Tuesday was a brutal night for President Donald Trump and his axis of antidemocratic actors — and a huge night for democracy.
In the first set of regular elections since Trump returned to the White House, voters across America registered their disgust with the direction the nation has been heading under his authoritarian leadership, electing Democratic governors in Virginia and New Jersey, retaining three Democratic justices on Pennsylvania’s supreme court, rejecting a Trump-aligned measure to restrict mail-in ballots in Maine, electing a New York City mayor who Trump had done everything in his power to stop, and — perhaps most significantly — greenlighting California Democrats’ response to the GOP’s attempts to gerrymander themselves to victory in the 2026 midterm.
In every major race across the nation, Democrats registered wins. Some were historic firsts — like in Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger and Ghazala F. Hashmi will be the first women to serve as the commonwealth’s governor and lieutenant governor. Others represented generational shifts, like in Georgia, where Democrats won statewide, nonfederal races for the first time in nearly 20 years.
While off-cycle elections were once strictly local affairs, political journalists cast this year’s contests as a no-confidence vote on the Trump administration.
And on Tuesday, the plebiscite replied with a resounding Hell No! The immediate results suggest whatever confidence this president enjoyed is now crumbling amid a record length government shutdown, a camouflaged cascade of federal kidnappings, a tariff-battered economy, and the systemic demolition of democratic norms.
The AP called Virginia’s gubernatorial race an hour after polls closed, with Spanberger’s results showing massive blue shifts across almost every county in the commonwealth. Not long after, Rep. Mikie Sherrill was announced the winner in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race.
As the results trickled in, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin called out Trump with each victory announcement.
“We have a message for Donald Trump. You can remodel your marble bathrooms. You can build your gaudy ballrooms. You can party the night away at Mar-a-Lago as people struggle to get by. But the people of New Jersey, they want leadership, and the people of New Jersey, they chose Mikie Sherrill,” Martin said in a release shortly after the NJ race was called. “Governor-elect Sherrill’s victory, along with Abigail Spanberger’s victory earlier tonight in Virginia, is the beginning of our Democratic resurgence. The American people are sick of Republicans putting the elites first, tired of Trump ignoring the tens of millions of families that bust their asses every day just to get by, and tired of watching the GOP turn our beloved country into a playground for billionaires.”
Martin’s take was mirrored in the exit polls. In New Jersey, 38% of voters told NBC exit pollsters that opposing Trump was one reason for their gubernatorial vote, while 37% said the same in Virginia. In California, 50% said opposing Trump was why they were voting on Prop 50.
After spending most of election night atypically quiet, Trump posted an all-caps screed on Truth Social that suggested the GOP can only win when he’s running. “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,” Trump wrote, citing unnamed “pollsters.”
But it wasn’t just Democrats rebuffing Trump Tuesday. As polls closed, news broke in Kansas that Republicans there were abandoning the push to redraw the state’s congressional maps.
Democrats also performed well in other bellwether races down the ballot.
Progressive darling Zohran Mamdani (D) cruised to victory in New York City, becoming its first Muslim mayor. In the final days of the race, Trump and Elon Musk both urged New Yorkers to back Cuomo — endorsements Mamdani touted.
Also in NYC, District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) cruised to re-election, even as Republicans tried to paint the progressive prosecutor as too soft-on-crime. And a short drive down I-95, another progressive DA won re-election, as Philadelphia overwhelmingly backed Larry Krasner for a third term.
A late-breaking texting scandal threatened to derail Jay Jones’ (D) bid for Virginia’s attorney general, but incumbent Jason Miyares’ (R) pleas to voters for ticket splitting largely fell on deaf ears.
Democrats also outperformed in Virginia’s House of Delegate races, with the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee projecting that they flipped at least 11 districts, which would expand their 51-49 edge there to a commanding 62 seat majority.
In Georgia, Democrats won two seats on the Public Service Commission, the first time they have won a statewide race for a nonfederal office since 2006. The commission will go from 5-0 Republican to 3-2, providing Democrats a path to taking control of the utility commission in 2026.
Democrat Johnny DuPree flipped a Mississippi state senate seat in a special election, putting the GOP’s supermajority in the chamber at risk. The district was redrawn after Mississippi’s previous legislative map was held to be a racial gerrymander in violation of the Voting Rights Act.
The Proof Was In the Polling
Ahead of the election, polls showed Americans increasingly disgusted with the Trump administration and disillusioned with politics in general.
Americans are sick of the Trump administration’s disdain for the rule of law, with nearly two-thirds saying Trump has gone too far expanding the powers of the presidency and 58% in targeting his political opponents, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Monday.
An NBC poll released Sunday found only 43% of Americans approved of Trump, while 55% disapprove, a 12 point gap. Ahead of the 2026 elections, Democrats lead Republicans in the generic congressional ballot by 8 points, the largest lead for either party in the NBC survey since the 2018 midterms, which saw Democrats flip 41 seats in the U.S. House. The same poll showed Democrats led Republicans by 11 points on protecting democracy and 8 points on protecting constitutional rights — combined, the most important issue for a quarter of votes, topping the cost of living (16%), and health care costs (10%).
Late last week, the Economist/YouGov tracking poll found that Trump’s net approval rating sat at -18%, with only 39% approving and 37% disapproving, the lowest it’s ever been – including after the January 6 riots during his first term. That same survey had Trump underwater on nearly every issue with voters, including immigration, crime, inflation, foreign policy, jobs and the economy. Similarly, a Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll last week found Trump’s approval fell to the lowest of his term, with 40% of Americans approving and 57% disapproving.
And as Philip Bump recently noted, even Trump’s support among Republicans is now slipping. While fast majorities still say they support the president, the intensity of that support has slipped in recent months, with more telling pollsters they only somewhat approve, rather than strongly approve. “This is how political support works. People don’t simply go from loving a politician to hating him,” Bump wrote. “There’s a waypoint: indifference. Enthusiasm becomes shrugging becomes dislike becomes disgust. And since February, a chunk of Republicans have gone from cheers to shrugs.”
Going into Tuesday, Democrats were nervous, worried that the polls would be wrong as they were in 2016, but as the first results were announced, Democrats’ mood improved.
“This is looking like a very good night for lower-case d democracy, the constitution and the virtue of the American people,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) tweeted.