Last November, Donald Trump recaptured the presidency and helped his party gain control of both chambers of Congress. He and his MAGA backers heralded it as the beginning of a realignment that would give the GOP a long-standing majority and give the president a popular mandate to do many unprecedented and unspeakable things. Democrats largely believed this spin and fell into mutual recriminations and despair.
Just a year later, everything’s looking different.
Democrats swept the 2025 elections in almost every competitive venue. They flipped the governorship of Virginia and held onto the governorship of New Jersey, in each instance crushing their Republican opponents. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani won easily on a wave of high turnout and voter excitement. At the same time, Democrats stopped efforts to purge their judges in Pennsylvania and rig voting rules in Maine. One of their most vulnerable candidates, Virginia attorney-general nominee Jay Jones, beset by a text-message scandal involving violent fantasies about Republicans, won anyway. Everywhere you look, the allegedly unbeatable Trump legacy is, well, taking a beating. The tide even flowed down to Georgia, where Democrats won two statewide special elections, flipping two seats on the utility-rate-setting Public Service Commission.
Exit polls show that those elements of the electorate where Trump made startling gains in 2024 are now running away from him and from the GOP. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger is winning 67 percent of under-30 voters, 64 percent of Latino voters, 61 percent of Asian American voters, and 90 percent of Black voters. Up in New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill is winning under-30 voters by better than 2-1, Latinos by exactly 2-1, Black voters by better than 10-1, and Asian American voters by better than 4-1. She’s also winning 90 percent of Black men and 57 percent of Latino men. These are also demographic groups that have begun turning their back on Trump in job-approval polls. And Trump got another very direct spanking as Californians overwhelmingly approved Prop 50, a measure to gerrymander the state to give Democrats more seats, meant to retaliate against Trump’s earlier power grabs. There, too, the issue became entirely a referendum on the turbulent president.
Some MAGA folk will argue Trump can’t be blamed because he wasn’t on any ballot. But Republicans everywhere embraced him fiercely and counted on his assistance to win the day. And no major party has ever so completely turned itself into a cult of personality for its leader, or been so eager to give him total power. Trump’s domination of political discourse throughout 2025 — right up until this week, when he’s rejected any compromises with Democrats in a gridlocked Washington, D.C. — means the election is inescapably a setback that bids ill for his efforts to maintain total control of the federal government in the midterms next year. Democrats may finally turn to the future rather than the past, the struggles for the party’s soul forgotten for a while.
We’ll soon see if Mamdani can redeem the hope he has instilled in so many discouraged and marginalized voters, and if the women chosen to lead New Jersey and Virginia can cope with rising living costs and terrible treatment from Trump’s administration. The GOP gerrymandering offensive isn’t done, and the Trump-enabling chambers of the Supreme Court could provide new setbacks for those resisting Trump’s creeping authoritarianism. And yes, in 2026 Democrats must more clearly articulate their own agenda while providing running room for different candidates in different parts of the country.
But for now, Trump and his party look far less invincible than before and far more likely to harvest anger and disappointment for his second-term agenda than to build anything like a permanent majority. The opposition can now emerge from the shadow of an especially cursed year and fight back.
“Quinnipiac Poll: Kerry, Bush tied Among FL RV’s
John Kerry and George Bush are tied at 44 percent of Florida RV’s, according to a new Quinnipiac University Poll conducted 10/22-26 .The Poll also found that, among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent. ”
So does that mean that 5% of the people who voted are still undecided or is nader picking up those votes?
What can we discern if anything from the 16%? Are they coming from Democratic areas? Jebbie was making excuses recently on MTP about hurricane damage in Republican areas, with those affected having higher priorities than voting for Bush.
At this point, when a poll is posted, can you give a comparison to the most RECENT poll, from the same jurisdiction and pollster, so that TRENDS can be assessed. Then it would always be good to summarize what other polls are saying (eg the other two most recent Fla polls are also close, and trending from their previous polls in the same direction, w numbers.) It would take up just a little extra space but would make it much more easier to make sense amidst a blizzard of individual data bits.
The Broward County thing shows how completely easy it still is to steal elections. Note that the POSTAL SERVICE might be involved, which is national. “Oh but that’s forbidden!” Well, remember what the word “Law” means to Tory types like Bush. To them, obedience to (their) power is the holy writ of what THEY call ‘natural law’. Honest elections are mere dust in the balance by comparison. Only by an approach to modern methods of discovery that jettisons the catch-22s that applied in Florida 2000 can there be any chance of an honest election –(or fighting terrorism, but I’ll get into that after the election).
The means of stealing elections are so myriad, that only by aggressively pursuing what is underground, and not relying on the means of laundering these issues that exist within the system that exists for the PURPOSE of stealing/railroading elections and then laundering it, can people hope to have honest presidential and Congressional elections
Great news. Just a point of clarification regarding the sentence, “among the 16 percent of Flordians who have alread voted, Kerry leads by 56-39 percent.”
Does this mean,
a) 16% of all eligible voters in FL have already voted through early voting, and among those that have already voted, Kerry leads 56-39
OR
b) Among all voters who have voted through early voting, 16% of early voters have been polled and within that 16% sample of early voters, Kerry leads 56-39
Do you see the confusion? I can’t tell whether the 56-39 figure is representative of 100% of the early vote, and the early vote constitutes 16% of those eligible to vote on Nov. 2; or whether the 56-39 figure is representative of 16% of all early voters, and we don’t know what the ratio of people voting early represents among all people eligible to vte on Nov. 2.
I wrote a state-by-state synopsis called “The Gore States Today” at Daily Kos and thought I’d share it here, too:
http://dailykos.com/story/2004/10/28/132557/30
(Just copy and paste the URL into your browser if clicking on it doesn’t take you to the page.)
I wonder if that includes the missing 58,000 absentee ballots? 🙂
I agree, i am no expert but here is how i feel about it, in 2000 Bush had 49.2 % of the vote, he has less support now he is at about 47%-48%. People who are going to vote for him already know, everyone else who hasn’t made up their mind hasn’t made up their mind for a reason, becasue they don’t like something about Bush. Also, people regester to vote for a reason, even if only half of the new regestered voters vote, that will put kerry over the top, people don’t fight to keep the status-quo, the fight for change, and i think on election day, kerry will win by a comfortable margin, 30 votes in the true battle ground states.
No wonder there are reports this morning of Repub goons waiting outside early polling places in Florida, telling old ladies there are no elevators or air conditioning and that the wait is 6 hours long.
Can’t we DO something about those guys?