Watching Today’s Elections? Proceed With Caution.

Your guide to Election Day 2025.

I am a politics nerd, and for that reason, I am having a few friends over tonight and we’ll be watching the election results.

If you’re also a politics nerd, you should do the same! Election nights are fun. I even like the music.

But if you’re not, there’s really no need to obsess over what will happen tonight. I mean, you should still vote if there’s an election taking place in your area. (Here’s a tool to see what’s on your ballot.) And, of course, you should read tomorrow’s newsletter, where I’ll update you on all the results.

I wouldn’t do much more than that, though. I would certainly be careful about making sweeping observations about the country based on how this set of off-year elections go.

Politico, for example, tells us to look at today’s elections for “clues” about whether Democrats can “mount a comeback.”

But, recall: the main elections taking place today are in New York City, California, New Jersey, and Virginia, jurisdictions which Kamala Harris won by 38, 20, 5.9, and 5.8 percentage points, respectively.

By comparison, Donald Trump won the national popular vote in 2024 by 1.5 percentage points. None of these places are representative of the country at large! And none of them are places where Democrats need to mount a comeback: they are already the dominant political party in each of them!

The one exception is Pennsylvania, an honest-to-God battleground state that Trump won by 1.7 percentage points in 2024 — hard to get more representative than that! — and which will be hosting three state Supreme Court elections today.

If any race could serve as a national weathervane, it would be this one, you might be thinking. But the state’s 2023 Supreme Court race drew 3 million voters, not even half of the 7 million who cast ballots in the presidential race in Pennsylvania last year. That’s a big difference. And there’s no reason to believe that the voters who participate in an off-year election in Pennsylvania will be an accurate stand-in for the state’s electorate as a whole (and the same goes for today’s other races).

According to a New York Times analysis, 50% of voters who participated in special elections between 2022 and 2024 were 65 or older, compared to 26% of all registered voters in the same districts. 88% were registered with a political party, compared to 68% of all voters in the same districts. Similar dynamics will likely be true in today’s off-year elections.

In addition to these demographic disconnects, voters who cast ballots in elections like this are also not ideologically representative. As recently as the Obama era (see here for data from 2010 and 2014), that was because less engaged voters were more likely to skew Democratic. In the Trump era, the opposite is true: according to NBC’s final poll of the 2024 race, voters who don’t follow politics closely were about 14 percentage points more likely to vote Republican than the electorate as a whole. (This is largely because older and richer voters have become more Democratic-leaning over this time period.)

If a poll was so unrepresentative of the country that its sample was skewed as much towards Democrats as an off-year electorate is now likely to be (and the poll wasn’t weighted), it would be dismissed out of hand.

If we were holding high-turnout elections in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina, I would rather use those results as a benchmark of the national mood than a national poll. But low-turnout elections mostly in states that aren’t even battlegrounds? I’d probably prefer a poll. Especially when national polling is telling us a very consistent story of our politics right now: Donald Trump is unpopular. So is the Democratic Party. Voters lean more culturally conservative and economically liberal. Democrats have a slight edge on the midterm generic ballot.

There shouldn’t be much that could happen tonight that should move you much from those priors, outside of Republicans sweeping every race or Democrats winning them in absolute landslides. If each one shakes out about how they’re polling now, you should carry on with about the same assumptions about American politics as you should be holding right now: The president is unpopular, especially in Democratic-leaning states, and Democrats are favored to take advantage of that in next year’s midterms.

Narratively, Democrats might be in need of a “comeback” and a “pathway back to national relevance” (as the Associated Press put it), which even a set of blue-state victories tonight might provide. But in the world of reality, a political party that won 48% of the vote in last year’s presidential election was never irrelevant to begin with and was always poised to start doing better once its opponent’s honeymoon wore off.

To see examples of parties ignoring these lessons of interpretive caution and courting peril by overreading the supposed “tea leaves” of low-turnout elections, you don’t have to wind back very far. Throughout the 2024 campaign, many Democrats cited their overperformance in the 2022 elections to dismiss widespread concerns about Joe Biden and the economy, forgetting that the 2022 electorate was very different than its 2024 counterpart.

