Tangle - Democrats sweep the 2025 elections.

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

On Tuesday, voters cast ballots in the first election cycle since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term. Democrats won the most closely watched races decisively, including Virginia’s and New Jersey’s gubernatorial elections, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court retention vote, and the New York City mayoral election. Furthermore, several ballot measures passed decisively. Californians passed Proposition 50 to approve mid-decade redistricting, Mainers voted down a voter ID ballot measure and approved the creation of a “red flag” law, and Texans amended their state constitution to ban noncitizen voting and codify parental rights.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think this year’s election results portend for next year’s elections? Let us know.Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. Today's episode, we are going to be talking about the 2025 election results. It was Election Day in America yesterday, a very big day. Honestly, I mean, I'll talk about this in my take. Pretty dominant night for Democrats. If you are a Republican operator, I think there's some alarm bells going off.

If you're a Democratic operator, I think, you know, you're happy, but you should probably do a quick. You know, gut check, take a breath, off cycle election, political fortunes change quick, that kind of thing. But this is, you know, a year after Trump got elected, this is a good signal for Democrats who want to see some power rested back from the kind of Republican trifecta that they're witnessing right now. So we're going to talk about why, share the results from many of the races that we covered in our preview yesterday. and then I've got 15 thoughts in my take. Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, a UPS cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Louisville Airport

killing at least nine people, including all three crew members on board. The crash also caused widespread damage to an industrial corridor adjacent to the airport with 11 injuries reported on the ground. Number two, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments and a challenge to President Donald Trump's use of emergency powers to impose tariffs on U.S. trading partners. Number three, a bipartisan group of senators is reportedly in advanced discussions over a deal to reopen the government. The potential agreement includes a continuing resolution to fund the government and full-year appropriations bills. Separately, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy

said portions of U.S. airspace may be closed to air traffic if the government shutdown continues into next week due to air traffic controller shortages. Number four, the Trump administration said it will comply with a court order to use emergency funds to disperse partial benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. On Wednesday, President Trump had suggested that he would only send out the benefits after the government's shutdown ended. And number five, Hamas returned the body of the last U.S. citizen held in Gaza. Israel says seven more hostages bodies remain in the enclave.

Overnight, a Democratic sweep in high-profile elections nationwide. Together, we will usher in a generation of change. With this vote, you guys just scream from the rooftops. In 2025, Virginia, Georgia, chose pragmatism over partisanship. On Tuesday, voters cast ballots in the first election cycle since the start of President Donald Trump's second term. Democrats won the most closely watched races decisively, including Virginia's and New Jersey's gubernatorial elections, Pennsylvania's Supreme

Court retention vote, and the New York City mayoral election. Furthermore, several ballot measures passed decisively. Californians passed Proposition 50 to approve mid-decade redistricting, Maynors voted down a voter ID ballot measure and approved the creation of a red flag law, and Texans amended their state constitution to ban non-citizen voting and codify parental rights. You can read our preview of the key elections and ballot measures with a link in today's episode description. In Virginia, Democrats flipped three key Republican seats. Former Representative Abigail Spanberger will become the state's first female governor after defeating Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earl Sears by a 15% margin of victory.

State Senator Gazala Hashmi defeated talk radio host and political strategist John Reed for lieutenant governor, 56% to 44%, and former state delegate Jay Jones won the race for Attorney General over current Attorney General Jason Miaris. Jones ran several points behind fellow Democrats Spanberger and Hashmi, but ended up winning by over six points in a race that was marked by controversy. Furthermore, Democrats increased their majority in the 100-member Virginia House of Delegates, going from 51 to 64 seats. In New Jersey, Representative Mikey Sherrill won the governor's race defeating former state general assembly member Jack Cheaterrelli. Polling suggested a competitive race in the final weeks, but Cheryl won by 13%. In New York City, state assemblyman Zora Mamdani won the mayoral election decisively, garnering over 50% of the vote in a race against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo,

an activist and radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa. Mamdani, 34, defeated Cuomo in the Democratic primary in June in what was considered a major upset, and he now becomes D. City's first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. Voters also passed three ballot measures aimed at streamlining the development of new housing in the city. In Pennsylvania, voters sent three Democrats back to the state Supreme Court for another 10-year term in the retention election, maintaining Democrats' five-to-two majority on the court. In Texas' special election for the 18th Congressional District, no candidate reached the 50 percent threshold to win in the first round of voting, but Harris County

