Blue wave: Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill & Zohran Mamdani win their races

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Blue Wave!! Back in 2017, something similar happened – one year after Donald Trump was “elected,” there was a blue-wave election in Virginia, New Jersey and across state and local races. Eight years later, and it’s the exact same reaction to Trump and his fascist bullsh-t. Here’s how everything went last night…

In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s race, but not only that – Democrats swept all of the state elections, and Democrats got a huge majority in the House of Delegates. All of the polling had Spanberger winning by a healthy margin, but not by the 15-point margin she ended up getting. Spanberger had coattails too – VA Dems were worried about the Attorney General race because Jay Jones had a BS controversy, but Jones ended up winning. Ghazala Hashmi is also the first Muslim woman in American history to hold state-wide office as Virginia’s lieutenant governor. Spanberger is also Virginia’s first woman governor!!

In New Jersey, they’re also getting a female governor – Mikie Sherrill won the governor’s race, defeating Trump-approved Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Sherill also won by a double-digit margin too. And in New York City, Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race. Mamdani becomes the first person of South Asian descent and first Muslim to be elected as New York’s mayor. He won by 50.4%, and Andrew Cuomo got 41.6% of the vote. I know Mamdani will get the bulk of the attention from mainstream media (because so many journalists live in New York), but the Virginia races are much more indicative of the mood of the country.

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104 Responses to “Blue wave: Abigail Spanberger, Mikie Sherrill & Zohran Mamdani win their races”

  1. lisa says:

    also PA voting to retain our judges was a huge deal for us

    • LBB says:

      This was a BIG deal!!!

    • Gia says:

      To Lisa, you are absolutely correct the judges getting reelected is a big deal, and even bigger deal when it comes to safe guarding the importance of the integrity of the national election in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

    • Traveller says:

      Absolutely!
      A big thanks to Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, Californians, New Jerseyans, and Virginians.
      What you all did was a very BIG DEAL.

  2. Inge says:

    All awesome AND California passed prop 50

    • Old & Tired says:

      YES!!! As a Texan who got disenfranchised in the redistricting power-grab by Trump and Abbott, I am so grateful and glad. Thank you, California!!

    • SIde Eye says:

      That was HUGE!!! Well done California, VA, New Jersey, New York, PA. Omg what an ass whooping!

  3. H says:

    Felt something this morning reading all the articles and hearing some victory speeches… felt something other than dread, embarrassment, defeat. I felt a spark of joy, hope, maybe we can stand and be true.

    • Roo says:

      H, I agree. I felt hope for the first time since election night.

      Every county in Va shifted blue. Every county.

      I pray it’s a good omen for midterm elections.

    • Indica says:

      I just felt like I could finally breathe, like I’d been holding my breath this entire election season.

    • Delphine says:

      I did an actual happy dance last night!

    • olliesmom says:

      I’m feeling some real hope here. Everyone does hate you Donny and your sucky regime.

      He’s probably throwing food this morning.

    • Mac says:

      Democrats winning in blue states and cities is expected, so I’m not overly excited about that. What I am excited about is Newsom having the guts to put Prop 50 on the ballot and the massive turnout to support it. Democrats are finally fighting back.

      • Becks1 says:

        Virginia was a surprisingly strong blue turnout though, as its not as blue a state as NJ or NYC (as a city.) so that one is nowhere near as simple as “blue states voting blue” no matter what Mike Johnson says. The NJ race was supposed to be incredibly close. It wasn’t.

        And I just saw that Mississippi Rs have lost their supermajority in their house of delegates. A texas district flipped blue.

    • Traveller says:

      Agree.

  4. ThatGirlThere says:

    It was a blue tsunami! From VA, to PA, to Detroit, to Albany NY, to Mississippi! Democrats won big. And women were the story! Not to mention prop 50 in California! (Hope I’m not thread jacking!)

