It was a good night for the beleaguered Democratic Party. Democrats swept the three biggest races in this year’s elections — for New York mayor, New Jersey governor and Virginia governor. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won a comfortable victory, energizing progressives around the country. When he takes office on Jan. 1, 2026, he will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, its youngest mayor in more than a century and its first immigrant mayor since the 1970s. Our editorial board congratulated Mamdani on his stunningly effective campaign and offered six specific ways we think he can improve life in New York. You can also read my colleague David Wallace-Wells’s newsletter, celebrating the election and analyzing what Mamdani’s win means for New York and for progressivism. And the Opinion columnist Bret Stephens has a critical take on the mayor-elect, lamenting his embrace of socialist ideas. In New Jersey and Virginia, two more moderate Democrats won the governor’s races. Both of the winners — Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia — are former members of Congress who worked in national security before entering politics. Jamelle Bouie takes stock of all the results and argues that they “are a marked contrast to the accommodation, capitulation and outright surrender of prominent individuals and institutions in the face of Trump’s demands. They also serve to remind us of what ought to be a fundamental maxim of democracy: that there is no singular ‘people’ and there are no permanent majorities.” Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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