The November 4, 2025, election results delivered sweeping victories for Democratic Party candidates in the handful of off-year state-wide elections.
Nationally, Democratic Party pundits are calling decisive wins in New Jersey and Virginia a repudiation of policies advanced by President Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress—and a “blue wave” bellwether for future elections.
This is a typical message during off-year elections heralded by party officials seeking to fire up their donors and voting base in advance of key gubernatorial and contentious midterm congressional elections.
Of note, victories by Virgina Governor-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) and New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) were not unexpected given local candidate dynamics and difficult political environments at play in their respective blue and trending blue states. Likewise, the party occupying the White House after presidential elections typically loses ground in subsequent off-year and mid-term elections.
In Virginia, Spanberger will be the commonwealth’s first female governor after she vanquished current Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) in a lopsided contest. The double-digit victory for Spanberger was called just an hour after polls closed. Many felt the race was lost months ago due to Sears’ weak fundraising and ever-changing campaign team, which frustrated donors and party leaders despite the commonwealth’s impressive economic record and down-ticket election gains ushered in by the rising GOP star but term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
The Republican Governors Association and other outside groups were reluctant to heavily invest in the race until controversial text messages surfaced by Jay Jones (D), the nominee for Virginia’s attorney general running against incumbent Jason Miyares (R). In the bombshell text, Jones said he wanted to murder Todd Gilbert—the GOP Leader of Virginia’s House of Delegates—and make his family watch and suffer in order to achieve Democratic policy priorities.
This controversial revelation from a man seeking the commonwealth’s top law enforcement job grabbed national headlines, outraged voters, narrowed polls, and breathed new life into the statewide elections. Money poured into Miyares’s campaign, making the contest the most expensive attorney general race in the nation’s history, according to the political analytics firm AdImpact. Republicans put $22.9 million into anti-Jones television ads, more than twice what Jones spent. And Sears ran ads painting Spanberger as a radical leftist tolerant of political violence and Jones’s comments.
On Tuesday night, voters shrugged off the controversy. Jones secured a margin of victory larger than Miyares’s win or Youngkin’s win four years ago. State Sen. Ghazala Hashmi (D) won the lieutenant governor’s race against conservative talk show host John Reid, becoming the first Muslim and Indian American to hold statewide office in Virginia.
Of note, Democrats picked up more than a dozen seats in the House of Delegates and stand a few votes shy of a veto-proof majority. The Virginia Senate, which is controlled by Democrats 21-19, was not up for election.
Count on Democrats to invest heavily in a handful of key Virginia Senate and House of Delegates races in the 2027 election to pick up at least two-thirds of each chamber’s seats and achieve a veto-proof Democratic trifecta that will allow them to pass partisan legislation that will undermine Virginia’s pro-business climate
In New Jersey’s election for the governor’s mansion vacated by term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy (D), Mikie Sherrill (D) crushed three-time challenger Jack Ciattarelli (R) by 14 points. In 2021, Ciattarelli lost to Murphy by less than 3 points.
These results suggest success in the Democratic campaign plans to nationalize each race and tap into local and national frustrations with President Trump and key hot button issues like the cost of living, federal workforce downsizing, the longest federal government shutdown in history, and the Trump administration testing the boundaries of White House power and political norms. Democrats also nominated candidates with solid message discipline. They were not afraid to deliver an economic message and avoided a campaign focus on far-left issues that hurt Democrats in recent election cycles.
Ultimately, quality candidate selection, swing voter-friendly messaging, and fundraising matter the most in elections. But Republicans are facing a bigger problem—it is hard to win when President Trump is not at the top of the ticket or fully engaged in races. President Trump was largely absent on the campaign trail for Sears and Ciattarelli, perhaps because he knew the contests were over before they began in these Dem-friendly states. Experts warn that President Trump needs to aggressively promote GOP candidates on the campaign trail to increase the chances for Republicans to maintain U.S. Senate and narrow House majorities in the 2026 midterm elections. The Senate map favors Republicans this cycle, while state gerrymandering efforts by both parties suggest that just 17 highly contested seats will decide the House majority.
Of note for Government Affairs Solutions clients with concerns about policies favoring unions, voters in New Jersey and Virginia elected governors who received union endorsements, which may result in the passage of anti-business legislation and executive actions into the beginning of 2028.
While Virginia’s Governor-elect Spanberger has promised not to repeal her state’s right-to-work law, the business community has good reason to be concerned. The last time Democrats controlled both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly and the governorship in 2020, they stopped short of right-to-work repeal, but passed costly prevailing wage requirements, gutted fair and open competition statutes, and tested the limits of anti-business policies during the COVID pandemic. This led to Republican wins in the General Assembly and the election of Gov. Youngkin in the next election cycle.
The big question in Virginia is can Democrats successfully govern from the middle of the political spectrum and permanently move the commonwealth from a purple state to a blue state. New Jersey is already a blue state with anti-business policies and high taxes and may be blue forever, especially with the recent exodus of conservative voters moving to red states over the last five years.
Government Affairs Solutions clients with an interest in political engagement should consider the 2025 election results as they formulate legislative and political engagement strategies for 2026 and beyond.
- Ben Brubeck, Government Affairs Solutions