Live Commentary
1:52pm Friday I’ve done an article for The Conversation about these elections, Trump’s sliding ratings and the US government shutdown.
9:20am Thursday In the NJ lower house, the NYT has 53 Dems and 19 Reps with eight uncalled. Dems are leading in four of the uncalled seats. If current leads hold up, they will win by 57-23, a five-seat gain.
5:28pm In the Texas 18th federal seat “jungle primary” (this is a special election), the two leading candidates, both Democrats, will advance to a yet to be scheduled runoff. A candidate needs over 50% to win a jungle primary outright, and the top candidate currently has 30.2%. The top Rep got 6.7%.
4:53pm End of day summary In Virginia, Dems won the governorship by 15.2 points, lieutenant governor by 11.4 and attorney general by 6.6 despite a scandal regarding the Dem A-G candidate. Dems won the lower house by 64-36, a 13-seat gain. Virginia voted for Harris in 2024 by 5.8 points.
In NJ, Dems won the governor by 13 points, far exceeding polls that gave them a low single-digit lead. NJ voted for Harris by 5.9 points in 2024. Dems have a 49-19 lead in called NJ lower house races, with 12 uncalled. Dems previously had a 52-28 majority in the NJ lower house.
With 91% in for NYC, Mamdani won the mayoralty by 50.4-41.6 over Cuomo with just 7.1% for Sliwa. In California, with 66% in, Yes to retaliatory gerrymandering leads by 29.4 points. We won’t have final results from NYC or California for some time as they take weeks to count all their votes.
3:23pm Now 50% in from California, and Yes leads by 66-34.
3:09pm Only 2% counted so far in California, but it’s already been called for Yes to retaliatory gerrymandering. Yes leads by 74-26 so far.
3:02pm VPAP now showing only one undecided seat in Virginia, with Dems winning by 64-35, a gain of 13 seats for the Dems. In the NJ lower house, the NYT has Dems winning by 44-14 with 22 still undecided. Dems have retained their hold on the trifecta in NJ and gained a trifecta in Virginia by gaining the governorship. The trifecta means control over both chambers of the legislature and the governor.
2:45pm Dems will win the other NYC races easily, beating the Reps with over 70%. In Pennsylvania, Dems have retained three judges on the state supreme court to keep their 5-2 majority. In Maine, a referendum to require photo ID for voting has been rejected by 23 points with 57% in.
2:37pm It’s now 59-26 in the Virginia lower house to the Dems with 15 undecided, a gain of ten seats for the Dems. Reps lead most of the undecided seats.
2:21pm In the VPAP count of the Virginia lower house, Dems lead Reps by 55-25 with 20 undecided, a gain of eight seats for Dems.
1:51pm According to the Virginia Public Access Project, Dems are winning the Virginia lower house by 40-17 with 43 uncalled. Dems have gained seven seats from the Reps so far.
1:40pm Mamdani CALLED winner of NYC mayor. With 75% in, he leads Cuomo by 50.4-41.3 with just 7.5% for Sliwa.
1:52pm The Dem has been called the winner in NJ governor, currently leading by 15 points with 63% in.
1:27pm With 52% in for NYC, Mamdani’s lead over Cuomo has narrowed to 49.6-41.5. But hardly any further narrowing with 60% in now.
1:15pm The Dem’s lead has narrowed to 15 points in NJ with 52% in, with the NYT expecting her to get a final 56% of the vote.
1:12pm With 38% in for NYC, Mamdani leads Cuomo by 51.2-40.0 with just 8.0% for Sliwa. These would be early votes, so election day votes may favour Cuomo.
12:36pm With 62% counted in Virginia, the Dems lead for governor by 11 points, lieutenant governor by 7 and attorney general by 2. So the scandal about Jones’ texts had an impact, but not enough for him to lose the att-gen race.
12:31pm With 27% in for NJ, the Dem leads by 23 points. If that holds up, the polls in NJ will have badly understated the Dem. But perhaps early votes are mostly counted, and election day votes will help the Rep.
