The Blue Wave Returns: Elections Show Disapproval of Trump – Vanderbilt Political Review
The Blue Wave Returns: Elections Show Disapproval of Trump
Caleb Anderson, Senior Editor, November 6, 2025
The first election following a new president’s inauguration is often seen as a thermometer on how the country feels about the president’s performance. Given the reactionary nature of American politics, it is no surprise that Democrats swept elections across the country on Tuesday.
Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, beat Republican Curtis Sliwa and former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for the New York City mayor’s seat. Abigail Spanberger, the former assistant speaker of the House under Nancy Pelosi, blew Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears out of the water. Rep. Mikie Sherrill beat former Rep. Jack Ciatterelli for the New Jersey gubernatorial seat, a race that was expected to be quite close. In California, voters adopted Prop 50, which will allow Democrats to redistrict the state before the midterm elections. This was seen as a controversial move to combat gerrymandering, which some describe as “fighting fire with fire.”
When a president enters office, their party most often loses in the following election, particularly during midterm elections. However, this election, a precursor to the “referendum” that will take place in the midterms next year, goes beyond that. A blue wave has swept across the country, not just because Donald Trump is a Republican, but also because of reactionary mobilization and voter swings due to extreme disapproval of the Trump administration.
One of the most anticipated elections of the year was the New York City mayoral race, where Cuomo lost in an upset primary election earlier this year to the underdog candidate: Muslim democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. The race was a peculiar one, with incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropping out in the final weeks of the election and Cuomo running as an independent. Trump even refused to endorse the Republican candidate, instead backing Cuomo and going so far as to say that “a vote for Sliwa… is a vote for Mamdani.” Despite the unorthodox nature of this election, Mamdani prevailed. His platform, centered around opposing Trump’s interference in the city and tackling the affordability crisis, appealed broadly to voters as both a sentinel against authoritarianism and a defender of the working class.
Further south, another highly anticipated election took place in Virginia. These elections are notable because they are often strong reflections of national sentiment towards the political party of the president during an off-cycle year. In 2021, Republican Glenn Youngkin won by a very slim margin of 1.9%. The New York Times, among others, saw this as both a failure on the part of Democrats and an indicator of voter disapproval of the Biden administration. Spanberger, in contrast, won by a margin of nearly 15%. There could be many reasons for this stark contrast, including Spanberger appealing to voters through her moderate platform, Earle-Sears hardlining on social issues, and the government shutting down. However, the Trump administration’s performance this year was arguably the greatest factor contributing to this outcome, given how strongly Democrats performed throughout the country during this election.
What connects centrist Abigail Spanberger and democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is not their policies. It is not their opponents in their races. It is not even their views on how to address the shutdown. In fact, it is their opposition to the unpopular policies and leadership of the Trump administration. According to a poll released by YouGov and the Economist, only 31% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the government shutdown. In a separate poll conducted by NBC, only 43% of Americans approve of Trump’s overall leadership, and about two-thirds of voters believe Trump has fallen short of his promises on the economy. If this were not enough, the same poll found that a majority of Americans blame Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown.
Continue/Read Original Article Here: The Blue Wave Returns: Elections Show Disapproval of Trump – Vanderbilt Political Review
#BlueWave #CalebAnderson #Democrats #DisapprovalOfTrump #ElectionReturns2025 #Governors #Sweep #TrumpDisapproved #VanderbiltPoliticalReview #ZohranMamdani
Poll: Frustration with Trump gives Democrats an opening a year before the midterms
Democrats have an early lead in next year’s battle for control of Congress amid an ongoing government shutdown, as more voters say President Donald Trump has not lived up to their expectations on several major issues that propelled him back to the Wh…Ben Kamisar (NBC News)