2025 Post-Election
By Alexandra Acker-Lyons (Political Director, EWA)
Certain things trigger bad election memories. Songs, phrases, The New York Times needle. In 2024, maps with red arrows showing movement towards Trump in nearly every state and county across the country swamped my social media feeds, further depressing my already depressed mood.
But this year, we have happy blue arrows!
Maps courtesy of The New York Times
Those blue arrows demonstrate the incredible shifts in Democratic support across both New Jersey and Virginia, propelling wins up and down the ballot. Democrats won across the country, from Governor to school board. And women dominated some of the most competitive races.
This was not inevitable. As we all know, the Democratic Party brand isn’t awesome these days. But candidates stepped up to run and our network stepped in to help them. You created the Pink Wave and propelled Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger to victory.
Topline Take-Aways
The historic breadth and depth of these wins. Turnout and Democratic performance both exceeded 2017, the first post-Trump off-year, when we saw then-record enthusiasm. According to exit polls, Democrats in both NJ and VA not only turned out voters who don’t always show up in non-presidential years but they also flipped approximately 7% of self-proclaimed 2024 Trump voters. (Obligatory caveat that exit polls, like all polls, are not perfect and we will need a few months for complete voter file information for full analysis.) Democrats have overperformed in every special election since 2024 by an average of 15%. Spanberger outperformed the outperformance, winning by 15 points, a margin not seen by a Democrat in Virginia since 1961. New Jersey moved further right than any other state in the nation in 2024, yet Sherrill won by 13 points in 2025.
Women won sh*t. Sherrill and Spanberger’s wins for Governor were huge in their own right, but it was also a great night for women in mayoral and state legislative races. Mary Sheffield will be the first female mayor of Detroit, Michelle Wu won re-election in Boston, Vi Lyles won re-election in Charlotte, and Dorcey Applyrs won in Albany – all women of color. In Virginia, women won every one of their competitive state legislative seats (more below). Hopefully this helps quash the whispers we’ve heard all year around women’s electability, particularly for executive office. Sherrill and Spanberger talk about how they were underestimated in 2018 and underestimated in these races. In your face, bros.
Real life > vibes. Across the country, Democrats from democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to badass mom Abigail Spanberger ran on affordability. They listened to voters and proposed practical policies that will make a real difference in people’s lives. This led to huge gains among Latino voters and young voters, including young men, in both NJ and VA (more below).
Generational not ideological divides. Zohran Mamdani, Mikie Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger, Mary Sheffield, and so many of the state legislative candidates we supported were (relatively) younger candidates who brought new energy and ideas to their races. Candidates across the ideological spectrum won. Most were not the typical career politicians; Sherrill and Spanberger both stressed their personal biographies and national security credentials while Mamdani talked about being from the new New York. Many Virginia winners were first-time candidates and some, including Lindsey Dougherty, Elizabeth Guzman, and Kimberly Pope Adams, emphasized their Mom credentials on the campaign trail.
Deeper Dives
Virginia
Rep. Abigail Spanberger cleared the Democratic primary field in Virginia and was seen as the frontrunner in this election from the beginning. Republicans had high hopes for Winsome Earle-Sears, the sitting Lt. Governor with a compelling biography, but her campaign never took off and Republicans all but divested from this race by the end.
While Democrats would have had a good night even without the DOGE cuts and government shutdown, those factors definitely impacted the margin. Turnout in some counties even exceeded 2024 levels. Exit polls show 69% of youth supported Spanberger, and youth turnout increased by seven points, likely providing the margin of victory for several House of Delegate seats.
Spanberger’s stunning 15-point margin, along with Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi’s impressive 11-point victory certainly helped propel down-ballot candidates as well, including beleaguered Attorney General candidate Jay Jones. Democrats flipped 13 seats in the House of Delegates, 10 by women candidates, for a 64-seat majority, the largest in 40 years. All 10 of the women we supported won their elections and flipped Republican seats! Thank you to Isez Roybal, our Down-Ballot Manager, for organizing our successful Zoom fundraisers and for additional post-election analysis found below.
There are now more female Democrats (64D, 37D women) in the Virginia House of Delegates than there are Republicans (36R, 7R women).
Map courtesy of Christian Heines.
Eight more seats are now women-held after previously being held by Republican men. Four of these women were second-time candidates who had been underfunded in a previous cycle, losing races by margins as small as 53 votes. This year, every single one of them won by more than 1,000 votes.
Women of color now hold 25% of all seats in the lower chamber, including three Black women who now have seats in the state House. Additionally, May Nivar was elected as the first Chinese-American legislator in Virginia, and former Del. Elizabeth Guzman, the first Latina elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, was elected again in 2025.
Democrats will also have a governing trifecta, with huge implications for democracy and abortion rights. Many national Democrats worried about backlash to Virginia’s last-minute push for redistricting; by law, maps needed to be passed in two sessions with an election in between. Democrats went back into session just a few weeks ago to pass new maps and saw tremendous momentum for redistricting among voters; some pundits even credit the redistricting fight with saving Jones’ candidacy. This may help provide a backbone for Democrats in other states.
Virginia will also likely now have a ballot measure codifying abortion rights on the ballot in 2026; had Democrats not retained their majority in the House of Delegates, they would not have the requisite votes to pass the measure again in the 2026 session to move to the November ballot. As the last state in the South with abortion access, this will impact millions of people.
New Jersey
In New Jersey, Rep. Mikie Sherrill won a competitive six-way primary where she was outspent by multiple opponents; she won handedly and squashed nay-sayers who said Democrats couldn’t win a historic third term.
Although polling showed the race tightening heading into the fall, Sherrill was leading by 7-8 points in the final weeks and came out on top with a commanding 13-point victory, outperforming Kamala Harris by five points and tying Joe Biden’s 2020 and Phil Murphy’s 2017 margins.
Notably, she flipped back five key counties Kamala Harris lost in 2024 including the three most heavily Latino counties and suburban bellwethers: Passaic County, which is 41% Latino, shifted 18 points; Cumberland County shifted seven points; and Hudson County, Sherrill won by 50 points, massively overperforming Harris’ 28-point margin. Youth turnout also surged nine points across the state with 69% of young voters supporting Sherrill.
Sherrill’s performance helped Democrats net an additional three seats in the state assembly for a veto-proof, 57-seat margin, the largest majority in 52 years.
Elsewhere
California: Voters passed Prop. 50 by a remarkable 64%, allowing Democrats to go on offense in the redistricting fight.
Georgia: Democrats Alicia Johnson and Peter Hubbard won seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, becoming the first Democrats to win non-federal races there in 20 years.
Maine: Voters rejected a ballot measure that would have limited early voting and required photo ID to vote and passed a red flag gun safety measure.
Minnesota: Democrats won a special election in the state Senate to hold onto a one-seat majority.
Mississippi: Democrats broke a Republican supermajority in the state Senate.
New York: Zohran Mamdani won a historic election as Mayor of New York City. Democrats retained the mayoralies of the major cities including Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester, with all candidates securing over 70% of the vote.
Texas: Amanda Edwards advanced to the runoff for the special election in the 18th Congressional district. Support Amanda Edwards here.
Pennsylvania: Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty and David Wecht were retained, securing a progressive majority on the crucial Pennsylvania state supreme court through 2032. Democrats also flipped a number of swing city and county elections with implications for 2026 and 2028 races.
Again, none of this would be possible without you. The Electing Women Alliance raised a phenomenal $948,000 for Spanberger, $567,000 for Sherrill, and $115,000 for down-ballot candidates.