Off-year elections provide the first chance for voters to make their voices heard after a presidential election — and shed early light on some major questions ahead of next year's midterm elections.
Here is everything we learned last night, and some clues as to what the results might mean to the future of both parties.
Big blue victories
Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral race, NBC News projected, after the 34-year-old democratic socialist energized progressives in the city. Now a nationally known political figure, Mamdani will attempt to enact the sweeping policy platform that inspired his supporters while managing an enormous municipal bureaucracy — and influencing national politics.
Democrat Abigail Spanberger is projected to defeat Republican Winsome Earle-Sears and flip control of the Virginia governorship, becoming the first woman to lead the state. Spanberger's campaign and allied groups attacked Earle-Sears over her conservative record on social issues and her fealty to Trump.
Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill won the New Jersey governor's race, NBC News projected, defeating Republican Jack Ciattarelli after a hard-fought contest in which Trump loomed over voters. Sherrill worked to make the race a referendum on the president, casting Ciattarelli as a Trump acolyte who will not stand up to him.
California voters approved a new congressional map drawn by Democrats, NBC News projected, giving the party the chance to gain up to five House seats in next year's midterm elections and counter Republican redistricting efforts in other states.
What these results mean for both parties
Democrats attacked Trump's agenda to help score victories across the country as they try to build on a data-based narrative that the president and Republicans have tanked the nation's economy and gone too far right ahead of the 2026 midterms. Last night was the beginning of the Republican Party's future without Trump on the ballot, leaving Democrats riding high.
The counterpunch for Republicans is the fact that off-year elections — those held in odd years not during traditional general elections — get less attention and are often poor measures for the overall mood of the electorate. That's amplified by the fact that Democrat's biggest wins, the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, were in states that generally lean Democratic.
But for both political parties, last night will remain a predictable Rorschach Test: You see what you want to see.
Read more takeaways from election night.
Exit polls show dissatisfaction among voters
In the first major elections of Trump's second term, voters in Virginia, New Jersey, California and New York City expressed broad dissatisfaction with Trump — and with both political parties, according to results from the NBC News Exit Poll.
Most voters in those elections are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the country today, and they continue to express concern about financial issues and the economy.
The results will offer an early, though limited, window into how voters feel about Trump's efforts to reshape Washington and the country, providing clues for candidates on both sides ahead of pivotal midterm elections next year.
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