12:29pm With 52% in for the Texas federal special election, the three leading candidates are all Dems, but the leader has 32%, well under the 50% needed to avoid a runoff.
12:15pm With 17% in for NJ, the Dem is up by more than 26 points. The NYT says the remaining vote is “fairly evenly split”, implying an easy Dem win.
12:10pm With 14% in for New Jersey, the Dem leads the governor’s race by 17 points. No NYT estimate of the final result yet.
12:01pm The Dem has been called the winner in Virginia governor.
11:55am With 29% in for Virginia, NYT gives Dem gov candidate 57% when counting complete. Dems still likely to win all three statewide offices.
11:37am With 17% now counted in Virginia governor, the NYT model thinks the Dem will win with 56% of the final vote. The other statewide races are closer, but Dems should win all three.
11:28am For the governor’s race, the Dem is winning all types of votes counted so far, early votes by 21 points, election day votes by 5.5 points and mail votes by 49 points.
11:21am With 2% reporting in Virginia, the Dems lead the governor race by 13 points. They are also 14 points up in the Attorney-General race and 10 points up for lieutenant-governor.
Guest post by Adrian Beaumont, who joins us from time to time to provide commentary on elections internationally. Adrian is a paid election analyst for The Conversation. His work for The Conversation can be found here.
US state elections occur today in Virginia and New Jersey, with the governor and lower house of the legislature up. New York City (NYC) will hold a mayoral election. California holds a referendum on enabling Democratic retaliatory gerrymandering. And there’s a federal special election in a safe Democratic Texas seat. Polls close at 11am AEDT in Virginia, 12 noon in NJ and Texas, 1pm in NYC and 3pm in California.
Late polls in NJ have the Democrat leading by low single-digit margins. Democrats have held the NJ governorship since 2017. In Virginia, where Republicans won the governorship in 2021, the Democrat leads by high single to low double-digit margins. At the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris won NJ by 5.9 points and Virginia by 5.8 points, while Donald Trump won the overall popular vote by 1.5 points.
Virginia also holds statewide contests for lieutenant-governor and attorney-general. A scandal about the Democratic AG candidate’s texts could cost him. Democrats currently hold a 52-28 majority over Republicans in the NJ lower house and a 51-49 majority in the Virginia lower house. Democrats hold a 25-15 upper house majority in NJ and a 21-19 majority in Virginia, which are not up for election.
In NYC, a late AtlasIntel poll gave Democratic nominee and socialist Zohran Mamdani a 44-39 lead over independent Andrew Cuomo with 15% for Republican Curtis Silwa. Cuomo led Mamdani by 50-44 head to head. Other than in the two final AtlasIntel polls, Mamdani has led Cuomo by double digit margins and also led him head to head. In California, “yes” to retaliatory gerrymandering is over 20 points ahead.
The special election in Texas’ 18th is being held eight months after the former Democratic member died, but it’s unlikely to be decided today. It’s a “jungle primary”, where all Democratic and Republican candidates compete and the top two go to a runoff. Unless one candidate gets over 50%, a runoff will need to be scheduled to decide this seat.
Republicans hold the House of Representatives by 219-213 with three vacancies. A Democrat who won a special in Arizona in September has not yet been seated. A special will occur on December 2 in a safe Republican seat in Tennessee.
With the ongoing US government shutdown set to beat the record for the longest shutdown, Donald Trump’s net approval in Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls has slid 5.3 points since October 19 to -12.8. In Fiftyplusone’s generic ballot average, Democrats’ lead over Republicans has changed little, and is now 44.9-41.8.
Netherlands, Bolivia and Chile past and upcoming elections
The 150 Dutch MPs are elected by national proportional representation without a threshold. At the October 29 election, the socially liberal and progressive D66 won 26 seats (up 17 since the 2023 election), the far-right PVV 26 (down 11), the conservative VVD 22 (down two), the Green Left 20 (down five), the conservative CDA 18 (up 13), the far-right JA21 nine (up eight) and the far-right FvD seven (up four).