attorney Christian Menafee and former Houston City Council member Amanda Edwards have advanced to an automatic runoff. In Minneapolis, no candidate received a majority of votes in the city's mayoral election, sending the ranked choice contest to a second round of tabulations. Incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey received 42% of the first round votes, and state Senator Omar Fethe received 32%. In California, voters approved Proposition 50, or the Election Ringing Response Act, which authorizes the state legislature to redraw its congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. The redistricting is expected to net Democrats up to five additional seats in the U.S. House, though the map will only be used until the state's independent redistricting commission

creates its scheduled map in 2030 using new census data. Finally, in Colorado, voters passed a proposition that will lower the cap on tax deductions for individuals earning 300,000 or more per year in order to raise additional funds to support a free breakfast and lunch program for public school students. Today, we'll break down the results of these major races with views from the right and the left, and then Isaac's tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right acknowledges Democrats' strong knight, and many say the GOP needs to

refocus its economic pitch. Some argue the Democrats' leftward shift will be a losing strategy in the long run. Others say Republicans need to begin preparing for a post-Trump world. The New York Post-Editorial board wrote about what the results mean for Dems and the GOP. Election Day 2025 was a good one for less radical Democrats, or at least Dems who play moderate, as Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Cheryl triumphed in Virginia and New Jersey, emphasizing their pragmatism, not their progressivism. Yes, Zoro Mamdani won in New York City, but the Democratic line is a near guarantee of victory, the board said. We'd advise national Republicans to avoid obsessing about Mamdani, at least until he actually produces disastrous results here. With control of the White House and, however thin,

both halves of Congress, Republicans need to be running on their own accomplishments, showing the voters what they're for, not simply pointing at boogeymen. Though the GOP can sometimes win statewide in Jersey and Virginia, both have become blue states. It's no real surprise that candidates who ran hard against President Donald Trump won in both, the board wrote. Republicans' challenge in next year's midterms will be to draw out the radicalism that Cheryl and Spanberger downplayed. Democrats nationally are still locked into lunacy on social policy, from DEI to trans issues, and bizarro boutique obsessions like killing U.S. energy production in the name of fighting climate change. In Fox News, Mark Penn said Democrats win the moment, but

left-wing tilt threatens their future. Democrats roared back in the 2025 off-year elections, and that's no surprise given widespread voter discontent with the economy and the political system in general. Democratic-leaning areas that flipped to Republicans in 2024 return to the party this year, Penn wrote. President Donald Trump was not on the ballot, but Republicans inherited a difficult situation from the Biden administration. Most voters believe the economy remains weak and that they are stuck in an inflationary spiral, one that may be lower than it was under Biden, but still remains their top concern. The big issue now for the Democratic Party is how far left it will drift under the influence of Democratic Socialists gaining ground within the party and being accepted

by much of its leadership, Penn said. The Democratic Socialists of America's agenda is far removed from mainstream Democratic values, with calls for open borders and the abolition of private property. Mamdani will likely prove a gift to Republicans, and the 28 presidential primaries could become a defining battle for the direction of the Democratic Party. On his subcommittee, stack, Eric Erickson suggested lame duck status begins to kick in today. It was a bad night for the GOP. Trump voters vote for Trump. Democrats have become so radicalized against Trump that there is no local politics anymore. Everything is defined by the R or D next to one's name. And in off-year elections, etc., that is very bad for the incumbent party, Erickson wrote. Donald Trump will start becoming a lame

duck sooner than he expected. He cannot turn out the vote unless he is on the ballot and he will never be on the valid again, so the jockeying will begin to replace him. It's also worth pointing out the New York, New Jersey, and even Virginia are not exactly red states. And because of the government shutdown, federal workers in Virginia have had a lot of idle time to vote, and they lean Democrat. So there's only so much you can read into these results, Erickson said. You won't hear about Texas, where every Republican offered constitutional amendment passed, and even Austin's progressive voter base rejected a tax hike. That suggests that the Blue Texas fantasy of next year should be down on arrival, but the press won't be able to help it.

All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left celebrates the results, and some say Mamdani's victory should be a model for other Democrats. Many suggest Democrats' success bodes well for the midterms. Others say voters made their displeasure with Trump known. In Jacobin, Eric Blanc said Mamdani's victory points the way forward.

