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42-Point Blowout With Young Men Helped Fuel Mamdani's Victory
The New York City mayor-elect's victory, said one campaigner, "shows a path for liberals that it doesn’t have to be about 'strong men' leaders—it's issue-led authenticity that can cut through and fight back."
Nov 05, 2025
Since young men across the US shifted right in the 2024 elections, with former Vice President Kamala Harris losing to President Donald Trump among men ages 18-29, the Democratic Party has searched for ways to win back the voting bloc—and on Tuesday night, progressives urged leaders to simply look to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's resounding success.
Exit polls showed Mamdani, a progressive state Assembly member who remained laser-focused on making the city more affordable for working people during his campaign, winning the support of 68% of male voters ages 18-29, while Cuomo won just 26% of them—a margin of 42 points.
The democratic socialist's support among men under the age of 45 was also notable, with a margin of 39 points.
Young male voters swung left in other closely watched races as well, with Virginia Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger winning the group by 15 points and New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill winning by 12 points—but observers said Democratic leaders should pay special attention to the "blowout" in New York City as they seek answers about how to win over young men nationwide.
Housing campaigner Matthew Torbitt suggested that Mamdani appealed to young male New Yorkers by speaking clearly and emphatically about the need to make life for all working people more affordable—by establishing a network of city-run grocery stores to compete with private corporations, freezing the rent on rent-stabilized units, and expanding across the city's bus system the pilot program he championed that made one bus line fare-free.
"Young men just need to feel like there is someone on their side," Torbitt said.
Mamdani's victory came less than a month after the centrist think tank Third Way published its own analysis of Democrats' troubled relationship with young male voters.
The group posited that young men have felt "alienated" by the Democrats—partially due to economic issues, with the study acknowledging briefly that young male voters are frustrated that "economic expectations are stacked against them as young men," but also because "Democrats are out of the mainstream on social and cultural issues."
Without naming specific cultural battles that have been named by some strategists and pundits as issues Democrats should move rightward on—like abortion or transgender rights—Third Way spoke to men who said Democrats in recent years had "too much focus on cultural inclusivity" and were not tough enough on immigration.
The analysis also emphasized "masculinity," and one focus group member said the Republican Party had prioritized the undefined quality by embracing "capitalism."
The study echoed calls by US Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), who paid homage to former Republican President Ronald Reagan in the Democratic Party's official response to Trump's State of the Union address earlier this year and went on to call on the party to exhibit "alpha energy."
Slotkin acknowledged Spanberger's and Sherrill's successful campaigns on Tuesday night, but made no mention of Mamdani's historic and nationally watched victory.
Journalist and reproductive rights advocate Jessica Valenti emphasized Mamdani's victory among young men in a video she posted to Instagram Tuesday night.
"Young men, who've been skewing more conservative, young men, who mainstream Democratic pundits said we could only win by messaging to the middle, by messaging to the right, by throwing trans rights under the bus, by throwing abortion rights under the bus," she said. "I really hope those people are paying attention tonight."
A year after Trump's victory, said Torbitt, Mamdani's support among young male voters "shows a path for liberals that it doesn’t have to be about 'strong men' leaders—it's issue-led authenticity that can cut through and fight back."
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Election Day Sweep for Dems Just Predictable Blue State Wins? Local, State Races Tell Different Story
In addition to high-profile victories in New York, New Jersey, and Virginia, Democrats came away with upset wins in Georgia and Mississippi.
Nov 05, 2025
Leading Republicans such as US House Speaker Mike Johnson and right-wing media outlets like Fox News are trying to downplay Democrats' sweeping victories in key elections held on Tuesday, even though many of the party's victories came in areas that are not traditional Democratic strongholds.
Speaking in Washington, DC on Wednesday morning, Johnson dismissed the Democratic wins as entirely predictable given the recent voting histories of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.
"There's no surprises," Johnson said. "What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what's to come, that's what history teaches us."
Mike Johnson: "What happened last night is blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night's election results." pic.twitter.com/AO72p71Zsj
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2025
But despite Johnson's claims, Democrats on Tuesday also won major victories in two southern states that supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.
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.
The Times also reported that Georgia Republicans are worried that the twin losses in Public Service Commission are an ill omen for next year's elections, when the GOP will seek to oust Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and maintain its hold on the governor's mansion.
In an interview with Politico, one Republican strategist said that the Democrats' wins in Georgia showed the challenges facing the GOP in getting low-propensity Trump voters to the polls in elections where he is not on the ballot.
"The one thing that would worry me, besides making sure you hold the House, is looking at how Democrats were able to fire up their base in some of these local elections in Georgia," they said.
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.
"Last night's victory proves that Mississippi is no longer a foregone conclusion—we are a battleground state," Taylor said. "But this win was only possible because the Voting Rights Act ensures fair representation. If the Supreme Court dismantles these protections, we risk silencing the very voices that made last night’s historic outcome possible. As voters continue to reject Trump's agenda in 2026 and 2027, we must protect the fundamental right that makes change possible: The right to vote."