To reach a majority, 76 seats are needed. It usually takes months after an election to form a government. Other parties have vowed not to work with the PVV, which caused the fall of the last government and this election to be held over two years early. But conservative to far-right parties won a combined 82 seats, so the next government is likely to be a conservative one.
The Bolivian presidential runoff election occurred on October 19. The Movement for Socialism (MAS) had dominated Bolivia since 2005, but at this election they won just 3.2% of the August first round vote, with the runoff contested by two conservative to right-wing candidates, with the more centrist candidate winning by 55.0-45.0. Seats in both houses of the legislature were allocated by PR using the presidential vote. The MAS won just two of 130 seats in the lower house and zero of 36 in the Senate.
Chile presidential and legislative elections will occur on November 16, with a presidential runoff on December 14. Incumbent left-winger Gabriel Boric cannot run owing to term limits. Jeannette Jara is Boric’s candidate and leads right-winger José Kast in first round polls, but other candidates are mostly right-wing, so Kast may win the runoff.
Blow out wins for the Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia, far bigger than the polls predicted beforehand.
The spin on Fox News will be most amusing.
The Orange Shitgibbon is going to go apoplectic 😎
NBC has called California Prop 50 for “Yes” at close of polls. 92% of voters support a non-partisan commission to draw boundaries.
“The spin on Fox News will be most amusing”
They will just say electoral fraud.
@mj
“It is so stupid that one state has to combat one gerrymander with another and put it to a vote.”
It is the most blatantly stupid part of the US Supreme Court’s permissiveness towards gerrymandering that it leads to the need for other states to gerrymander too.
Let’s watch how they try and justify blocking California doing this after permitting red states to do it.
herman the german says:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 3:01 pm
The Orange Shitgibbon is going to go apoplectic
中华人民共和国
Oh I like “Shitgibbon” Herman. Hope you don’t mind if I borrow the term. Though as a supporter of Gibbons (funky Gibbons) I throw no disparaging criticism their way.
California’s redistricting measure, Prop 50, has PASSED — a major win for Governor Gavin Newsom.
The Blue Tsunami is complete.
Wow! Virginia elected the first Muslim Woman ever to statewide office, as their next Lieutenant Governor.
My son showed me a Harry Sisson TikTok which highlighted Trump’s Truthiness Social bleat after the loss. Basically, the Repugs lost because HE wasn’t on the ballot!
There could be an element of truth in that, but not in the way he meant. Like, after he goes, the hole the Republicans will likely fall into will be bigly
Two cogent comments from CNN re gerrymandering:
Jeff Zeleny:
As we await the California results on redistricting, a smart Republican tells me that tonight’s results could be a warning sign — even in deep-red Texas — for the fallout from the new maps. Was it a wise idea to draw new districts based on Trump 2024 results alone? Or will it spark surprises next year?
Steve Contorno:
And to carve out more GOP seats, Republicans may have made some districts tighter. A wave election in 2026 could potentially swing even more seats to Democrats.
The spin on Fox News will be most amusing.
Fox is saying it was the economy, stupid.
Mamdani looks like he may be one of the first in a wave of people centred leaders…I think what we are seeing is generational realignment which has been brewing pretty much since 2008 but seems the dam wall may be breaking now. Lot of pressure on him to succeed though.
Fantastic news about US election results, especially NYC mayor. The Democrats opposed to Mamdani were never going to defeat Trump. The Democrats need a new generation of leaders IMO. So go Zohran!
His victory speech. He can certainly rev up a crowd.
https://www.youtube.com/live/G1NYWqxG0CM
Shogun – yes, that is always the risk with redistricting. In a wave election for the other side, you end up losing a lot more seats than you expect. In simple terms, changing 7 x GOP seats with 10% margins into 10 x GOP seats with 5% margins means they a fair number of previously safe seats become vulnerable in the right circumstances. After all, those Democratic voters (and even in somewhere like ruby Red Alabama, they are still 35-40% of the vote) have to go somewhere.
