Election Day 2025: The Resistance Strikes Back
A data-driven case for what to look for in New Jersey, Virginia, California, and New York City.
1. The Jerz
Let’s start with a recent history of elections in New Jersey, because the story is more complicated than you might guess.
That’s a pretty swingy electorate, yes? In four of the last seven statewide elections Democrats have won by about +15. In two of them Democrats were +3/+5. And in one of them the Democrat lost by 22 points.
The obvious story we might tell is that Trump has slowly turned Jersey purple-ish with his no-nonsense working-class shtick. But I don’t buy that. At all. Let me explain why.
Trump has been directly on the ballot in Jersey three times and indirectly (via the gubernatorial race while Trump was the sitting president) once. Three of those four races (2016, 2017, and 2020) were the best results Democrats have had in the state aside from Obama’s 2012 blowout.
Now look at two weakest Democratic performances, the 2021 gubernatorial election and the 2024 presidential.
In 2021, President Biden had just crossed over from being net favorable to net unfavorable.
Biden was net -8 in November of 2021.1 So why was the 2021 election close? A few reasons:
Yes, Biden was a small drag on the incumbent Democrat, Murphy.
Murphy actually increased his raw vote totals from 2017 to 2021.
But the pandemic anti-incumbent wave was still rolling through the electorate.
And most importantly, the Republican candidate, Jack Ciattarelli, was pretty good.
In New Jersey, candidate quality matters a great deal in gubernatorial elections. Just look at what happened to Barbara Buono in 2013: She earned about half of the raw number of votes a Democratic candidate for governor usually gets.
So what about 2024? Do you believe that 2024 showed Trump winning over New Jersey voters? I don’t.
Here are Trump’s raw vote totals in his three NJ elections:
Trump 2016: 1,601,933
Trump 2020: 1,883,313
Trump 2024: 1,968,215
The big jump is from 2016 to 2020, but that’s an artifact of elevated turnout nationally. Trump actually lost Jersey by a bigger percentage margin in 2020 than he had in 2016.
Trump then closed the gap by 10 percentage points from 2020 to 2024, despite only a modest increase in total votes.
Which tells me that there was a candidate-quality problem. Kamala Harris got 400,000 fewer votes in 2024 than Biden had gotten in 2020.
Put it all together and I expect tonight’s race to be fairly close. Ciattarelli is in a tough environment for Republicans, but he has the rare advantage of being a non-incumbent incumbent: He’s not the sitting governor, but he is on the ballot for a second consecutive time. That means that he has the dual-benefit of running an insurgent campaign but simultaneously working with a base of people who pulled the lever for him four years ago.
And Mikie Sherrill—who I suspect would be a good governor—has not been a great candidate.
If it is close, I do not believe it is a sign that Trump is transforming the state. It’s a sign that Ciattarelli is a good candidate and in Jersey, Democrats need good candidates to hit their numbers.
One last thing: The single most important marker I’ll be looking at is the Hispanic vote.
In 2024, Trump performed so well with Hispanic voters that people thought there might have been a realignment. I’ll be looking at how Ciattarelli does overall with Hispanic voters in the exit polls but specifically at the returns in Union City, which is 76 percent Hispanic.
Here’s how Trump grew his vote share in Union City over the last three elections, courtesy of Equis Research:
Does Ciattarelli stay at 41 percent in Union City tonight? Or does he collapse back to some much lower number?
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2. Old Dominion
Virginia is closer to a proxy on Trump for three reasons:
(1) Gov. Glenn Youngkin has governed like an aspiring MAGA.
(2) Northern Virginia has been significantly impacted by the Trump administration’s war on the federal government.
(3) The Republican candidate, Winsome Earle-Sears, is (unlike Ciattarelli) running a Trump proxy campaign.
Four polls dropped in the last few days and most of them had Abigail Spanberger at or near 55 percent. I’m sure there’s a candidate effect going on in Virginia, too: Spanberger has been a good candidate and Earle-Sears is, uh, not good.
But a Democrat hasn’t hit 55 percent of the vote in Virginia in a long time.
It’s possible that Spanberger could be on track for the biggest Virginia Democratic landslide in a generation. If that materializes, it would be hard to see it as anything but a temperature check on Trump.
3. Cali Style
The least important election today is the one people will talk most about: Mamdani in New York City.
Here’s the deal: Will Mamdani be a good mayor? I dunno. But quick: Who was the last good mayor of New York? The current mayor is only avoiding jail because he sucked up to Trump. The guy before him was so unpopular he didn’t even run for re-election. Seems like Mamdani could be sub-replacement yet still be better than either of those guys.2
But most importantly: The New York City mayoral election has fork-all to do with American politics. Just ask the presidential campaigns of Bill de Blasio, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani. Please, I beg you, don’t get sucked up into thinking that Mamdani is the future of anything except New York City.
The most important vote is the one no one will talk about: California’s Proposition 50 on redistricting.
We don’t have great polling on this initiative. Because it’s in California we won’t have a clear sense of the result until late-late tonight (at best). But this is the one that will have national repercussions
If Prop 50 passes, it will likely result in a five-seat swing, so the effect on the House totals of the Texas redistricting would be counteracted. Which means the Democrats’ chances of flipping the House next year increase pretty significantly.
Also, if Prop 50 passes, it’s a significant boost to the Gavin 2024 Project.
And finally, if Prop 50 passes, it will incentivize Democrats in Illinois and Virginia to redistrict, too, making a Democratic takeover of the House next year even more likely.
Prop 50 is the big one today. We are unlikely to know the result for sure tonight. But this is the one where America strikes back against Trumpism.
By contrast, when Phil Murphy won the governor’s race in 2017, Trump was net -17 approval.
Or Mamdani could be a good mayor! Anything is possible in the greatest city in the world.
Hey, remember the last election night livestream?! Boy that was something! I can’t believe we are one year removed from the last gasp of hopium….with JVL being Data as the Enterprise heads towards Veridian III.
A slightly nervous Tim saying “we’re not going back” with JVL responding “OH YES WE ARE!” will live with me forever…
Here is for a better night (and morning after)!
The dark horse election that no one is talking about is that that three PA Supreme Court justices with Democratic affiliation are up for retention election. The polling has had the retain votes pace out the no votes but there are apparently a large number of undecided voters. This makes sense because judicial retention elections make no sense but it is something under the radar.