A Quick Recap of the 2025 Election Cycle

Abigail Spanberger (D) celebrates winning the 2025 gubernatorial election in Virginia, flipping the seat from Republican control.

In all the buzz that traditional midterm and general election cycles typically receive, off-year elections, which occur during odd years, often go under the radar. While not as impactful as even year elections on the national scale, off-year cycles still contain a number of key races at the gubernatorial level, and this year, due to the craziness of mid-decade redistricting (for more on this debacle, check out this article here), the number of races was greater than usual. This past Tuesday, New Jersey and Virginia elected new governors, and California voted to pass a monumental proposition that temporarily legalizes partisan redistricting. Let’s take a quick look at these elections, along with what their results could spell for the 2026 election cycle.

Democrats Win Big Across The Board

A couple months ago, I wrote a short article about the 2025 gubernatorial elections where I had believed I was being overly generous to Democrats. Not only was I incorrect in this assumption, but the performances of Democratic candidates Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherill of Virginia and New Jersey respectively blew even my expectations out of the water. In all four major elections of the 2025 cycle, the Democratic-backed candidate or agenda won, and won big. Comparing the individual maps to past elections, the results look eerily similar to the results of the 2020 general election, widely considered to be a strong performance for Democrats nationwide.

However, next to the Democratic performances in 2025, even comparisons to 2020 feel like understatements. Spanberger’s performance in Virginia was particularly eye-popping: her victory margin of 14.6% was the highest for a Democrat in Virginia in any state election since 1989, and her margins in the Washington DC suburban counties (Fairfax, Loudoun, and Prince William counties, three of the state’s four largest by population) in the Northern part of the state are the highest produced by a Democrat in the modern era. This suburban strength, noted as one of the Democratic Party’s greatest assets throughout the past decade, was echoed in both New Jersey and California. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherill became the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate to win suburban Morris County since 1973. In California, the victory margins of proposition 50, a Democrat-backed proposal, were eerily similar to those of Joe Biden in the 2020 Presidential Election. In particular, the proposition’s approval margins in Los Angeles suburban counties Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino (some of the most populous counties in both California and the country as a whole) were staggering, also approaching peaks of liberal support throughout the modern political era. All across the board, counties and states that shifted towards the Republican Party in 2024 vaulted back to the left, indicating a general trend that should excite Democrats and serve as a major source of concern for Republicans.

2026 Prospects Look Bleak For Republicans

2025 can undoubtedly be considered a mini “blue wave,” but as many will say, a lot can change between now and next year’s far more nationally influential midterm election cycle. While this is undoubtedly true, equally important to note is the fact that throughout history, off-year elections have typically been predictive of midterm elections that took place the following year. While the specific political situation of our country may be slightly different a year from now, the general trends dominating the election cycle will likely be similar, and right now, they do not look great for Republicans.

One of the biggest positives for Republicans in 2024 was their notable gains amongst minority voters, particularly Hispanics. In 2024, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump won 46% of Hispanic voters, by far the highest proportion won by a Republican on the national level in the modern political era. However, in 2025, Hispanics shifted hard towards the Democratic Party. In California, for example, the heavily Hispanic Los Angeles suburbs, which were used as a microcosm for the primary concerns of the Democratic Party following the 2024 election, voted in favor of Democrat-backed proposition 50 at rates not only matching, but outperforming 2020 victory rates. In the state in general, 71% of Hispanics voted in favor of Prop 50 according to exit polls, rates much more in line with Democrats of the pre-Trump era. These results indicate that many of the Republican gains amongst Hispanics in 2024 may have been more of a fluke than previously expected. While I would still argue that Hispanic voters (and minorities in general) are a Republican-trending group, these trends are nowhere near as strong as many people would have stated a year ago, and looking to 2026, will almost certainly not be strong enough to counter Democratic trends in the suburbs.

The elections in New Jersey and, in particular, Virginia, showcase that Democratic gains in suburban areas are likely to continue for the foreseeable future. In addition to the aforementioned DC suburbs, Abigail Spanberger won the large mid-sized city-centric counties of Southern Virginia at all-time high rates, showcasing that trends favor Democrats in populated areas. In New Jersey, in addition to flipping the historically Republican Morris County, Mikie Sherill won suburban Passaic County, which Donald Trump narrowly won in 2024, by nearly 15 percentage points. Heading into 2026, it seems that Republicans are fighting an increasingly uphill battle against suburban shifts to maintain their congressional advantages, and frankly, based on the results in 2025, I struggle to see them making through the 2026 midterms unscathed.

Note: the specific electoral numbers described in this article may not be entirely accurate, as results were not 100% in at the time of writing.