    I need for democrats to main this mindset of winning and keep our foot on the gas. Those wins were a repudiation of everything DT stands for and we have to maintain to get rid of him. For the first time in 10 months I have hope.

    • Hypocrisy says:

      “For the first time in 10 months I have hope” my feelings exactly also.. the exhale after seeing the result this morning was deep.

    • lucy2 says:

      I’m allowing myself to feel a little bit of hope too.
      Here in NJ every media source was saying the race was “neck and neck”. Mikie Sherrill won by THIRTEEN POINTS. She flipped 6 counties back to blue from 2024.
      Virginia is amazing. PA kept their judges. CA yes to 50.

      I have mentioned before here that I write for postcards to voters. Every single campaign I wrote for this election WON. That has never, ever happened to me. (And we have 2 special election campaigns still going for Florida and Tennessee, if anyone wants to join in!).

      • ThatGirlThere says:

        Postcards is something I really enjoy doing for election campaigns. But after the presidential election I stepped all the way back. It was a stab in the heart and I needed the break.

        Last night was the flicker of hope & I needed it. I hope that these sparks ignite a flame that lasts.

      • calbooklover says:

        I wonder if I got one of your postcards, I received four this election lol. I would love to write postcards, but a few that I’ve looked up only send out sets in 200-250 minimum and I can’t afford the postage for that. :/

      • IdlesAtCranky says:

        @CALBOOKLOVER

        I have gotten cards from my local County Democrats office. They gave me cards & addresses in groups of 20, and the postage was pre-paid. All I had to do was write them out & mail them.

        There’s also the Card Campaign, which is not a mail campaign. It’s a favorite of Heather Cox Richardson’s —

        Card Campaign For Democracy
        https://share.google/9Uls1Vx4nKN5CdSDs

  5. To be honest I thought that there would be cheating like how trump got in but I’m very happily surprised the cheating wasn’t a part of any of these races and the blue wave hit and hit hard!!

  6. Steph says:

    They called it for Zohran at 9:03PM. Our polls closed at 9PM. We went crazy last night.

    Funny: the Secretary of State for KY tweeted that his office was getting many calls about polls being closed and had to remind his constituents they can’t vote for the NYC mayoral race. At least ppl are excited to go out and vote.

    • Miranda says:

      I was a poll worker in NYC yesterday. As soon as we cleaned up, I literally ran down the street to my dad’s place and we broke out the good whiskey to celebrate. Clinked glasses with my grandparents’ urns, lol. We’re an old socialist family and never thought anyone who even partially used that label would ever be elected.

  7. IdlesAtCranky says:

    I’m relieved, but one election does not a revolution make. We have to push back more effectively this time. We cannot let these fascists and Christian Nationalists destroy us, and they absolutely will if we allow it.

    • Heylee says:

      I agree. Feel it and look to what’s next. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts”

    • Mightymolly says:

      Absolutely this. But it’s an injection of LFG! we need right now.

    • olliesmom says:

      We’ve won a battle. We can’t relax now. We have to keep fighting everywhere all the time now. We need to look to the elections in 2026 now and set our sights on those.

    • jennifer romans says:

      Amen to that, Trump will be doubling down on his efforts to suppress the voters at Midterms, we cannot take a breather, we gained a little ground last night, but the fight is nowhere near over.

    • Betsy says:

      Accurate!

      I would say a main thing we need to do is figure out how to fix the media. All the mainstream media is just flavors of right wing, and that ain’t right. Pick one to start with, boycott the holdings of it and force them to divest sounds like a strategy but… lots of people love their amazon and would never be able to stop shopping there, for example, if we wanted to force Bezos to sell Wapo to someone not fascist.

  8. BlueSky says:

    Thank you VA for not voting for that crazy lady. And thank you NY for not electing that predator.

  9. RMS says:

    I was discharged from hospital 4 days ago after a super risky cancer treatment. I double masked, got an Uber and dragged my exhausted, broken butt to the polls in NJ to vote. I was NOT going to miss this election and my chance to leave things a little better in case my Hail Mary car-t therapy doesn’t take. Smiling into my coffee and drugs this morning because enough of us showed up to get this done!

