Forget Rs or Ds: This Is What the 2025 Elections Can Tell Us About the Midterms

The 2026 midterm elections will undoubtedly be consequential—hence the redistricting scramble in both red and blue states—for the end of President Donald Trump’s second term. In anticipation of those midterms, however, some in Washington have looked past Tuesday’s elections, even though they will set the tone for future elections in the era of Trump.

In states across the country, voters will be heading to the polls next week to cast their ballots in state and local elections. New Jersey and Virginia will choose a new governor. New York City and Minneapolis will choose new mayors, as will thousands of other towns and cities across the country. But what can Tuesday night’s results tell us about the midterms to come?

On Tuesday night, the temptation for professional and casual election observers alike will be to assume that if more candidates win with Ds next to their names than Rs, Democrats are in the driver’s seat for the midterms, and vice versa. 

And forget the fact that in some major races, thanks to the flawed “jungle primary” system, two Democrats are the main contenders, as is the case in New York and Minneapolis mayoral elections. 

The truth is that the party identification of Tuesday night’s winners are oftentimes bad predictors of how the chips will fall in the midterms.

Take when Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, for example. The Virginia gubernatorial election in 1981 went to Democrats and the New Jersey gubernatorial went for Republicans. In the 1982 midterms, Democrats maintained their decades-long hold over the House, picking up 26 seats, but failed to make the gains necessary in the Senate to flip the upper chamber blue.

In 1985, however, Virginia once again went blue and New Jersey once again went red. This time Democrats did manage to flip the Senate.

Off-year elections in the George W. Bush era also proved a poor predictor of the midterms that followed. The Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections both went blue in 2001 and 2005. In the 2002 midterms, however, Republicans held the House and flipped the Senate. In the 2006 midterms, however, Democrats flipped both chambers.

That said, what party prevails in next Tuesday’s election is less important than the kind of politics the respective candidates are engaging in.

And what we’ve seen from the American Left is a renewed embrace of radicalism. 

When Trump and Republicans prevailed last November, the Democrat party entered an era of soul-searching. Many believed this project was to consider the fact that the Democrat party had taken the side of the 20 on several 80-20 issues, such as men in women’s sports, open borders, and defund the police. 

But when they emerged from this conclave, they doubled-down. 

In the run-up to these elections, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has taken the government hostage for a month over health care funding for illegal immigrants as he tried to appease his radical-left base and stave off a suspected primary challenge from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat nominee for New York City mayor, is a self-proclaimed socialist who wants to “globalize the intifada.” He’s earned the endorsement of Washington’s second-highest ranking Democrat, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, not to mention Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, Democrat gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger, once under the employ of the CIA, has made little attempt to distance herself from Jay Jones, her scandal-ridden Democrat compatriot running for attorney general who said he’d like to see the former Republican speaker of the state house and his family shot and killed.

The New Jersey gubernatorial pits Democrat Mikie Sherrill up against Republican Jack Ciattarelli. The corporate media has portrayed Sherrill as some kind of moderate in light of the extremism on display in Virginia and New York, but Sherrill is not inoculated from the woke virus infecting the Democrat party, either.

As Scott Hogenson, a public relations executive who lives in Texas, recently wrote for The Daily Signal:

Sherrill voted twice—in 2023 and again in 2025—against bills in Congress to ensure that boys and girls sports remain sex segregated. She also voted against legislation requiring schools to inform parents that their children have bought into transgender ideology.

It’s no surprise, then, that Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey have eaten into Democrats’ lead. And while it is becoming increasingly apparent that Mamdani will win the mayoral race in New York City, he’ll do so with a weak plurality because of vote splitting between his two opponents, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.

Each of these races were easily winnable for Democrats—and appeared as much just two months ago. With just days to go before the election, however, it appears that they’ll be real contests, and national Democrats have expended a lot of political capital in keeping it that way.

Regardless of Tuesday’s outcome, Democrats have decided that doubling-down on left-wing radicalism is their strategy for 2026. Just like in 2024, the American people could make them pay dearly.

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