In recent months, as Democratic candidates racked up a series of impressive special election victories, there were some lingering questions about the significance of the results. Sure, some pundits said, Democrats won by surprising margins in every part of the country — from Arizona to Iowa, Wisconsin to Pennsylvania — overperforming when compared with last year’s results, but those off-year elections were relatively low-turnout affairs.
Could Democrats do as well on Election Day 2025? That question now has an unambiguous answer. As a New York Times analysis summarized:
With their election night triumphs on Tuesday, Democrats showed that their demoralized party — which spent the past year mired in self-recriminations and soul-searching — could still accomplish the most important goal in politics. They can win. And win big.
The highest-profile contests offered obvious proof of the Democratic breakthrough: Governors-elect Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger won their races by double digits in New Jersey and Virginia, respectively, and California’s Proposition 50 is on track for a landslide win. In New York City, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani ended former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s career with a decisive 9-point victory.
But the scope and scale of the party’s triumphs extend well beyond the top of the ballot. From Mississippi to Pennsylvania, Minnesota to Maine, Democrats celebrated an electoral clean sweep.
Even in Georgia, where Democrats haven’t won a nonfederal statewide race in almost two decades, Democratic candidates successfully (and easily) defeated two Republican members of the state’s utility board. A separate Times report noted, “The closely watched races for two of the five seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission had been viewed not only as a referendum on rising electric bills but also as a bellwether for next year’s contests for governor and U.S. Senate.”
GOP officials looking for good news from Election Day 2025 will need magnifying glasses.
But as the results came in, I found myself thinking about the commentary from a year ago. After Donald Trump won a second term, the conventional wisdom was that Republicans had entered an era of electoral dominance. Trump had successfully realigned the American electorate to put the GOP in a position to control the nation and its future. The same commentary held that the Democratic Party wasn’t just defeated, it was also small and divided, with a demoralized and disheartened base, filled with voters who were prepared to withdraw from civic life for a long while. In the weeks and months that followed, there was a near-obsessive focus on Democrats and their “brand.” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado told NBC News in March that his party’s brand was “problematic.” Around the same time, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, said the Democratic brand was “toxic.” Days earlier, Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania told Politico, “If we don’t get our s— together, then we are going to be in a permanent minority.” Such talk was in short supply on Tuesday night as the election results came in.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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