Observations of the November 2025 Elections

So there were a number of elections across the United States - in what is an off-year between the 4-year presidential cycle and the congressional midterms - this November 4th 2025, involving city, state, and a few special federal elections that tend to indicate the overall mood of the American electorate heading into the 2026 midterms.

At the top of the list were key elections in Virginia and New Jersey for governorships and other state officials, a retention vote for Democratic judges in Pennsylvania, a special election in Texas' US House 18th district, a referendum in California that would grant the Dems in control there to gerrymander against the Red state gerrymandering attempting to rig the 2026 House districts for Republicans, 

And the top observation - considering how the Democrats and mostly liberal-leaning referenda won the votes across nearly the entire country even in Deep Red Republican places! - is: Wow, a lot of voters are PISSED at the Republicans.

Via Stephen Fowler at NPR:

Democrats flipped two seats on Georgia's statewide Public Service Commission by wide margins, one of many surprise victories for the party Tuesday up and down the ballot in the handful of races across the country.

Polling shows the Democratic Party is historically unpopular, but at polling places this year voters have helped the party overperform in elections against the backdrop of President Trump's even less popular policies.

Beyond the blowout victories in the New Jersey and Virginia governors' races, Zohran Mamdani winning a majority of votes in New York City's mayoral election and California voters approving a plan to temporarily redraw the state's congressional districts to add Democrat-leaning districts, the party continued its trend of electoral success in the 2025 general election...

In terms of blowouts, the governor wins for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherill in New Jersey were around 13 percent over their Republican opponents. In this age of polarized voting bases, getting to double-digit wins means A) your own base (Democratic) of voters showed up in droves, B) their base (Republican) failed to show, and/or C) the independent voters that tend to go 50-50 (at best 60-40 leaning to one party) really hated everyone and everything the Republicans were offering this time around.

But those results alone don't describe just how overwhelming the Blue Wave was this year, even when you throw in how Democrats in Virginia secured control of both houses of the state legislature. Back to Fowler:

In Georgia, Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson will be the newest members of the state's five-person public utility regulator after earning roughly 60% of the vote. It's the first time Democrats have won a nonfederal statewide office there since 2006 and one where soaring energy costs and displeasure with incumbents dominated the race.

Pennsylvania voters chose to retain three state Supreme Court judges that were first elected as Democrats after millions of dollars in outside spending driven by conservative billionaire Jeff Yass' efforts to reshape the state court's politics. Democrats also won special elections for a seat on Pennsylvania's Superior Court and a seat on its Commonwealth Court.

Also in Pennsylvania, Democrats swept the top "row offices" in the purple-hued Bucks County, electing the county's first-ever Democratic district attorney and defeating an incumbent Republican sheriff a year after Trump narrowly won there. Democrats similarly notched commanding victories in county executive races in Erie, Lehigh and Northampton counties, all bellwether counties in recent presidential elections.

At the state legislative level, Mississippi Democrats have broken a GOP supermajority in the state Senate after flipping two seats in that chamber plus another pickup in the state House. A federal court ordered lawmakers to redraw 14 total House and Senate districts after finding the maps drawn in 2022 discriminated against Black voters...

In many local races across the country, Democrats touted victories that will reshape their communities, like the flipping of all three city council seats in Georgetown, S.C., the unseating of the last remaining Republican city council member in Orlando, Fla., and winning back mayoral races in Connecticut...

I knew things were really skewing well for Democrats when I heard about those Georgia state committee wins. In a Deep South state heavily dominated by Republicans, and where any Democratic wins in the past decade were down to the wire, getting over 60 percent of statewide voters in blowout wins is a huge sign of anger by voters towards the Far Right GOP.

An opinion piece by Rex Huppke at USA Today spells it out:

Polling had already shown how much Americans broadly dislike everything the Trump administration is doing. But in the first election of Trump’s second term in office, voters in red, blue and purple states made clear they aren’t buying the smug cruelty and king-like behavior the president and his lackeys are selling.

In the most high-profile races – for mayor of New York City and governors of Virginia and New Jersey – Democrats fended off millions of right-wing dollars and relentless Islamophobic and anti-transgender fearmongering to win all three offices convincingly.

What happened in New York City where the Far Right, the billionaire elites, and even the mainstream media attacked winner Zohran Mamdani for his Muslim heritage underlined the racism and fear that drives the Far Right. And in Virginia, the Republican candidates' open transphobia - in an attempt to build on the DEI fearmongering that propelled outgoing governor Youngkin in 2021 - ignored the voters' ongoing concerns about cost-of-living/affordability issues that are still hampering a majority of Americans in this post-pandemic world.

In short: the Republicans were too desperate to mudsling their Democratic opponents to remember that most voters still care about their financial and familial well-being. They were able to lie about the price of eggs in 2024 to ruin Biden/Harris' and the Democrats' chances to win, but with the GOP in full control of the federal government - and responsible for the economic downturns happening under that control - they couldn't fearmonger their way out of this election cycle. As Huppke notes:

This is the kind of ballot-box walloping that’s earned, highlighting the simple fact that Trump has gone to great lengths to anger and outrage Americans since his second term started in January.

Consider this multitudinous array of deceptions, blunders and outrageous acts:

After promising to lower food prices and inflation on Day 1, food prices are increasing and inflation has risen every month since April and is now higher than it was in January.

The U.S. government is in its longest-ever shutdown because Republicans want to do away with Affordable Care Act subsidies and Democrats won’t agree. Health insurance premiums are skyrocketing, and now food aid is in limbo because the Trump administration is delaying funding to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, putting millions of Americans in danger of going hungry...

Also in short: trump and his Republican allies are acting like assholes. That may impress the mainstream punditry - who always misinterpret arrogance for leadership - but it doesn't impress most voters.

The night before SNAP benefits expired, Trump posted a slew of photos showing off his fancy marble remodel of the Lincoln Bathroom, then he attended a "Great Gatsby"-themed Halloween party at his Florida resort.

Trump demolished the East Wing of the White House to make room for a massive ballroom that nobody asked for, thumbing his nose at the optics of desecrating a historic building and erecting a monument to opulence while Americans struggle to afford meat.

The GOP has secured tax cuts for billionaires while slashing Medicaid and putting a squeeze on rural hospitals...

None of this is popular. None of this has made any regular American’s life better. None of this has brought down grocery bills, made housing more affordable or provided better health insurance.

Perhaps a president who gleefully shows off a video of himself wearing a crown and flying a jet that drops poop on the heads of protesting Americans is a cool thing inside the MAGA bubble. Maybe anti-transgender hate and cruelty against immigrants bring the good kind of tingle to a small subset of the population.

But as the Nov. 4 blue wave demonstrated, most Americans don’t find Trump’s childishness cool. They don’t get off on cruelty. And they aren’t, in any way, shape or form, feeling the good kind of tingle.

While it's good news that a sizable plurality of American voters across the whole nation are wising up to how bad the Republicans under trump are performing, the bad news is that past experience with Republican setbacks is that these assholes will double-down on the ineptitude, cruelty, and graft. Especially trump: he can never admit he is in the wrong, that his conduct is offensive, or that his policies aren't working (and will never work).

It's going to take the 2026 midterms and the other state-level elections that year for most American voters to hold the Republicans and this crooked trump accountable for the ongoing damage they're committing and threaten to make worse. That is, if the Republican-controlled Supreme Court will let us have fair elections next year... /rage

Keep resisting, America. This isn't over.