Americans are heading to the polls across the country Tuesday to vote in a handful of states and cities.
Not everyone is voting. But the plots and subplots are still important. And there will be plenty to learn from the results.
Some of the most significant contests of Election Day 2025: races for governor in New Jersey and Virginia, the New York City mayor’s race, a much-watched redistricting ballot measure in California, and key state Supreme Court retention elections in Pennsylvania.
Below are some of my big questions today.
The 2026 midterm elections pose a conundrum.
On the one hand, President Donald Trump and many of his actions are quite unpopular. (A CNN poll this week showed his disapproval rating hitting an all-time numerical high of 63%, in fact.) And presidents in that position usually lose big in midterm elections.
On the other hand, the Democratic brand is in the tank. And that’s called into question whether the party would be able to take full advantage of Trump’s problems. Its lead on the so-called generic ballot, for instance, hasn’t been that convincing.
The verdict this year has been strong for Democrats. They’ve routinely overperformed by wide margins in special elections and other races. But Tuesday’s elections should provide the best clues to date.
The big question is whether Democrats continue to benefit from the kind of turnout advantage they’ve seen in those special elections, now that we’re getting into higher-turnout races.
The CNN poll this week provided some encouraging signs for Democrats on that front.
For instance, 67% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters said they were “extremely” motivated to vote in the midterms, compared with just 46% of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters.
Also, the gap between voters who said they intended to vote to support the president (21%) and to oppose him (41%) was bigger than at any point since 2006. George W. Bush and the GOP got drubbed in those midterm elections.
Democrats definitely want to win the New Jersey and Virginia governor’s races. But that’s more of a baseline than anything.
What they’d really love to see is their side turning out in huge numbers to send a message — and Republicans continuing to suffer the turnout problems they usually do when Trump isn’t on the ballot.
It would be a shock if the New York City mayor’s race resulted in anything other than a win for state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani. He’s led by double digits in most polls.
But the forces trying to stop the 34-year-old democratic socialist are still throwing everything at the wall.
Most recently, they’ve tossed a Hail Mary if there ever was one: Trump effectively endorsing his former nemesis, ex-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Cuomo actually leaning in on it. Trump on Monday night urged supporters to back Cuomo over Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa.
Mamdani critics have been suggesting Sliwa drop out of the race for a long time, arguing he’s splitting the anti-Mamdani vote.
The 50% mark is something of an artificial guidepost — even if Mamdani gets in the high 40s, it suggests Cuomo never really had a chance. Polling shows not all Sliwa supporters would have reverted to Cuomo in a two-man race.
Even if it’s a good night for Democrats, that could come with a major and potentially significant exception: the Virginia attorney general’s race.
Most polls there show a competitive race between Republican incumbent Jason Miyares and Democratic former state Delegate Jay Jones. And the reason is clear: Jones’ recently unearthed violent text messages, in which he suggested a political opponent’s children should die.
The polls signal there could be a sizeable gap between this race and the top of the ticket. A recent Washington Post-Schar School poll showed Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger leading the governor’s race by 12 points, but Jones in a tie with Miyares.
If that gap shows up in the results — and especially if Jones loses — it would send a strong message about voters’ tolerance for violent rhetoric in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and a number of other high-profile examples of political violence.
The federal government shutdown is poised to become the longest in history on Wednesday, when it is set to enter its 36th day.
But it’s been a relatively minor subplot in these races. And that includes in Virginia, which is home to many federal workers.
In other words, we shouldn’t necessarily expect any major clues about how the shutdown is playing, politically.
But the results could still impact the shutdown moving forward.
If Democrats underperform, for instance, they might start to fear they are overplaying their hands politically. And if they win big, they might feel emboldened to keep pushing the envelope and holding out for an extension of the enhanced Obamacare subsidies they’ve been demanding.
Polling shows Americans are more likely to blame the shutdown on Republicans than on Democrats, which has instilled Democrats with confidence in their strategy. Tuesday will test whether they feel like pressing forward.
5. How do Newsom and Shapiro emerge?
California’s Proposition 50 and the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court retention elections won’t get the attention of the more preeminent contests.
But they’re worth watching for a number of reasons. And a big one is how they reflect on a pair of ambitious Democratic governors who are thought to be 2028 presidential contenders.
In California, Proposition 50 is looking like a significant triumph for Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Basically, Newsom launched the ballot initiative in response to Texas Republicans’ politically brazen effort to draw five new Republican-leaning congressional districts. Newsom wanted to offset that with new districts that favor Democrats in California.
But he needed voters’ consent to do it. And that looked potentially dicey, given he was effectively asking for permission to gerrymander.
It looks like the bet paid off, given Republicans seem to have thrown in the towel on trying to defeat the measure. The situation also helped put Newsom center stage nationally in the process. If Prop 50 can rack up a huge margin of victory, all the better for him.
In Pennsylvania, Shapiro has invested significant political capital in trying to get voters to grant new 10-year terms to a trio of Democratic state Supreme Court justices. Such “retention” votes almost always succeed, but Republicans have fought hard to defeat the justices. Trump even weighed in this week.
There’s probably more downside than anything in this for Shapiro, given how unusual it would be for justices to lose the retention votes. But again, the margins are worth watching.
