Bottom line

November’s US elections were Donald Trump’s first real electoral test since he swept to victory for the second time a year ago, and they produced plenty of results for the Republicans to be concerned about. The Democratic party did about as well as it could hope for, especially so given the party is without a central figure who could lead the opposition to Trump and crystallise to voters what the Democrats stand for.

The dynamic Zohran Mamdani attracted most of the attention this side of the Atlantic with his stunning win to become the new mayor of New York City, gaining plaudits from prominent Labour politicians including his London counterpart Sadiq Khan and members of the parliamentary Labour party. Mamdani’s campaign has been admired for its ground and social media mobilisation, especially when centre-left parties seem to be behind the populist right when it comes to commanding online attention.

The elections of two new Democrat governors in Virginia and New Jersey, however, may tell us more about what is happening in America than winning the mayoralty in a state that hasn’t voted Republican for 40 years. Abigail Spanberger took back the Virginia governorship from the Republicans, winning by 15 points, and Rep. Mikie Sherrill won by 13 points in New Jersey. At the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris won Virginia by just 5 points and New Jersey by 6 points. She won New York City by nearly 40 points.

Both Spanberger and Sherrill made inroads with the voters the Democrats will have to win over to succeed at next year’s major mid-term elections and in the race for the White House in 2028. Both won independents, including voters who supported Trump last year. They made important gains in exurban, small town and rural communities. Spanberger outperformed the last Democrat candidate among non-college voters, the critical constituency that Trump has focused on and which make up a majority in America, unlike in these states, which had a higher share of college-educated voters than the national average. Among Latino voters, who along with Black Americans reduced their backing for the Democrat sat the last election, support for the Democratic candidates grew by 9 points in New Jersey and 5 points in Virginia. Black American voters also shifted toward the Democrats. Turnout in the races was up, which included Democrats gaining their biggest majority in the state legislature since 1989, as Trump appears to have motivated Democrats to get out to vote. It is the first sign that Trump’s high disapproval ratings are turning into votes against him and his administration. In New York City, turnout surged to more than two million voters, though Mamdani lost non-college voters to the former Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo, who had been plagued with scandal. As we know well in the UK Labour party, who we appeal to, and where, is often decisive. The watch out with Mamdani’s victory is that what happens in New York City is not reflective of the rest of America, which is unlikely to elect someone who self-describes as a democratic socialist and whose policy platform of government grocery stores and new taxes on the wealthy is to the left of the mainstream.

By contrast, Spanberger and Sherill ran on more pragmatic positions, focussing on lowering living costs with more affordable housing, holding energy costs down, and access to healthcare. They describe themselves as “security moms” – Spanberger was a CIA agent and Sherrill flew helicopters for the navy – and distanced themselves from some of the identity politics championed by the progressive left. Their moderate positioning and pragmatic solutions acted as a foil to their opponents’ attacks and won over the voters they needed. Spanberger, Sherill and Mamdani all focused unaffordability and the cost of living, which continues to be the biggest issue for Americans. Trump’s approval ratings on the economy are low; his voters are already concerned he’s paid insufficient attention to the area he made the central pitch of his presidential campaign. They are divided on tariffs and unimpressed by the recent government shutdown, for which Republicans – who control both the Senate and the House in addition to the presidency – seem to have taken most of the political heat. While Democrats were energised by the election results, they know they have work to do to be competitive in the states that voted for Trump – states which they will need in order to regain control of Congress in the 2026 mid-terms and in 2028 presidential elections. A good result against a divisive incumbent is not necessarily a prelude to larger success.

After their presidential election defeat in 2024, the Democratic party was in poor standing with voters. Since then, there are not that many signs that the fundamentals in how the Democrats are perceived have improved. A comprehensive election review that the Progressive Policy Institute undertook with the aid of Keir Starmer’s former director of strategy, Deborah Mattinson, found that the voters the Democrats need most – non-college educated voters on low and middle incomes – said the Democrats were less likely to be on their side than the Republicans, and were seen as incompetent, weak, unpatriotic, out of touch, and extreme. Sixty-eight per cent said Democrats had “moved too far left,” with only 47 per cent saying Republicans had “moved too far right.” They felt Trump would be more likely than Harris to stand up to the extremists in his own party, which was echoed even amongst her supporters. In the research we have done since the election, little has changed about the negative perceptions of the Democrats.

As we know from our experience with Labour after the 2019 general election defeat, voters need to believe the party has changed before they will give its ideas and representatives a hearing. Like the Democrats today, Labour’s central electoral challenge was with working-class voters who they had moved away from, and without whom Labour – and the Democrats – could not win durable majorities. The Democrats know they need to address these fundamentals to be truly competitive at the next sets of elections. Even if the mid-terms produce a strong result for the Democrats, it does not mean they are a shoo-in for the White House.

The Democrats can learn from candidates who have already won – not just at these most recent elections, but from those Democrats who won in states which simultaneously voted for Trump. The lessons from those candidates, whose teams were interviewed for PPI’s ‘Build Back Belief’, which sets out a roadmap from winning centre-left parties and candidates, is that they have to represent the change these voters are crying out for. They are discontented with the status quo and want authentic candidates who will stand up for them. They want champions of their place, who have practical solutions to the everyday challenges they face on affordability and the cost of living more than anything else. And they want to have hope for the future too – hope that they, and the next generation, will have opportunities to get on.

Now that Mamdani, Spanberger and Sherrill have the chance to serve, they will find, as Labour is finding in the UK, that voters expect visible delivery of local, tangible evidence that government can deliver for them. In the can-do approach of the winners from centre-left parties around the world, the message is clear: get on with showing that we can be the practical agents of change they are looking for.

Image credit: joshmonobody via wikimedia commons