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election 2025
Mamdani’s Win Shows That Democrats Can Expand the Their Electorate
His victory proves that Democrats can not only win over Trump voters but perhaps even more importantly reach voters who are not normally part of the political process.
Nov 15, 2025
While it may be hard for Democrats to admit it, the fact of the matter is that over the past 10 years Donald Trump has been able to expand his political base in ways that seem inconceivable. In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 elections, Trump’s achievements were clear to Democratic pollster John Zogby who wrote in The Guardian a week after the 2024 election:
But 2024 exit polling has clearly shown that MAGA has expanded beyond its original base. Trump outperformed his previous runs by substantial numbers among men and women, particularly young men; Black people, Latinos, Asian/Pacific Islanders; and suburban voters. He grew his support among voters in every state.
Many Democratic pundits have been in denial about Trump’s 2024 achievement let alone trying to chart effectively how Democrats can expand their electorate. There is some good news here as the 2025 elections as Zohran Mamdani in his successful run for mayor of New York City has demonstrated that Democrats can also expand their electorate.
It is certainly true that New York City is not necessarily a model for political communications and organizing in the United States. Nonetheless, an analysis of the 2025 results offer the Democrats some lessons. Kabir Khanna, CBS’ director for election analytics, has broken down the 2025 results and come up with some very intriguing conclusions.
All parts of the Democratic Party should study Mamdani’s winning campaign and figure out how Democrats can reach Trump voters and nonvoters.
Khanna’s analysis finds that fully 14% of Mamdani voters either voted for Trump (5%), for a third-party candidate (3%), or did not vote for president (6%).
Mamdani non-Harris voters tend to be younger than the electorate as a whole (two-thirds were under age 45), less likely than Harris voters to have a college degree, and tend to be less affluent (44% under $50,000 annual income). Mamdani was clearly able to expand the Democratic electorate by bringing in more blue collar and younger voters.
To his credit, Khanna acknowledges that New York City is not representative of the country as a whole. However, he does find some interesting parallels in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races:
Democrats Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia won in landslides, thanks both to high turnout in Democratic areas and some Trump voters flipping. And it was voters of color, specifically Latino voters, and younger voters who were the likeliest to flip. In New Jersey, for example, 18% of Latino Trump voters flipped to Sherrill this year, while only 5% of white Trump voters did so. Add to this group voters who backed this year's Democratic nominees but didn't turn out in 2024 and you see many of the same characteristics as we saw in New York: The Democrat-not-Harris voters tend to be younger, less partisan, less affluent, and more focused on the economy.
There is nothing in the CBS data that shows us how effective Mamdani was as a communicator. I do think we can infer that from Mamdani’s ability to reach voters in unexpected ways and maintain a consistent stance on his issue. Contrary to what many thought, after he won the Democratic primary, Mamdani stuck with his progressive platform and did not try to move to the center.
Mamdani’s victory shows that Democrats can not only win over Trump voters but perhaps even more importantly reach voters who are not normally part of the political process. A number of self-styled Democratic centrists are wary of what Mamdani’s win means for the future of the Democratic Party. I would point out to these centrists that future elections will determine the direction of the Democratic Party. In the meantime, all parts of the Democratic Party should study Mamdani’s winning campaign and figure out how Democrats can reach Trump voters and nonvoters. The outcome of the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections will be determined by how effectively the Democrats can learn lessons from the 2025 election results.
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Progressive Challenger Katie Wilson Elected Mayor of Seattle
"The Zohran moment extends beyond NYC," said one organizer.
Nov 13, 2025
With the help of an "army of grassroots volunteers" and the support of Seattle's working-class neighborhoods, progressive candidate Katie Wilson was named the winner of the city's mayoral election on Wednesday night, beating corporate-backed Democratic Mayor Bruce Harrell after a campaign that focused heavily on how unaffordable Seattle is for many families—including Wilson's.
Wilson, who rents a one-bedroom apartment with her husband and young child and spoke on the campaign trail about how her parents have helped her pay for childcare, was elected after taking a 1,976-vote lead over Harrell, with just 1,320 ballots remaining.
The Seattle Times called the race for Wilson and reported that it was unclear whether the close race would go to a recount, and Harrell said he would address voters on Thursday.
"Ahead by almost 2,000 votes, we now believe that we're in an insurmountable position," said Wilson in a social media post on Wednesday night. "We're so grateful to all the volunteers who have powered this grassroots campaign to victory. We look forward to hearing the mayor's address to the city tomorrow."
The mayoral election results were mirrored by other municipal elections in Seattle, with the Times reporting a "progressive sweep" of City Hall as voters elected left-leaning nonprofit leader Dionne Foster as City Council president and progressive challenger Erika Evans as city attorney.
Wilson's victory also proved wrong the commentators who had dismissed New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani's victory over corporate-backed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo as an aberration that would not be replicated outside of the solidly Democratic city.
Wilson has never held public office and is the co-founder of the Transit Riders Union, where she has directed "successful campaigns for better transit, higher wages, stronger renter protections, and more affordable housing."
