciattarelli was a test case: Could these Trump gains transfer to a non-Trump Republican running without Trump on the ballot?

The answer is a resounding no. In New Jersey municipalities that are at least 60% Hispanic (and where results are currently available), all of Trump’s 2024 gains were washed away Tuesday night.

Similar results can be seen in heavily Asian American areas in Middlesex County, where Trump also made notable gains last year.

Had Ciattarelli combined his suburban performance from 2021 with Trump’s 2024 inroads among nonwhite voters, Ciattarelli would have won. And if he could have retained at least some of both, the race would at least have been tight.

That would have given Republicans a nice post-election talking point, obviously, but it also would have been a genuine source of midterm optimism for them. It would have shown that the anti-Trump suburban passions were cooling and that partywide growth with nonwhite voters was continuing apace.

But Ciattarelli got neither. And as a result, he got clobbered.