Washington — After voters shifted toward Republican Donald Trump during last fall’s presidential election, states like Virginia and New Jersey are shifting back toward Democratic candidates almost as quickly in 2024, an Associated Press analysis of election data found this week.
From densely populated suburbs to big cities to heavily military counties, voters this year have moved decisively toward the Democratic Party. Some of these areas saw the biggest shifts toward Trump last year, especially in New York and New Jersey, but on Tuesday, returns were more like 2020 margins.
This came alongside a relatively high turnout, at least compared to recent off-year elections, suggesting that one of the patterns of the past decade in American politics — Republicans doing well when Trump is on the ballot, and Democrats doing better when he isn’t — remains in place.
AP’s analysis is based on county and district-level data. In all cases, spreads are for 2025 as of 10:45 a.m. on November 7. Additional votes will be counted while election officials tabulate late mail and provisional ballots. Here are some results.
Virginia and New Jersey, states that elect their governors the year after presidential elections, have a tradition of moving against the party in the White House.
Beginning in 1976, each time a party regained control of the presidency, Virginia voters chose a governor from the opposing party the following year. In New Jersey, voters elected a governor from the party opposite the incumbent in every election from 1989 to 2017.
Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill continued the trend with double-digit victories.
Spanberger’s victory was particularly notable because of its size. In Virginia’s last 12 gubernatorial elections, the average margin of victory was 8.6 percentage points.
Spanberger’s win by 14.4 points — comes a year after Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris won the state by only a narrow margin. 5.8 percentage points – They were boosted by large margins in Northern Virginia, home to Washington, D.C., a suburb that has been hit hardest by federal government cuts and the ongoing government shutdown. It also significantly surpassed former President Joe Biden’s 10.1-point win in 2020.
Those shifts helped Spanberger win 15 charter counties and cities that her predecessor, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, had won four years earlier. Six of those jurisdictions — Spotsylvania, Lynchburg, Nelson, Waynesboro, Prince Edward and Surry — also backed Trump in 2024.
Spanberger also took advantage of a spending advantage of about $27 million and Trump Reluctance to believe Her Republican rival.
Succeeding term-limited Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, Sherrill not only resumed New Jersey’s history of voting for the party not in power, but also broke a 60-year streak. No party has served as governor of New Jersey for more than three consecutive terms since the 1960s, when a two-term Democratic governor succeeded another two-term Democratic governor.
Recent voting patterns in New Jersey suggest the race for governor could have been much tougher. In addition to receiving Trump’s endorsement, Republican Jack Ciattarelli kept pace with Sherrill in terms of spending.
He also came close to the previous elections. Ciattarelli He came within 3 points of unseating Murphy In 2021. Between Chiattarelli’s 2021 and 2025 campaigns, Trump made huge inroads in New Jersey: he flipped five counties that Biden won in 2020 and reduced the Republican margin in the state to Only 5.9 percentage points.
Sherrill’s victory by 13.5 points indicates a return to pre-2024 levels. Although she did not achieve Biden’s victory of 15.9 points, she returned all five counties that Trump flipped to the Democratic column. She also improved on Harris’ margin in Bergen County, the state’s largest county, by more than 8 points.
Some of Tuesday’s elections were noticeably outliers in terms of the number of people who came to the polls, while others were more in line with previous races.
And in New York City, State Assemblyman Zahran Mamdani Iqbal Juice In his successful primary campaign and built on that in the general election. More than two million New Yorkers voted for mayor this year, a level of voter enthusiasm the city has not seen in a mayoral election since 1969, when John Lindsay won a second term.
The governors’ races were more of a mixed bag. New Jersey had its highest gubernatorial voter turnout since 2009, when Republican Chris Christie beat incumbent Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine. As of Friday morning, participation this year was just under 50%.
Virginia’s turnout was just shy of 2021 levels as of Friday morning. It is not yet clear whether turnout in 2025 will match or exceed 2021 as vote counting continues.
Before the general election, Mamdani aroused suspicion from political pundits because of the perceived vulnerability of some voters of color in New York City. While he performed well in the June primary among neighborhoods with large Asian and Muslim populations, he generally failed to reach the level of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in majority black and Hispanic neighborhoods.
The general elections were a different story. Whether it’s because Of awarenessTaking advantage of running on the Democratic ballot line, or his viral campaign videos, Mamdani won nearly every majority-black and majority-Hispanic neighborhood.
Overall, Mamdani performed well in areas and among demographics that moved toward Trump during the last presidential election.
Forty-seven New York City boroughs shifted by at least 25 points toward Trump in 2024. Mamdani won 37 of them.
After a year of Trump erosion Democrats’ advantage among young voters Nationally, Mamdani won nearly three-quarters of voters under 30, according to an AP Voter poll.
There was only one race on the ballot in California, but it had major consequences for control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections. in Approval of Proposition No. 50which temporarily replaces the map created by an independent redistricting commission by Democrats, California voters could flip up to five Republican-controlled U.S. House seats next year.
California became the first state to adopt a new map that would add Democratic seats. Four other states – Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio — They have also enacted new maps since Trump began encouraging states to redistrict over the summer. Those four states changed their district lines to create winnable Republican seats.
Two groups that have been particularly affected by the ongoing government shutdown are military families and federal workers. Many of these groups have been furloughed or are working without pay as the lockdown continues into a sixth week.
Democrats sought to capitalize on that in both gubernatorial campaigns.
In Virginia, home to one of the largest concentrations of federal workers as well as major military bases, federal workers in particular supported Spanberger.
Households with a current or former military member were split evenly between the candidates in Virginia and Ciattarelli in New Jersey.