The ‘corrected’ version of the NYT that Trump will get on his desk tomorrow.
Hugoaugogo
Yes – in stretching the wall longer, it gets lower in parts. As you say, the votes have to go somewhere.
mj says:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 3:26 pm
Mamdani looks like he may be one of the first in a wave of people centred leaders…I think what we are seeing is generational realignment which has been brewing pretty much since 2008 but seems the dam wall may be breaking now. Lot of pressure on him to succeed though.
He just needs to not be a sexual predator, not a liar and not corrupt. That will take him very far.
meher babasays:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 2:02 pm
And well done to Mamdani too. Sure, he has a few silly old-style lefty ideas…
_____________________
Perhaps by US standards, in Australia he’d probably be accused of being too moderate.
C@tmommasays:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 3:35
He just needs to not be a sexual predator, not a liar and not corrupt. That will take him very far.
——-
Yeah bit weird that 42% of New Yorkers support a creepy predator but we live in interesting times.
This will help the housing crisis – one of Zohran’s promises
mj says:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 3:40 pm
C@tmommasays:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 3:35
He just needs to not be a sexual predator, not a liar and not corrupt. That will take him very far.
——-
Yeah bit weird that 42% of New Yorkers support a creepy predator but we live in interesting times.
mj, it’s the hate that consumes those people that they couldn’t vote for a Democratic Socialist Muslim Immigrant, take your pick. There’s a lot of culture war enmities wrapped up in the person of Zohran Mamdani.
Oh no! Not an exododus! That is the worst kind of dodus!
Yes Cat I’m glad hope over fear won the day for a change. But yeah GOP and their minions are going to attack him relentlessly as a communist, jihadist etc. they are shameless.
Shogun says:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 3:48 pm
Oh no! Not an exododus! That is the worst kind of dodus!
中华人民共和国
So the Bible says. Much better than the result of Revelations though which could really upset the Big Apple Cart
Ben Meiselas reports on the myriad US elections. To say he’s excited is to understate the matter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT6TiMyNFSY&t=326s
Upnorth,
I told you I’m a slack individual. Could you please give me your gmail address again so I can go on the Bludger WhatsApp? Thanks in advance. 🙂
Democrats winning, bigly.
From 2016 to now, there have been 8 mid term or off-year elections. Democrats have won 7 of them, and republicans have won 1.
Looks great for Democrats in 2026 and 2027, and if Republicans put up someone like Vance in 2028 they’ll lose in a landslide
C@tmommasays:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 4:06 pm
Upnorth,
I told you I’m a slack individual. Could you please give me your gmail address again so I can go on the Bludger WhatsApp? Thanks in advance.
中华人民共和国
upnorthisastooge@gmail.com
I have a few on the list already but waiting for you dear C@t and then we will kick things off. My tickets at tickety boo so locked and loaded for the 19th!!
My email again
upnorthisastooge@gmail.com
I rarely comment here on US politics but today gives me hope that Americans are preparing to take their country back, bring on the midterms
Fightback!
Oh yeah, there’s also the Texas 18th Congressional District special election. It’s such a safe Democratic district that the only candidates are 3 Democrats.
I wonder how long Mike Johnson refuses to have whoever wins it sworn into Congress?
Donald Trump/Elon Musk (who exhorted New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo)/Stephen Miller and the rest of the Project 2025 crew will not be pleased with these results and will already be working on their response for the 2026 Mid Terms. You can count on it.
Kirsdarkesays:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 4:24 pm
Oh yeah, there’s also the Texas 18th Congressional District special election. It’s such a safe Democratic district that the only candidates are 3 Democrats.
I wonder how long Mike Johnson refuses to have whoever wins it sworn into Congress?