  10. Kiera says:

    Over here in Maine we defeated some stupid voter id/absentee voting rules and passed a gun control law.

    So happy to see the results this morning for all over the country!

  11. Tessa says:

    It looks bad for Trump in mid term elections

    • lucy2 says:

      It sure does, and while I am enjoying the blue wave from yesterday, that makes me worried. He doesn’t want the election to happen, and it worries me what they’ll pull to keep from losing any power.

  12. Seraphina says:

    Madam Governor! And congrats to Lt. Gov Hashmi. She will do good work in her new position just like she did in the General Assembly! Two women at the helm!

  13. Jan says:

    At least Cincinnati re-elected their Mayor and JD Vance’s cousin/brother fell by the wayside.

  14. Normades says:

    Nice to have a good news day.

    T-rump will probably retaliate by knocking down another wing of the White House. He still thinks this is his forever home and sadly they’ll do anything stop any form of democracy. So glad to see the states stepping up.

  15. Normades says:

    Also JD’s 1/2 bro losing majorly was the icing on the cake

    • PunkyMomma says:

      You beat me to it. I posted the percentages below. Truly, the icing on this particular cake was absolutely delicious. 😊

  16. Jais says:

    Love to see it, especially in VA. My cynical self thought Cuomo might pull it out but silly me. Good.

    • Kittenmom says:

      I would not allow myself to imagine a cuomo loss – my husband’s family lives in queens and let’s just say that their political views are…disappointing at best. I was so pumped last night when the announcement was made.

  17. PunkyMomma says:

    Another win for the Democrats, and a particularly satisfying one: JD Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, was slammed in his bid to become mayor of Cincinnati. He garnered only 22% of the vote. The incumbent mayor, Aftab Pureval, walked away with 78% of the vote.

  18. Little Red says:

    In VA, the Democrats flipped many seats in the House of Delegates as well so Spanberger has a sizable majority in the state legislature.

    • Seraphina says:

      This speaks volumes to Youngkin’s administration. Madam Governor elect will be able to uphold what the general assembly passes. A haven for those women needing medical care as well.
      On a side note, Youngkin focused on critical issues this week with his executive order of bringing the Presidential Physical Fitness test back to public schools.

    • Kittenmom says:

      One of my daughters is a Virginian and I’m so thrilled that she was part of the blue wave there!

    • Betsy says:

      I hope she grinds the GOP into dust in the Commonwealth!

  19. Kiki says:

    For the first time in a year I have hope. We must continue. The Democratic party must evolve and make room for the younger stars. If everyone feels like at least their voice is heard and they can expect not just to scrape by but actually prosper, then what we are dealing with right now an be defeated. Last night my heart was pounding with something other than fear.💙

  20. Becks1 says:

    So glad to see these results roll in last night!!

    Virginia is huge. And I think that one will have the Rs nervous.

    Someone on my FB (a HS teacher who is pretty conservative but hates Trump – I don’t think she voted for Harris though, she probably did some BS like write in Reagan, like our governor did) said she was surprised by VA because apparently they have a big surplus right now. And my reaction was uhhh people care more about ICE, cities being invaded by the military and national guard, Republicans refusing to open the government, womens healthcare being attacked – and oh yeah, groceries are more expensive, the job market sucks, and Trump laid off thousands of workers in Northern Virginia.

    The culture wars aren’t quite hitting the way they used to and the Rs know that, its why they’re so desperately scrambling to gerrymander as much as possible.

    • seraphina says:

      What people tend to forget is that VA has been strong due to 8 years of Dems being in charge, Any surplus or top business ranking the Commonwealth has is due to the Dems that were in the executive branch.
      Winsome (Lose-Some) Sears was questioned on CNN I believe about the Federal employees being let go and she had the audacity to say that she was there to answer important or relevant questions – I sat there thinking, did I just hear that correctly.
      My favorite comment on FB – Rumor has it she is still speaking.