Tonight's historic win proves to skeptics wrong. Despite millions of dollars poured into billionaire-bought attack ads, and despite Trump's attempts to blackmail voters into backing Andrew Cuomo, New Yorkers are sending a 34-year-old Democratic Socialist to Gracie Mansion with a strong mandate to make our city affordable again, Blancro. It turns out things don't need to just keep getting worse and worse. At a moment of deepening authoritarian attacks, astronomical economic inequality, and Democratic Party disarray, the shockwaves of Mamdani's political

earthquake will be felt nationwide. Zoran was a credible messenger for this transformative vision because he wasn't beholden to corporate cash or part of the decrepit democratic establishment. The fact that Mamdani is a democratic socialist and that he refused to throw Palestinians under the bus signaled his authentic outsider status to millions of New Yorkers who are used to mainstream politicians saying one thing and doing another, Blanc said. Like Bernie Sanders before him, and very much unlike candidates like Kamala Harris, when Zoron talked about workers versus billionaires, you knew he meant it. In Bloomberg, Ronald Brownstein called the results an unmistakable warning to Republicans.

With resounding wins in Tuesday's Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, Democrats substantially repaired the most important cracks that President Donald Trump made in their coalition in the 2024 election. That gives Democrats' reason for optimism, Brownstein, Ron. Democrats, Mikey Cheryl in New Jersey and Abigail Spanberger in Virginia regained significant ground among two groups where Trump made noteworthy advances last year, working-class people of color and young people, according to both media exit polls and county-by-county election results.

The two Democrats also improved among college-educated voters. The results signaled that exuberant Republican predictions after 2024 that Trump had engineered a durable realignment, particularly among working-class Hispanic, black, and Asian-American voters, were premature. Instead, Tuesday's results signal that many voters in all the constituencies that moved toward Trump in 2024 remain within reach for both parties. Moreover, the same economic frustrations that boosted Trump among those groups last year are buffeting him and other Republicans now, Brownstein said. The convincing Democratic wins reinforced the core truth that attitudes about

the incumbent president are now the driving force in off-year elections. In the New York Times, as Jamel Bowie wrote, Trump is an albatross. As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump is a phenomenally effective vote winner, capable of turning out millions of otherwise infrequent voters to deliver the White House and Congress to the Republican Party. But as president, Trump has been an albatross around the neck of his party, Bowie said. Although voters across Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City were most concerned with the particulars of their respective states and localities, there was also no question that this was also a chance to register their discontent in a way that might send a message to Washington and the rest of America.

Supporters of the president, my pooh-poo, the results as unrepresentative. This isn't a presidential electorate, they might say. There are different circumstances. But New Jersey and New York City both had high turnout for off-year elections. Virginia had a slight increase. In other words, it really is the case that Trump specifically, in his capacity as president, inspires ferocious energy in opposition against him among a large part of the voting public, we wrote.

The results, then, are a marked contrast to the accommodation, capitulation, and outright surrender of prominent individuals and institutions in the face of Trump's demands. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the right, which brings us to my take. So yesterday's results just span far too much ground to cover with one cohesive take, so instead here are 15 assorted thoughts on last night. Number one, Democrats won every major race, often by huge margins, which provides some clarity on what their new coalition could look like. A group of voters opposed to Trump and concerned about affordability.

I took two lessons from these wins. One, the fallout from Trump's first 10 months in office is clearly motivating the left. And two, it's time for Republicans to start focusing on the affordability crisis they said they were going to solve. Marjorie Dela Green might be on to something. Number two, plenty of people, including me, thought the New Jersey governor's election was going to be close. Instead, it turned into the loudest screaming alarm of the night for the right. Remember, Trump somehow made the state competitive in 2024. After Biden carried New Jersey by 16 points,

Trump got to within six points of Harris in 2024. Democrat and Mikey Sherrill ran a totally flat and unconvincing campaign. She couldn't even answer basic questions about making millions of dollars on stock trades, and yet she won decisively by 13 points. Her election marks the first time since 1961 that the state has had a governor from the same party for three consecutive terms.

Not only is New Jersey not going red, it's now historically blue. Number three, Virginia's and Georgia's results were pretty remarkable, too. Virginia provided the first tangible blowback to cuts to the federal workforce from Doge and the ongoing shutdown. As one Democratic strategist put it,

it turns out that firing half of Northern Virginia for no reason might not be super popular in Northern Virginia. But it wasn't just federal workers, nearly the entire state lurched leftward. As Democrats flipped the governor's mansion and outperformed Biden and Harris in pretty much every county.

