One thing that is interesting about this race is how Jones exceeded results projected by polling. Recent poll results showed a tie or Jones leading by two percent. Jones margin of victory was actually about six percent.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... -silwa/(Mother Jones) Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday, defeating former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the second time in five months and capping a stunning rise from obscurity to the helm of the nation’s largest city. A 34-year-old state democratic socialist assemblyman from Queens, Mamdani became the city’s first-ever Muslim mayor—and the first immigrant mayor in half a century—with an obsessive and inimitable focus on “affordability.” In the process, he ushered in a new era of city politics and slammed the door shut on an old one.
The throughline of Mamdani’s campaign was a willingness to meet people where they were, in physical and ideological ways. For a democratic socialist, that meant trading dogma for a slate of unavoidable policies tied to unavoidable things: free childcare, a rent freeze, fast and free buses, and city-owned grocery stores. His hopes and policy prescriptions were things that every voter deals with, or knew someone struggling with. The message was so unavoidable that Democrats everywhere else in the country kept going off-message to argue with it.
Mamdani was the most relentlessly disciplined Democratic nominee for anything that I’ve seen in years. He was conversant in the language of the city, and also its literal languages. (It was a good sign when Mamdani was falsely accused of using AI to film an ad in Spanish; it was a better sign when the candidate’s team promptly published an equally compelling set of outtakes.) You could accuse Mamdani of pandering, of course. But this is politics—the point is to pander in a way that makes voters feel seen and heard.
Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... ts-gop/(Mother Jones) Despite years of voter suppression efforts by the state’s Republican Party, Virginians have spoken: It’s time for GOP gubernatorial candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears to “go somewhere and sit down.”
Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who represented the state’s 7th District in Congress until this year, defeated Earle-Sears in a highly anticipated race to become the first female governor in the Commonwealth’s centuries-long history.
Spanberger beat Earle-Sears by a staggering 12-point margin with close to 80 percent of votes counted, according to Associated Press projections. The 56-44 win—representing well over 300,000 votes—comes at a precarious time for the Democratic Party, with Virginia serving as a critical bellwether for the country’s feelings on President Donald Trump before national midterm elections next year.
For years, Virginia Republicans have been working overtime to suppress the state’s Democratic voters, including a blatantly illegal voter roll purge in 2023 orchestrated by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In 2024, the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc ruled in Youngkin’s favor, forcing nearly 1,600 voters to fight for their registration to be reinstated. A year later, shortly after Trump’s re-election, the Justice Department voluntarily dismissed a lawsuit originally brought forth by the Biden administration that once again challenged the purge.
Spanberger’s victory is a promising sign for Virginia’s effort, alongside other Democratic-led legislatures, to redraw district lines after states like North Carolina and Texas were subjected to extreme gerrymandering by Republican legislators that functionally disenfranchised a huge swath of their voters.
Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/demo ... sissippi(Common Dreams) As reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson ousted incumbent Republicans serving on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, which is responsible for regulating utility prices in the state.
According to The New York Times, this will mark the first time that any Democrat has served on the commission since 2007, and it came after the commission signed off on six rate increases for the state’s largest electricity provider over the past two years.
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In Mississippi, meanwhile, Democrats broke the GOP’s supermajority in the state Senate for the first time in over a decade by flipping three seats. According to Mississippi Free Press, losing the Senate supermajority will make it significantly harder for the Mississippi Republicans to “override a governor’s veto, propose constitutional amendments, and execute certain procedural actions.”
While Democrats in the state celebrated the wins, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Cheikh Taylor warned that it could be undone if the US Supreme Court strikes down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that has historically been used to create of majority-minority districts to ensure Black voters in southern states have proper representation.
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While the wins in Georgia and Mississippi were impressive on their own, data analyst G. Elliott Morris found that shifts toward Democrats weren’t confined to any individual state or city, but were incredibly broad.
Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politi ... c82&ei=76(CNN) Pennsylvania Democrats defended the liberal majority on the state Supreme Court Tuesday, blocking GOP efforts to flip the balance of power ahead of the next presidential election.
Justices Kevin Dougherty, Christine Donohue and David Wecht were retained for new 10-year terms. They faced no opponents, only a yes-or-no vote on whether to extend their tenures on the state Supreme Court.
If even two of the justices had been voted out, liberals could have lost their 5-2 majority on the state’s high court, giving Republicans a chance to flip the ideological balance in replacement elections in 2027.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/2025/11/05/jared- ... rats-maine
Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) said Wednesday that he will not seek reelection to Congress in 2026, citing "frequent threats" against him and the "grim milestone" of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
Why it matters: Golden represents the most Republican-leaning district of any House Democrat. His retirement is a major blow to his party's efforts to retake the House in 2026.
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/local/twin-citie ... election(Axios) Minneapolis voters have reelected Jacob Frey to a third term as mayor.
Why it matters: In a triumphal election for Democrats nationwide, Frey won a deep-blue city on a moderate platform, defeating a field led by an ambitious democratic socialist who embodied the hopes of factions trying to push the party to the left.
• State Sen. Omar Fateh embraced the "Mamdani of Minneapolis" comparisons to the viral New York City mayoral candidate — but his campaign failed to bottle the same energy.
Catch up quick: A northern Virginia native and former attorney, Frey jumped from a City Council seat to the mayor's office in 2013 after defeating then-incumbent Betsy Hodges.
• Following R.T. Rybak and Don Fraser, the 44-year-old Frey is now Minneapolis' third three-term mayor since 1982, when the city's chief executives began serving four-year tours.
How it happened: Frey received the most first-choice votes, and election officials declared him the winner Wednesday after counting second- and third-choice votes. He received just over 50% of the vote to Fateh's 44.4%.
Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politic ... 33&ei=37(Newsweek) Polls could be overestimating President Donald Trump’s support following a “huge” miss in the New Jersey gubernatorial race, pollster Nate Silver said.
Why It Matters
Democrats swept Tuesday night’s elections, handily winning the closely watched New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races and securing other victories across the country. These gains have reignited Democratic optimism ahead of the 2026 midterms, as the party pushes to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.
What To Know
Silver, in his Silver Bulletin newsletter, lamented on polls being “not great,” particularly in New Jersey. A flurry of them released before Election Day showed a tight race between Democratic Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Real Clear Politics’ aggregate gave Sherrill only a 3-point advantage.
But Sherrill ended up winning by a much larger margin. She held a 13-point lead over Ciattarelli with 95 percent of the vote in, meaning she performed 10 points stronger than polls predicted. She also outperformed former Vice President Kamala Harris in the state. In November 2024, Harris only carried New Jersey by about 6 points in the presidential election—a disappointing result compared to past Oval Office candidates.
Silver described that as a “huge miss,” noting that it was “more than twice as large as the overestimation of Hillary Clinton in 2016.”
https://uomod.com/moms-for-liberty-shut ... 20ideology.In a stunning rebuke of the far-right education movement, Moms for Liberty (M4L) candidates failed to win a single contested race across the United States in the November 4, 2025 elections. According to official results, all 31 M4L-endorsed candidates who appeared on ballots in competitive races were defeated, marking the first total shutout for the organization since its rise to prominence in 2021.
Top Three Takeaways from the Article:
Moms for Liberty candidates lost all 31 contested races nationwide in the November 2025 elections, marking a complete national shutout.
Voters across party lines rejected the group’s divisive culture war politics, favoring candidates focused on education quality over ideology.
The results signal a turning point in public education politics, suggesting that the parental rights movement’s influence is rapidly waning.
Once hailed as a powerful grassroots force for “parental rights” in education, Moms for Liberty had become synonymous with book bans, anti-LBGTQ+ activism, and public school censorship campaigns. The group’s endorsements once carried weight in local school board elections, particularly in conservative regions where debates over critical race theory and gender identity had dominated public discourse. But this week’s results signal a dramatic reversal.
