US elections: Four takeaways after Democrats achieve key victories

After scoring decisive victories in New York mayoral races and gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, it’s clear the Democratic Party will be buoyed by a big election night on Tuesday.

It’s a far cry from the scenes after last year’s presidential election, when the party was left searching for answers after Donald Trump and the Republicans won a hugely dominant victory.

The results also mark one year until the vital midterm elections. With the nighttime picture becoming clearer, here’s what we learned from the results.

Democrats scored key victories by sweeping the first major election of Trump’s second term.

There were joyous celebrations at the various candidates’ headquarters, in stark contrast to the pessimistic scenes after the party’s resounding defeat in 2024.

Abigail Spanberger won Virginia, wresting the governorship from the Republicans, while Mikie Sherrill was elected governor of New Jersey. Both won decisively, garnering more than 56% of the vote.

In New York City, Zohran Mamdani defeated independent Andrew Cuomo to become the first candidate to win one million votes since 1969.

Barack Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, told the BBC that Mamdani had “changed the electorate” by urging young people and immigrants to vote.

“The most important thing is that he built a movement,” he said.

The series of decisive victories may well boost a party that has at times struggled to counter President Trump’s quickly enacted second-term agenda and bounce back from its 2024 defeat.

“The Democrats are back and we are winning,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin said Wednesday. “We have momentum heading into the midterm elections.”

The promise to reduce the cost of rent, food and child care was the core of Mamdani’s left-wing campaign, but it was also a winning issue for more moderate Democrats elsewhere.

Sherrill in New Jersey and Spanberger in Virginia made addressing the high cost of living a central issue in their gubernatorial campaigns. And apparently it was on voters’ minds, too.

Exit polling data from major American networks indicated that in all three elections the most important issue for voters was the economy and affordability.

And tellingly, according to exit polling data from CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, a majority of voters who named the economy as their most important issue voted for the Democratic candidate in New York, New Jersey and Virginia.

It could well give the party a message to unite ahead of next year’s crucial midterm elections, and pose a challenge to Republicans.

“I can’t see the future, but I see Republicans losing the House if Americans continue paying paycheck to paycheck,” Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene recently told Semafor.

“It is clearer than ever that affordability must be the centerpiece of Democrats’ message heading into the midterm elections,” political communications expert Andrew Koneschusky told the AFP news agency.

“The affordability message transcends demographics and highlights a huge vulnerability for Republicans,” he said.

When Trump won his decisive victory over Kamala Harris last year, he amassed enormous support from Latino voters who had been a key part of the Democratic voter base for decades.

Trump saw a whopping 14 percentage point increase in support from that demographic compared to the 2020 election, according to exit polls. No Republican presidential candidate had ever won a higher percentage among Latino voters.

And although he wasn’t on the ballot Tuesday night, there were some potentially worrying signs for his Republican Party. The winning gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey had wide leads of about 30% among Latino voters, according to exit poll data.

Interesting changes are also seen when the results are examined more closely.

Passaic County in New Jersey, which census data shows is nearly half Latino, is often cited by analysts as a bellwether for Trump support among those voters. He won it by 3 percentage points in 2024, but Sherrill won it by 15 on Tuesday.

Mike Madrid, a Republican political consultant who specializes in Latino voting trends, suggested that the cost of living – a key issue in Democratic campaigns – was a major factor.

“No survey conducted in the country in the past month has anything other than the economy as the top issue for Latinos,” he said.

In liberal New York, Mamdani ran as a democratic socialist who will tax millionaires and corporations to the tune of $9bn (£6.9bn), to pay for policies such as childcare and free buses.

However, it was a different story in the gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republicans have had much more electoral success in the past.

In those states, the two Democratic candidates were establishment-backed moderates who emphasized pragmatic policies that were likely to attract less liberal voters than those in New York City.

The night itself illustrated the wide differences in the party between its left and its center, and raised questions about how it will approach elections and candidate selection in the future.

Koneschusky suggested that Democrats should field candidates who reflect the specific electorate, rather than taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

“In some cases, that may mean running progressive candidates. In other cases, it may mean moderate or centrist candidates,” he said.

New York City Comptroller and Mamdani ally Brad Lander echoed this point, telling the BBC’s Nada Tawfik that the Democratic leadership must recognize that different things will work in different parts of the country and that they must allow the primary process to play out.