Now, that doesn’t mean there are no national implications that will stem from today’s elections. If Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoralty of New York City, it will serve as a fascinating test for leftist governance on one of the largest possible stages. A referendum in California could play a big role in deciding control of the House in next year’s midterms. The aforementioned Pennsylvania Supreme Court justices will be charged with settling any disputes about the 2028 presidential election and the state’s House map the next time it redistricts. The Virginia attorney general race will give us a clue of the degree to which ticket-splitting still exists in a polarized era.

More broadly, Kamala Harris may have won Virginia and New Jersey, but by slimmer margins than normal: those states may not tell us much about the mood in battleground states, but it will be interesting to see how Democrats perform in blue-leaning areas that have been notably trending away from them. (The same is true in California and New York City, for that matter. Although the caveat remains in all four that today’s electorate will not be representative of the electorate in a presidential or even midterm year.)

And some lawmakers believe today’s election could serve as an inflection point for the ongoing government shutdown, which as of today is tied for the longest in history.

So, with all that said: let’s take a look at the main races to watch tonight. Just promise you won’t watch them too closely.

Virginia — polls close at 7 p.m. ET

Governor

Former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger and Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears are facing off to succeed term-limited Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. Either one would be the state’s first female governor; Earle-Sears would be the first Black female governor elected anywhere in U.S. history.

Trump has been a major presence in the race, as Spanberger has sought to tie Earle-Sears to a president who has lost Virginia three times — and who has laid off more than 20,000 federal workers in a state where, as Politico’s Jonathan Martin put it, “the federal workforce is akin to the auto industry in Michigan.” Earle-Sears has tried to make some of that ground back by tying Spanberger to the government shutdown, which has similarly led to many Virginia workers going without pay; like Youngkin before her, the Republican lieutenant governor has also placed culture wars at the center of her pitch, running ads that accuse Spanberger of supporting “men in girls’ locker rooms,” referring to transgender students.

The president has kept his distance from Earle-Sears, declining to mention her by name during a Virginia tele-rally last night.

Polling average: Spanberger +9.

Attorney General

The biggest office on the ballot in Virginia is governor. But the most contentious race is for attorney general.

That’s because of a scandal stemming from violent text messages sent by former state legislator Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee challenging Republican incumbent Jason Miyares. National Review jolted the race last month when it reported on the texts, in which Jones said that a Virginia Republican legislator, Todd Gilbert, was “breeding little fascists,” and admitted to hoping that Gilbert’s children would die. “Only when people feel pain personally do they move on policy,” Jones wrote.

Jones also mused about a scenario that would lead to Gilbert’s death, writing:

Three people, two bullets

Gilbert, hitler, and pol pot

Gilbert gets two bullets to the head

Spoiler: put Gilbert in the crew with the two worst people you know and he receives both bullets every time

Miyares received a polling lift after the texts were released; in the governor’s race, Earle-Sears has also used the scandal in her campaign, noting frequently that Spanberger and other Virginia Democrats did not call on Jones to drop out. (Jones spoke at a rally this weekend with Spanberger and former President Barack Obama.)

If Miyares wins, it will likely be because he received support from Spanberger voters turned off by Jones’ texts, a notable example of ticket-splitting in an age when it has decreased. Conversely, if Jones wins despite the scandal, it will show just how much it takes to get voters to deviate from their party line.

Polling average: Miyares +2.

House of Delegates

All 100 members of the lower chamber of the state’s legislature are up for re-election today. The chamber is closely divided, with 51 Democrats and 48 Republicans. (One previously Republican-held seat is vacant.) Republicans would only need to pick up two seats to flip the chamber.

If Spanberger wins the governorship and Democrats maintain control of the House of Delegates — restoring the statewide trifecta they lost during the Biden era — it would allow the state to jump into the national redistricting wars, with Virginia Democrats already preparing to push forward a map that would add 2-3 House seats for the party. The new map would then need to be approved by Virginia voters.

No polling average available.

New Jersey — polls close at 8 p.m. ET

Governor

Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill and former Republican state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli are squaring off to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy.

