Tuesday’s election results are sobering for Republicans, who relinquished three key Virginia statewide races to Democrats as well as the New Jersey Governor race and watched New York City embrace Democratic socialism with the ascension of radical leftist Zohran Mamdani as mayor.
In an unsettling if unsurprising turn of events for anyone who has glanced at polling over the past few months, self-identified socialist Zohran Mamdani, running as a Democrat, beat out independent Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa for New York City mayor.
Mamdani won just over half the vote (50.2 percent), while his opposition vote was split between Cuomo (41.6 percent) and Sliwa (7.1 percent). Mamdani’s win marks a forward lurch for socialist-style policies in the city, including taxpayer-funded free city buses, a rent-freeze for a million tenants, and rumors of a wealth tax on wealthy residents and an increase in the city’s corporate tax rate. His win also indicates Democrats have no objection to rallying around actual socialism, and hints that the party could be lurching even further left. However, the likelihood that these policies have a fighting chance outside of hubs like New York City is unlikely.
In the Virginia Governor race, which was tightening in the weeks before the election, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the race against her Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears by just over fifteen points, 57.5 percent to 42.3 percent. Spanberger drummed up a total of 1,961,990 votes, a record-breaking number that pushed the state closer to presidential turnout levels than a typical governor race. For comparison, Spanberger’s vote total eclipsed former Governor Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 vote total by over 290,000 votes on Tuesday.
Democrats developed a turnout machine to be reckoned with in Virginia, but it didn’t hurt that Spanberger raised nearly double the campaign money that Earle-Sears did. Spanberger raised $65 million during the campaign while Earle-Sears raised $35 million according to The Virginia Public Access Project reports. One of Spanberger’s largest donors was the Democratic Governors Association, which descended on the Virginia race, pouring 10.4 million into Spanberger’s coffers. This is more than it has spent on any Virginia race since at least 2012 according to Open Secrets, indicating Democrats were willing to bankroll the Virginia race to secure the outcome they wanted.
In the Virginia Lieutenant Governor race, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi beat out Republican John Reid by 11.4 points, 55.6 percent to 44.2 percent. Hashmi significantly outraised Reid, with The Virginia Public Access project reporting that she raised $7.8 million to Reid’s1.3 million as of Oct. 23. Ghazala received over $1.2 million from the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, and hundreds of thousands from left-leaning groups like Planned Parenthood VA and New VA Majority.
In the Virginia Attorney General race, Republican Jason Miyares put in a significant final push in the weeks before election day, but ultimately lost to Democrat Jay Jones by 6.5 percentage points, 53 percent to 46.5 percent. Miyares and Jones both raised significantly more in funding than is typical in an Attorney General race, with Miyares outraising Jones according to Open Secrets data. That said, Jones’ 14.2 million pre-election fundraising level 12 days before the election dwarfs any recent Democrat candidate for Attorney General. Jones also received over $1 million in donations in the weeks after disturbing text messages from 2022 were discovered in which he said he wished there were “two bullets” in the head of the Republican leader of the House of Delegates.
In the New Jersey governor race polls showed a tightening race in the final weeks before the election, but Democrat Representative Mikie Sherrill ended up beating Republican Jack Ciattarelli by thirteen points, 56.2 percent to 43.2 percent. Like Spanberger in Virginia, Sherrill significantly increased Democrat turnout levels, winning over 1.7 million votes. This is over 450,000 more votes than former Governor Phil Murphy won in 2021. For his part, Ciattarelli improved on his 2021 numbers by over 100,000 votes as well, demonstrating Republicans did not have a turnout problem, but Democrats pushed turnout to near-presidential election levels.
Similar to the Virginia Governor race, Mikie Sherrill was well-funded by out-of-state interests who zeroed in on the New Jersey Governor race to secure the seat for Democrats. Sherrill raised a total of $17.5 million overall with $6.5 million on hand leading into the final weeks of the election, and Ciattarelli raised $16.5 million and had $4 million on hand.
However, much of Ciattarelli’s donations stemmed from New Jersey donors while Sherrill received funding from an array of out-of-state groups. According to the Brennan Center, the super PAC boosting Sherrill raised $7.8 million for her campaign, and much of that amount stemmed from groups fully or partially shrouding their sources. This included over a million dollars from groups whose addresses were listed outside of New Jersey.
Funding from national Democrat-aligned groups fixated on securing power for the party ahead of the midterm cycle played a role in both the New Jersey and Virginia Governor races. Democrats also managed to push voter turnout to near-presidential election levels, indicating trouble for Republicans in the midterms if they are unable to match Democrats’ spending and turnout spree. As for Mamdani’s win, the city will become a social experiment that can be looked back on in four years, and Democrats will finally have a “real socialism” case to cite.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