In Georgia, the results were just as stark. Democrats won two non-federal statewide elections for the first time since 2006. If I were a Republican strategist, the results here and in New Jersey would be keeping me up at night. Number four, Jay Jones was elected Attorney General in Virginia despite his text messaging scandal,

and I have to say, I'm not surprised. Because of Trump, Republicans have been dismissing character deficits in favor of political unity for a decade. Remember the bumper stickers? I'd take mean tweets and $2 gas right now. Well, here you go. A lot of people will take mean text messages in fighting Trump right now, or mean text on their federal job, or stability from the government, or even just political power. This is why people like me have been calling for the right and left to police their own. It is not a great sign of the times.

Number five, this is a stop and pause moment for Republicans that I predict will cause two immediate reactions. One, there will be a flurry of activity to reopen the government given that Democrats withstood the political blowback and Republicans now hear the alarm bells everywhere. And two, many Republicans will reconsider the gerrymandering wars. The shifts in places like Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia are so notable that it could genuinely make them rethink the wisdom of trying to gerrymander more districts where Trump had, say, a five to six point edge, but now looks beatable. By attempting to redraw those districts, Republicans could be overreaching and putting themselves more at risk in 2026. Lots of commentators are already pointing this out.

Number six, I'm sure many Democrats are buzzing right now, but they shouldn't get out over their skis. Remember, these were off-cycle elections where across the board, Democrats had a lot of advantages. In 2021, Glenn Yunkin, winning the governor's race in Virginia, was supposed to be the first sign of a red wave. He was supposed to provide the playbook for how Republicans can win in Virginia. None of that materialized. Not the 2022 red wave and not even a conservative Republican governor in Virginia. The rule always end forever and as I said after Trump won is that political fortunes can change in a hurry.

Number seven, Mamdani winning in New York City will dominate much of the news because so many members of the media, including on the right, are from New York or have roots there. I personally think the hysteria is totally overblown, and it is hysteria. ISIS did not endorse him. He will not be deported. He is not a raging anti-Semite.

He is a leftist with brown skin who speaks some Arabic. He doesn't have to be the big scary thing. But yes, his policies are far left and often socialist. And the big problem for Democrats nationally is that Republicans are going to give Mamdani the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez treatment, making him the face, of the party's true socialist intentions. Number eight, let's pause for a moment to talk about Mamdani's agenda. He campaigned on freezing rent, free child care, government-run grocery stores, and making

New York a sanctuary city. I think many of these policies are bad and unrealistic, but it isn't an evil agenda. Some of the attacks against him, like calling him a radical Muslim who hates Jews, are just overtly racist and Islamophobic. But most, like fearing New York will soon be a failed communist state, failed to take into account how difficult it will be for him to implement his policies. I think in four years, we're going to look back on the commentary about Momdani, the calls for his deportation, the obituaries about New York, and realize how absurd and over

the top it all was. He's inexperienced, and he can't just flip switches to make things happen. I expect he will be facing a constant uphill battle, get very little done, and that New York will be just fine. Number nine, on the other hand, I also dismiss many of the fears coming from the left about Trump's second term as hysterical, and look how that turned out. Maybe the fears I'm dismissing from the right will end up coming to pass, and I'll look slow to the punch again in one or two years. It's possible. And what's more, number 10, Mamdani is being dealt a great hand. One undersold story of this election is that Mayor Eric Adams, however corrupt, has actually overseen some good years. Unemployment is low and improving. Housing production is up. Violent crime is down. Sanitation is

improving. Bike lanes are expanding and public school students are testing up after the city implemented phonics-based learning. It's pretty remarkable that Mamdani won in that environment, but that's what you get when the competition is someone as detestable and as bad a record as Andrew Cuomo. If a normal, moderate Democrat or Republican had run against Momdani, maybe he would have won. After all, Cuomo lost by single digits, with Curtis Sliwa taking 7% of the vote. Also, last night, New York City voters approved three proposals to rewrite housing laws and make it easier to build in the city. Momdani has an incredible opportunity to build, literally on these wins.

I hope he doesn't screw it up in America's greatest city. Number 11. In Pennsylvania, all three Democratic Supreme Court justices were retained, meaning Democrats' majority is secure until the next election in another two years. removing judges is rare, so this is what I expected. A more interesting signal came from my hometown in Bucks County, where a few years ago Republicans had flipped a couple big school boards on a message of fighting wokeness. Democrats retook control of two of those school boards in 2003. Last night, they removed all Republicans from both. In one of the most important swing states, Democrats have a popular governor, control of the high court, and are taking local power back

in purple counties. Number 12. Per NBC exit polling in Virginia, Spanberger was plus 14 with 18 to 29 year old men. In New Jersey, Cheryl was plus 10. In New York City, Momdani was plus 40, with 18 to 29 year old men. We were getting some early signals that a populist left coalition of young voters could be rising into a participatory voting age, and I'm not entirely sure the current political class is ready for it. Number 13, Prop 50 passed in California, and I'm really not sure how to feel about it. On principles alone, I'm upset. Gerrymandering is a bipartisan scourge, and I want the worst gerrymanders across the country undone.