This is Ciattarelli’s second bid for the post, after coming within about three percentage points of beating Murphy in 2021 — an unexpectedly tight race that presaged the 2024 presidential race, which marked the closest a Republican presidential candidate came to winning New Jersey since 1992.

Like Spanberger, her former roommate and fellow “national security mom,” Sherrill has placed Trump and the economy at the center of her campaign, emphasizing a recent debate moment where Ciattarelli gave the president an “A” grade. Ciattarelli, meanwhile, is hoping to build on the gains he and Trump have made in New Jersey, including among Hispanic voters whose Biden-era trend towards the GOP he hopes to prove wasn’t just a fluke.

Polling average: Sherrill +5.

Pennsylvania — polls close at 8 p.m. ET

State Supreme Court

In Pennsylvania, state Supreme Court justices are chosen in partisan elections for 10-year terms. When their terms are up, voters cast ballots on whether to retain them — voting “yes” to keep the justice in office and “no” to kick them out.

The court is currently composed of five Democrats and two Republicans; three of the Democratic justices face retention votes today. If the justices are not retained, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro would nominate an interim replacement, who would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate. If the state Senate declined to approve Shapiro’s nominee, the court would be split 2-2 heading into the 2028 elections.

However, that outcome is unlikely: since the state established retention elections in 1968, only one justice has not been retained.

No polling average available.

New York City — polls close at 9 p.m. ET

Mayor

Back in June, New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani — a 34-year-old Muslim democratic socialist who has only held elected office for four years — shocked the political world when he trounced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, one of the state’s best-known Democrats and the heir to a political dynasty, in the Democratic primary for mayor.

Five months later, Mamdani and Cuomo are facing off again in the general election, with Mamdani as the Democratic nominee and Cuomo as the candidate of the “Fight and Deliver” party, a third-party ballot line of his own creation. The contest has divided Democrats across the country, with Mamdani exciting many progressives with his mastery of the short-form video format and his promises to freeze rent for some apartments and make city buses free in order to stem the cost of living — and polarizing others with his career-long criticism of Israel and his refusal earlier in the campaign to condemn rhetoric like “globalize the intifada.”

Cuomo, meanwhile, is divisive as well, with Mamdani frequently reminding voters of how his rival exited the governorship: in disgrace after 13 women accused him of sexual harassment. In addition to suffering from Cuomo’s personal scandals, the anti-Mamdani vote is likely to be split, between the former governor and Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa. President Trump last night endorsed Cuomo over his own party’s standard-bearer.

Fearing that Mamdani’s embrace of leftist policies will be attached to Democratic candidates across the country, the two Democratic Party leaders in Congress — both hailing from New York — have been hesitant to embrace the Democratic mayoral nominee in their own backyard. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries endorsed Mamdani late last month, after months of dithering; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has still declined to say how he’s voting in the race.

Polling average: Mamdani +11.

California — polls close at 11 p.m. ET

Proposition 50

Since 2010, California has drawn its congressional district lines by an independent redistricting commission, an initiative that was championed by the state’s bodybuilder former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But will that nonpartisan style of redistricting survive this year’s national gerrymandering wars? We’re about to find out.

After Republicans moved forward with mid-decade redistricting in Texas and other states, California Gov. Gavin Newsom started advancing a plan for Democrats to counter, by placing a measure on today’s ballot that would override the nonpartisan map and replace it with a new map that is poised to net Democrats up to five new House seats from the Golden State.

California voters started out skeptical: polling as recently as August showed the state leaning towards voting “no” on Newsom’s referendum. But that lean has since reversed, as national Democrats poured tens of millions of dollars — and some of their star surrogates — into the California fight. So far, according to the Cook Political Report, Republicans have added 5-10 House seats for themselves through mid-decade redistricting; the approval of this California ballot measure would shave that advantage down significantly.

It will also be regarded as a major victory for Newsom: expect to watch plenty of 2028 primary ads where the governor boasts of “fighting fire with fire” when given the opportunity to one-up Trump.

Polling average: “Yes” +20.