The New York Times reported that she was driven to run for mayor earlier this year, after voters overwhelmingly backed a ballot measure to fund a new public housing agency with an “excess compensation” tax, targeting employers that pay more than $1 million to any employee. Harrell had opposed the measure, urging the City Council to use existing budgets to pay for the agency.
Like democratic socialist Mamdani, Wilson focused her mayoral campaign heavily on the need to make Seattle more affordable for working families. She easily beat Harrell in the Democratic primary after winning the support of working-class neighborhoods across the city, while Harrell won votes in "expensive waterfront neighborhoods," as labor-focused media organization More Perfect Union said in a video about the race.
BREKAING: Katie Wilson has been elected Seattle’s next mayor. The progressive challenger has taken an insurmountable lead in the vote count, and defeated the establishment candidate. pic.twitter.com/15Qypd6Oyz
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) November 13, 2025
The race was "a referendum on inequality and affordability in Seattle, where the richest 5th rake in $345,000 per household and the poorest 5th bring in just under $19,000," said More Perfect Union. "Ordinary working people in Seattle are struggling to keep up with consumer prices, which are 13% higher than the national average, and housing prices, which are 50% higher than the national average."
Wilson has called to expand the city's social housing program by using union labor to build thousands more mixed-income units that would serve as a public option for housing. She has also pledged to strengthen renter protections and end algorithmic price-fixing by corporate landlords.
Like Mamdani, she has called for the establishment of city-owned grocery stores that would help keep costs down.
As the votes continued to be counted earlier this week, housing justice organizer Daniel Denvir said a victory for Wilson would show "the Zohran moment extends beyond NYC."
Daniel Nichanian of Bolts added that Wilson's victory "is a West Coast companion to Mamdani’s as a statement municipal victory for the left."
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Democrats Can Win Back Trump Voters—If They Don't Blow It
The message from the 2025 election is clear: Some Trump voters will back Democrats if the candidates reach them where they are and talk to them about the issues that they care about most.
Nov 11, 2025
While the media has covered extensively Democratic successes in the 2025 off-year elections, there is one story that has been dramatically undercovered. This is the fact that the 2025 Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races show that Democrats can win over Trump voters. Granted, these are not dramatic slices of the Trump coalition, but they are enough in these hyper-polarized times to win elections.
According to CNN polling, in New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill in her race for governor was able to win 7% of those who had voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Interestingly, the Virginia exit polling data shows that Rep. Abigail Spanberger won the identical (7%) of Trump voters.
The New York Times’ Nate Cohn is one of the few journalists who has pointed to the New Jersey and Virginia Democrats’ ability to win over Trump voters. He concludes that:
Instead, the two Democrats won so decisively because they also flipped a crucial sliver of voters who said they supported Mr. Trump in 2024. Ms. Sherrill and Ms. Spanberger both won 7 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters, according to the exit polls. It may not seem like much to flip 7 percent of Mr. Trump’s backers, but consider: When a voter flips, it adds one voter to one party and also deducts one from the other, making it twice as significant as turning out a new voter.
Looking at the exit polling data makes it clear that while the Democrats margins in New Jersey and Virginia were helped by increased Democratic turnout, winning over 2024 Trump voters was critically important.
One of the key parts of the Trump coalition has always been strong and even almost overwhelming support from rural voters. An analysis by Politico of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows that:
Spanberger’s victory was largely driven by massive turnout in northern and eastern Virginia’s urban areas. But she picked up support across the state’s deep-red central and western counties, where Trump’s tariffs have hit the manufacturing and agricultural industries especially hard. Even as her GOP opponent won most of those places, Spanberger posed the best performance by a statewide Democratic candidate in several cycles, according to a POLITICO analysis of voting data in the localities classified as “rural” by the federal government.
To her great credit, Spanberger targeted rural voters and consistently hammered away on how the Trump administration’s tariff policies were hurting them. In comparison with former Vice President Kamala Harris’s performance in 2024, Spanberger outperformed Harris’ margin in 48 of Virginia’s 52 rural localities. The exit polling shows that Spanberger won 46% of rural voters—an eight-point deficit to Republican candidate Lieutenant Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, and a 19-point swing from 2021 gubernatorial Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe’s 27-point disadvantage.
There is also data in the exit polling data indicating that Democrats won back in 2025 Hispanic voters who backed Trump in 2024. The Washington Post reports:
This year, most Democratic statewide candidates won Latino voters by at least 30 points in exit polls, re-creating the margins their party held before 2024. In New Jersey, 18 percent of Latino voters who backed Trump last year cast their ballot for the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, exit poll data showed.
The fact that Democrats won over Trump voters in 2025 has profound implications for Democrats in both the 2026 midterms and the 2028. The message is clear: Some Trump voters will back Democrats if the candidates reach them where they are and talk to them about the issues that they care about most. To assume that all Trump voters are absolutely committed to Trump no matter what the circumstances is a mistaken assumption that only hurts Democrats. Successful politics is always about addition.
Hopefully, Democrats learn from their success in 2025 and realize that they can make some Trump voters part of their winning coalition.
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