Thursday, November 6, 2025

Five takeaways from Election Night 2025

Democrats completed a near-sweep of Tuesday night's elections, winning bigly in places like Virginia, New Jersey, and Georgia — as well as safer, bluer areas.

So what is Washington learning from going over last night's results?

Inside Washington's Eric Garcia broke it down for us this morning:

1: Turnout. Democrats were bolstered on Tuesday by record turnout that blew past off-year elections from cycles past. Zohran Mamdani, in New York City, was the first mayoral candidate to surpass one million votes since 1969.

Hear that, Congress? Those alarm bells should be ringing, as Republicans prepare to defend twin majorities next year. All signs point to voter participation remaining high all through 2026.

2: Affordability, affordability, affordability. Democrats of all stripes, not just Mamdani, hammered home messages centered on bringing down Americans' cost of living.

Will Donald Trump and his Republican allies listen? So far, the only talk of fighting high prices from the White House has been just that: talk. The president, speaking in Miami today, claimed falsely that gas prices were at their lowest point in a decade. But unlike his other falsehoods, that's one voters can fact-check all by themselves.

3: Transgender attacks fail to resonate. Democrats on a Human Rights Campaign press call Tuesday were positively glowing about the party's ability to withstand attacks on the issue of acceptance of transgender Americans.

"What voters made clear yesterday is that they will reject campaigns built on hatred. They will reject campaigns that seek to divide us. And they will reject candidates that offer no solutions for the cost of living crisis this country is facing, and instead will focus on targeting a small group of vulnerable people," said Rep. Sarah McBride, the only openly transgender member of Congress.

"We saw millions of dollars in anti-trans attacks in Virginia. But we saw governor-elect Spanberger, there, respond. We saw her defend her trans constituents."

Spanberger won by nearly 15 points.

4: The center-left has woken up. Democrats who won last night weren't just from the DSA-aligned left wing of the party. They were also center-left moderates who found ways to win back voters who'd voted Republican in 2024, a feat much different in places like Georgia and Virginia.

Having watched their faction hand the Democrats a brutal defeat last year thanks to the collapse of the Biden campaign, moderates are now ready to prove that they've got some fight in them.

Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist formerly of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, told Inside Washington that Democrats cannot let the word “affordability” slip from their lips.

“There is no one way to be Democrat,” she said via text message. “We need people like Zohran Mamdani who can inspire and bring out new voters who usually sit out off-years. We also need leaders like Abigail Spanberger who will go into the reddest areas and convert Trump voters to support them. What they share in common is that they met voters where they are and talked about the number one issue in people’s lives: affordability.”

5: Democrats are still making up ground with Latino voters.

On the surface, it looks like Democrats made inroads with Latinos after Trump cut into their margins to build a multi-racial working-class coalition. New Jersey was ground zero for that in 2024 as he flipped the heavily Hispanic Passaic County.

Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, explains that there is more work to do to repair this crucial part of the Obama-Biden coalition.

“That’s the big story no one ever talks about,” he texted Inside Washington. “Pundits think half of us are voting for Republicans and the other half is voting for Democrats. What’s really going on is half of Latinos are voting against Democrats and the other half are voting against Republicans.”

Read more here:

By John Bowden

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Florida man arrested by FBI for threatening lives of Trump foes in online comments section

A 57-year-old Florida resident is facing federal charges for allegedly threatening to assassinate various government officials in the comments section of right-wing blog The Gateway Pundit, according to an affidavit reviewed by The Independent's Justin Rohrlich.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY

We got our asses handed to us.

Vivek Ramaswamy, MAGAworld candidate for governor in Ohio and former presidential contender, on last night's results.

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