  21. AmyB says:

    Proud to be a Jersey girl!! Congrats to Mikie Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger & Zohran Mamdani!

    Starting to feel hopeful, finally – Blue Wave 💙💙

  22. Brassy Rebel says:

    It turns out starving people and bragging about it is a pretty stupid electoral strategy. Who knew? But let’s keep our foot on the gas now and give them no quarter. We must fight any attempts to rig next year’s elections. Thank you, California! If the 2026 elections are free and fair, then last night will just be the beginning of a great blue tsunami🌊!

    Democrats really are a big tent. Last night we elected a former CIA employee governor of Virginia and a democratic socialist as mayor of our largest city. We should be proud of ourselves. 🫡

  23. jferber says:

    That bitch in office threatened an executive action against California gaining more Democratic seats through a proposition. Of course, Texas did the same thing with no push back from Orange. He is ruling not by law, but by political party. No president has ever been so blatantly illegal. And yes, your president can be illegal if he is a despot.

  24. Sue says:

    A glimmer of hope.

  25. MsIam says:

    Keep going folks, keep going. We elected our first woman mayor in Detroit! The guy she ran against was saying he’d be happy to work with the National Guard if they came here. Sure Jan.

  26. Ben says:

    Mamdani victory is super important because he’s also an out and proud Socialist Democrat. Something many in the Democratic establishment didn’t have the backbone to support. He’s the much needed young new face of the Democratic Party . Also there’s nothing that brings out the abismal insecurities from the flacid orange blob than a handsome, smart, young and popular Democrat man of color.

  27. BettyD says:

    I cast my vote yesterday morning in the Georgia Public Service Commission races and we flipped the two seats up for grabs to blue! It’s small and not sexy, but me and Hank Green are both happy today.

  28. Gabby says:

    I am in tears this morning for all the right reasons. Thank you to all the voters and volunteers involved yesterday.

    NJ and VA YES!
    GA Commission flipped two seats blue and GA republicans are worried!
    California redistricting!
    And JD Vance’s half brother lost the mayor of Cincinnati. A city that once elected JERRY SPRINGER as their mayor turned down Vance’s half brother. Cherry. On. The. Cake.

  29. calbooklover says:

    Mamdani only won by a smidge 50.4% is not a mandate, so he’s not going into office with a lot of political capital. His opponents were badly flawed and disorganized, one on one against someone competent and he’d have been in trouble. He has four years and he has to really deliver.

    A new-ish (since August 2022) resident of Virginia, I am pretty excited about the results of the races here. The AG scandal had me worried. But I am so happy for Spanberger and Hashmi. The Lt. Governor in California has announced she intends to run in 2026, I hope she wins so my home state can finally have a female governor!

    • Little Red says:

      If Sliwa had dropped out, most of those votes would have likely gone to Cuomo which would have made the margin even slimmer.

      • CatGotMyTongue says:

        TBH I can hardly believe Sliwa ran. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a minute. It’s good that he did. It brought about a positive result for everyone, tho not in the way he’d intended. Go, NYC!! Go Dems everywhere!!!

  30. Betsy says:

    Kaiser, thank you for tipping your hat at Trump’s earlier “elections.” It is so obvious that there were shenanigans in 2016 and in 2024 (and in 2020, but the sheer number of voters mailing their votes in upended the GOP’s fascistic plans) and I feel like I’m taking crazy pills that it never gets mentioned. What’s a few hundred bomb threats called in from Russia? Who cares that a notoriously unpopular old freak boat managed to win all seven swing states just outside the margin for an automatic recount?

    Last night’s wins were amazing and it felt weird not to be voting for anything (my town and state literally had nothing for me to vote in), so just watching the election happen was odd but obviously welcome with the way it turned out.

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