At the same time, we have a president with control of Congress who wants and insists on a gerrymandering war, and I don't think it'd be wise to just cede the field to him without a fight. Otherwise, the people pushing gerrymandering the hardest will win and never lose control. To me, the only off-ramp is that both sides gerrymander so much, they realize how bad they've made things and then mutually agree to back off and undo the damage. We might be a few years or more from that, but I genuinely don't see how we get to that off-ramp otherwise, especially not when Trump is explicitly calling for this fight. Number 14, it's not an exaggeration to say that Republicans in the right lost every single race they were invested in last night. When I try to communicate the dangers of Trump's excesses to the right, as Associate Auditor

Audrey Moorhead recently did for the left, I give the message I already said in point six. Political fortunes can change in a hurry. Any power you exercise now against your perceived enemies in this country will one day be exercised against you. Trump won on the back of a promise to lower inflation and address the immigration crisis. Things are getting more expensive and the Obamacare cliff isn't even here yet. The legal immigration has plummeted, but the enforcement has produced some extremely unpleasant scenes. Simply put, the president isn't yet winning voters over on the agenda he promised,

and he's also activating his political opposition with his power grabs. This is a recipe for a midterm blowout. Number 15, if there's any good news for Republicans in all of this, it's twofold. Number one, if or when Mamdani's policies fail or fail to get implemented, he will be a great new foil. They'll make him the face of the left to scare off moderates and independence, and it will probably work. Number two, Democrats still don't have a strategic path forward. The wins are helpful, but now what? Embrace the young self-proclaimed Democratic Socialists or the blue dog moderates, like the underwhelming Mikey Sherrill, who's also a military

vet, and Abigail Spanberger, a pretty milk-toast centrist. I honestly have no idea. All of this is even more interesting considering Trump. Republicans have been clearly unable to turn out the vote without him, and once he leaves office, Democrats will lose their number one enemy. The 2028 vacuum is going to be enormous. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod. I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Thanks, Isaac.

Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. On Sunday, Major General Yavat Tomar Yerushalami, the former top lawyer in the Israeli military, was reported missing, then found and arrested on suspicion of leaking and other serious criminal offenses. Two days prior, Tomar Yerushalami resigned from her post after admitting that she approved the leak of the video allegedly showing Israeli soldiers abusing a Palestinian detainee. The video caused international outcry and five soldiers shown in the footage

were charged with aggravated abuse and causing Syria's bodily harm. However, Tomir Yurushulami has drawn sharp criticisms from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who called the leak perhaps the most severe public relations attack that the state of Israel has experienced since its establishment.

The BBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. decision-desk H.Q called the mayoral election for Zohram-Mam-Dani three minutes after polls closed in New York City. Decision-desk H.Q. called the gubernatorial election for Mikey Sherrill, 13 minutes after polls closed in New Jersey. Decision-desk HQ called the gubernatorial election for Abigail Spanberger, 19 minutes after polls closed in Virginia. Approximately 2 million votes were cast in New York City's election before polls closed, the highest turnout in a mayoral election since 1969. The approximate turnout in the city's 2021 mayoral election was 1.15 million.

Mamdani's margin of victory over former Governor Andrew Cuomo was 8.8% with 91% of votes tabulated. New York City Mayor Eric Adams' margin of victory over Curtis Sleewa in the city's 2021 mayoral election was 39.5%. The number of seats flipped by Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates is 13. And Virginia Democrats projected majority in the House of Delegates after the election, is 64 to 36. And last but not least, our have a nice day story. When Kevin Tang was eight,

his grandmother fell at home without the family's immediate knowledge. By the time help arrived, she had permanent brain damage. A few years later, Kevin's grandfather also suffered a serious fall. Now 13 years old, Kevin used those experiences

as motivation to invent a fall detection system. Using a network of cameras placed around the house to monitor movement, Kevin's invention can determine if someone has fallen and needs help. The creation earned $25,000 and the title of Americans' top young scientist for 2025. Most importantly, Kevin says he's committed to making the product free or affordable to anyone who needs it. USA Today has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode.

As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a great day, y'all. Peace.

Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lull. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback

and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.