A Movement in Decline
Political analysts say the 2025 elections confirmed what polling data had hinted at for months: voters across party lines are increasingly rejecting the divisive tactics that defined Moms for Liberty’s national strategy. Once supported by GOP donors and conservative PACs, the group’s candidates were swamped by moderate and progressive opponents who ran on messages of inclusion, academic freedom, and depoliticizing classrooms.
DSA winners included:(Washington Examiner) America’s de facto socialist party docketed a dozen victories on Election Day this week, with self-declared socialists winning mayoral offices and city council seats in various off-year elections across the country.
Candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won more than half of the 23 races they were running in as openly avowed socialists, suffering relatively few losses at the ballot box, while the remaining DSA-endorsed hopefuls head to runoff elections.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/el ... -governor/
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik announced she is running for governor of New York early Friday morning, after months of hinting that she might challenge Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul in the 2026 election. Stefanik launched her campaign with a post on social media, calling Hochul "the worst governor in America."
"Under her failed leadership, New York is the most unaffordable state in the nation with the highest taxes, highest energy, utilities, rent, and grocery bills. When New Yorkers were looking for leadership from our Governor, she bent the knee to the raging Defund the Police, Tax Hiking Communist causing catastrophe for New York families," Stefanik wrote. "I am running for Governor to make New York affordable and safe FOR ALL. Democrats, Republicans, and Independents will unify to save our state."
Hochul shared a statement of her own, calling the congresswoman President Trump's "number one cheerleader in Congress and his right-hand woman in his war on New York."
"Apparently, screwing over New Yorkers in Congress wasn't enough – now she's trying to bring Trump's chaos and skyrocketing costs to our state," the governor wrote. "While Stefanik puts Trump first and New York last, Governor Hochul is lowering costs, cutting middle-class taxes, and fighting for the New Yorkers Stefanik abandoned."
Read more here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine ... 0638299(Politico) It’s easy to find fractures in the Democratic Party, particularly as the center and left battle for dominance. But what’s to be gleaned from an Election Day when both factions win?
Mikie Sherrill, a moderate who scored a surprisingly large victory in New Jersey’s gubernatorial race this week, sees a through-line between her election, and that of fellow moderate Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York.
“I think what people want to hear is a leader who’s going to address their key issues, and then I think they want to see really good, clear results,” she said in an interview with The Conversation. “What all these races have in common is there is this desire to make change, that things aren’t working for people.”
In 2024, Donald Trump made huge inroads in New Jersey by making gains with working class people, particularly among Black and Latino voters. One year later, and Sherrill helped return many of those voters to the fold through what she said was a laser-focus on issues of affordability.
“I think we saw 22-point swings in Hudson County, a big Latino county. We saw about an 18-point swing in Passaic County, a Latino and a Black county that’s very diverse,” she said. “I think what you’re seeing in these races is a deep desire to address the needs of working people.”
Additional extract:(Scripps News) U.S. Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva is expected to be sworn in this week, ahead of the House vote on a government funding bill, Scripps News has confirmed.
Grijalva won a special election in Arizona's 7th congressional district in late September, but House Speaker Mike Johnson refused to swear her in. He said it was due to the House not being in session, which has been prolonged due to the government shutdown.
Grijalva publicly pushed back, noting that the House often holds pro forma sessions during shutdowns, brief meetings that allow members to conduct procedural business even when regular legislative work is paused.
She and the Arizona attorney general also filed a lawsuit against the U.S. House of Representatives seeking to ensure she is sworn in.
Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politic ... 2f1&ei=68Grijalva and some of her supporters have argued that Johnson delayed the swearing-in because she has pledged to sign a discharge petition that would force a House vote to release the so-called Epstein files. Johnson has denied that accusation, saying the delay had nothing to do with the petition.