The pressure on him will now be greater because there are 2 of them. He can’t keep making phoney baloney excuses anymore.
C@tmomma @ #132 Wednesday, November 5th, 2025 – 4:25 pm
Hopefully that turns out to be the case. That seems to be a pattern among the Republicans over the past year, they just refuse to play by the rules and they’re not called out on them by the media.
At least the New York Post avoided the term ‘mass exodus’. That’s one of my most unfavourite superfluous redundancies.
Edit : Corrected spelling.
Also the turnout for the NYC Mayor election has nearly doubled from 2021.
Back then it was 1.1 million voters, now it’s about 2.1 million voters.
C@tmomma says:
Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at 4:25 pm
I wonder how long Mike Johnson refuses to have whoever wins it sworn into Congress?
The pressure on him will now be greater because there are 2 of them. He can’t keep making phoney baloney excuses anymore.
I understand that neither candidate in Tx-18 will reach 50% so a runoff election is to be held in February 2026 – 11 months after the seat became vacant. Mike Johnson therefore is safe from having to admit a Democrat for a few months yet…
The myriad turkeys who lined up for a spot of the old gobble, gobble, gobble last time are not voting for Christmas this time.
kruscica @ #136 Wednesday, November 5th, 2025 – 4:50 pm
Ah, okay, I didn’t think there’d be a runoff election.
Still, it’d be interesting to see how much longer he refuses to have Adelita Grijalva sworn in.
mj: “Yeah bit weird that 42% of New Yorkers support a creepy predator but we live in interesting times.”
——————————————————————————
Someone (I forget who) once said that a sizeable proportion of Americans keep on voting for candidates from the Democratic Party machine (including nepo candidates like Andrew Cuomo) for the same reason that they keep on drinking Coca Cola. It’s not that great a product, they know it really isn’t that good for them, but they’re used to it and feel comfortable with it.
Historically, yes – the old saying was New York (both city and state) is much more Democratic, than liberal or progressive – so the machine generally gets its way, but also not exactly in this case…
According to Exit Polls, which will have been adjusted by now, in NYC
Democrats (59% of the electorate) – Mamdani 65% Cuomo 32%
Republicans (15%) – Mamdani 4% – Cuomo 73% – Sliwa 23%
Independents (26%) – Mamdani 43% – Cuomo 46% – Sliwa 9%
…So despite being a Democratic Governor, and the son of a Democratic Governor, the only reason why Cuomo got close was by getting nearly 3/4 of Republicans and almost half of the unaffiliated. Cuomo actually underperformed expectations with Democrats – he was expected to be at 35-38%.
“Project 2025 crew will not be pleased with these results and will already be working on their response for the 2026 Mid Terms. You can count on it.”
Yup, absolutley. And they will be workshopping how to do the messaging of:
“Understand this, the Democrats under Obama, Biden, Harris and Newsome, and their fellow travelers had so corrupted our Great Democracy that we thank God Our Leader Trump was wise and brave enough to knock it all down to Save it for the Real Americans who deserve it.”
Or words to that effect. 🙁
Listening to Mamdani’s victory speech, gosh he has so much charisma and energy.
This sentence stands out for me.
Great night (day) for Democrats. Not unexpected, but still good to see regardless.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2025/11/04/trump-mamdani-jewish-voters-new-york/
Trump falls back on his usual whiny and baseless bawling.
The government shutdown in Virginia probably help many federal employees to vote during the day.
Just watched Zhoran’s victory speech – watch to end if you can…/
https://youtu.be/h97drm7dLmw?si=Y_iQ0CJr3jRm3dJE
Confessions @ #144 Wednesday, November 5th, 2025 – 6:20 pm
Oh but Trump is just so manly and masculine, that can’t be right, just ask anyone in the US Media Elite who have their lips attached to his arse.
The Democrats also retained their majority on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Honestly – we know Trump will allege fraud, we all know they’ll threaten and cajole – you can’t frame your campaign around what the Orange Shitweasel does.