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.
Writing on his Substack page, Morris revealed that "almost every single county" in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia in this week's elections moved toward Democrats compared to how they voted in 2024.
"What we saw last night was a directional shift toward Democrats in 99.8% of counties that held partisan elections," Morris explained. "With few exceptions, voters everywhere moved to the left from 2024 to 2025."
What's more, Morris found that the shift toward Democrats wasn't simply the result of having lower turnout elections, which typically are beneficial to the party out of power.
"Average turnout in [New Jersey and Virginia] was close to 80% of 2024 levels, which is impressive for an off-off-year election—and the swing to Democrats there was still 7-8 points," he explained. "So I wouldn’t dismiss the results of last night just because low-turnout-propensity voters stayed home. There's evidence of both persuasion and turnout effects in last night’s contests."
David Smith, the Guardian Washington, DC bureau chief, writes in his analysis of election day that "the results were in part a referendum on Trump, whose approval rating has never been lower," and he added that the president was displaying stark political vulnerabilities just one year into his second term.
"His authoritarian grandstanding is a show of weakness rather than strength," he wrote. "From ICE raids and tariffs to his $300 million White House ballroom, his presidency is deeply unpopular. Are you better off than you were a year ago? Voters said no."
Even still, warned Smith, it's important that Democratic leaders don't mistake anger at Trump for glowing enthusiasm for their work atop the party, which remains at historic lows.The results on Tuesday were "never going to solve the riddle" of which direction the Democrats should head, he wrote, with both "progressives and moderates" provided "fodder to make a case" for their respective approach to politics.
For progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who spoke to MSNBC from New York at Mamdani's victory party, the Democrats need to understand that the party "does not have one face," but that everyone who wants to defeat Trump and the fascist Republicans "all understand the assignment" before them.
“Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters for the working class wherever possible," she said. "In some places, like Virginia, for the gubernatorial seat, that’s going to look like Abigail Spanberger. In New York City, unequivocally it is Zohran Mamdani.”
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California Voters Pass Prop 50, Punching Back at Trump in Gerrymandering Fight
"The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now," wrote David Dayen at The American Prospect.
Nov 05, 2025
The people of California dealt a huge counterpunch to Republican efforts to gerrymander their way to a 2026 midterm victory, voting overwhelmingly on Tuesday for new congressional maps that are expected to net Democrats an additional five seats in the next US House elections.
Republicans have appeared on track to cling to power after President Donald Trump pushed red states to carry out largely unprecedented mid-decade redistricting efforts. New maps enacted or approved in Texas, Ohio, Missouri, and North Carolina were expected to net the GOP an extra nine seats that may have proven decisive in holding off a blue wave next November.
But on Tuesday, as Democrats romped up and down the ballot nationwide, more than 5.1 million California voters almost singlehandedly stymied the Republican advance in its tracks, passing Proposition 50 with nearly 64% of the vote, and approving new maps drawn up by Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats with a more aggressive partisan gerrymander.
David Dayen, the executive editor of The American Prospect, wrote on social media that in one fell swoop, the Democrats "have largely neutralized Trump's gerrymandering push."
However, he noted that the GOP could grab a possibly insurmountable advantage if the US Supreme Court votes to gut Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, effectively legalizing racial gerrymandering and, in the process, potentially netting Republicans at least 19 more seats.
Notably, California's maps only needed to be approved by voters in the first place to override those drawn up by the state's independent redistricting commission, which was also created by a ballot measure in 2008. Meanwhile, the new maps drawn in red states have been enacted by state legislatures without voter approval.
As the champion of Prop 50, Newsom argued that desperate times called for desperate measures, saying it was a necessary counter to Trump's "attempt to rig the 2026 election and redistrict his way out of accountability in states like Texas.”
On Tuesday night, after Prop 50's resounding passage, Newsom told a gathering of California Democrats in Sacramento that the party was "on its toes, no longer on its heels."
The passage of Prop 50 may give other blue states a shot in the arm to pursue their own mid-decade gerrymanders and further chip away at the GOP advantage.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has signaled her support for the state pursuing its own redistricting, and a constitutional amendment has been proposed to override the state's independent, bipartisan redistricting commission.
In Virginia, Democratic leaders have passed the first round of a constitutional amendment to give the legislature emergency powers to redraw maps, an effort that remained viable after Democrats held onto the state’s House of Delegates in Tuesday’s elections.
Earlier this week, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore also announced the creation of a new bipartisan commission to target the state's one remaining GOP district, though some Democrats have criticized the effort as a risky gambit that could backfire and benefit Republicans.
Regardless, Dayen believes that the result in California is a decisive indication of the more confrontational approach Democratic voters are looking for in the second Trump era.
"Prop 50 was called the moment polls closed in California," he wrote. "The blowout showed how showing up to fight is the most important thing in Democratic politics right now."
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