Opinion: Americans voted in elections on November 4 in the first major test of whether Republicans can hold together the coalition of voters that propelled Donald Trump to the White House in 2024. The result was a Democratic Party triumph, writes academic Andrew Gawthorpe.
Trump was not directly on the ballot in any of these elections, the most high-profile of which were to decide who would become the mayor of New York City and the governors of Virginia and New Jersey.
But each race has been seen to varying degrees as a referendum on the president and the direction he has taken his party.
American politics is highly nationalised.
This means that the results in local and state elections are often heavily influenced by how voters feel about the national political situation.
This is often frustrating to local politicians.
In New Jersey, for example, the Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli frequently complained that his Democratic opponent Mikie Sherrill was trying to make their recent race a referendum on the president rather than basing the campaign on the relative merits of their own proposals.
“If you get a flat tyre on the way home tonight, she’s going to blame it on President Trump”, Ciattarelli said to voters at numerous campaign rallies.
In the end, Sherrill won by 13%.
Republicans’ fraying coalition
None of the major races decided on November 4 were in the states usually regarded as the “swing states” – the ones that could reasonably be won either by the Democrats or Republicans and usually decide the outcome of presidential elections.
But this doesn’t mean we cannot learn anything from them.
The nationalisation of US politics means that voters with similar demographic characteristics – for instance, what race they identify as or whether they live in the suburbs or rural areas – tend to vote in similar ways across state lines.
If a party is improving its performance in the suburbs of New Jersey, the same is likely to be the case in the swing state of Pennsylvania.
In this respect, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York City was the least surprising news of the night. For New York to have its first Muslim mayor is a historic milestone, and Mamdani’s achievement has electrified many.
But Democrats usually dominate in urban areas, and he was no exception.
Republicans will be much more worried about what happened elsewhere.
In both Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats won by double-digit margins – and they did so by winning back the groups that deserted them in the 2024 presidential election.
In 2024, Republicans were thrilled to make big inroads with Hispanic voters. Many saw it as proof that their party was extending its appeal beyond the white voters who make up its core supporter base.
But in the recent elections, those inroads seemed to vanish.
Sherrill, a moderate Democrat who hasn’t generated nearly as much excitement as Mamdani, made her biggest gains in Passaic and Hudson counties, two of New Jersey’s most heavily Hispanic areas. Abigail Spanberger made the same inroads in Virginia.
Suburban voters, who often prove crucial to winning presidential elections, also deserted the Republicans in large numbers.
Spanberger won Virginia’s Henrico County, a swathe of the suburbs of Richmond, by 40%. This was the Democrats’ biggest margin of victory in the county ever.
Some caveats
These results are great news for Democrats, and they exceeded the expectations of most observers before election night. Taken together, they seem to suggest that the coalition that won victory for the Republicans in 2024 is collapsing.
But it’s also not time for possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidates to start measuring the White House drapes quite yet.
These results reflect a recent trend in US politics in which Republicans have struggled to win so-called off-year elections – ones in which the presidency is not on the ballot.
In his ten years on the political scene, Trump has transformed the Republican party by expanding its appeal among less-educated white voters, younger voters and, to some extent, voters of colour.
But these are also groups that are less likely to vote than the average American. As a result, getting them to turn out when Trump is not on the ballot is a goal that Republicans have found elusive.
So, we have to be careful about the conclusions we draw from these results.
At a minimum, we can safely say that the results of the recent elections suggest Democrats can expect to perform well in the midterms in 2026.
That gives them the opportunity to win back one or both houses of Congress and act as a check on Trump’s agenda.
For their part, Republicans have some soul-searching to do.
Trump is constitutionally barred from seeking a third term in 2028.
Unless some other Republican can reproduce Trump’s appeal to infrequent voters, the signs are that his party will struggle even in presidential election years.
Much also depends on Trump’s policies in the years to come. Voters are clearly fed up with the lack of progress on reducing the cost of living, the brutality of immigration raids, and the corruption and chaos that many perceive to exist under this administration.
Voter sentiment on these issues is unlikely to change unless Trump changes course.
The question, given his political style and his personality, is whether he can – or whether he even wants to.
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence
Andrew Gawthorpe is a Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University
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