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 — though not yet certainty — that they are on track for a solid recovery in the 2026 midterm election.

Democrats Mikie Sherrill 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, essentially matching the party’s 2024 showing with White voters and improving among non-White voters with a four-year degree, according to the Voter Poll conducted by SRSS for a consortium of media organizations. All those groups also provided huge margins for Proposition 50, the redistricting ballot initiative backed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, which passed convincingly in California.

Even the most optimistic Democrats don’t contend that Tuesday’s results prove the party has solved its problems with those voting blocs. Since the 1970s, New Jersey and Virginia have almost always elected governors from the party that lost the presidential race the previous year. And Trump’s 2024 gains among blue-collar minority voters were concentrated among irregular voters who are the least likely to show up for an odd-year election.

But the Democratic wins do signal 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.

The convincing Democratic wins reinforced the core truth that attitudes about the incumbent president are now the driving force in off-year elections. Analysts in both parties have wondered for months whether the public dissatisfaction with Democrats that is evident in poll after poll might offset the mounting doubts about Trump’s performance. On Tuesday, the answer was clear: In the Voter Poll, more voters in both New Jersey and Virginia expressed a negative view than a positive view of the Democratic Party, even as they convincingly elected Democrats. Voters’ discontent with the incumbent president clearly outweighed their doubts about the party out of the White House — continuing a pattern that has become consistent (though rarely discussed) in off-year elections.

In Tuesday’s major contests, Republicans lost ground with each group where Trump established a key beachhead last year. In Virginia, the shift was most visible in the four big, well-educated and racially diverse suburban counties outside Washington (Fairfax, Arlington, Prince William and Loudoun). The Democratic margin in those counties had sagged in 2021, when Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race, and in 2024, when Kamala Harris eked out a surprisingly narrow win. Spanberger far exceeded the Democrats’ vote share in either of those elections across all four counties. (Almost unimaginably, Spanberger won those counties by an even larger combined vote total than Harris did in 2024, when far more people voted statewide.) Compared to 2024, Democrats also rebuilt their margins in such heavily Black Virginia communities as Petersburg, Portsmouth and Norfolk, and exit polls showed Spanberger holding Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears to 34% of Hispanic voters, well below the 40% Trump carried there last year.

In New Jersey, Republican Jack Ciattarelli, who narrowly lost the governorship in 2021, saw several of the New Jersey counties with the highest share of college graduates — including Monmouth, Morris, Somerset and especially Bergen — tilt back toward the Democrats, compared to Trump’s performance in 2024. Even more important, Sherrill rebuilt the Democratic margins compared to 2024 in counties with large Hispanic and/or Black populations, including Camden, Middlesex, Mercer (Trenton), Hudson (Jersey City) and Essex (Newark). Big gains among Hispanics allowed Trump in 2024 to become the first GOP presidential nominee in the 21st century to carry Passaic County. Sherrill was winning 55% there with about three-fourths of the vote counted. In the Voter Poll, only 32% of Hispanics supported Ciattarelli, way down from Trump’s 43% in 2024.

And in both states, Democrats ran much better than Harris among all non-White voters without a college degree — the group whose movement toward Trump was Exhibit A in the putative GOP case for realignment.

For Democrats, the most reassuring aspect of Tuesday’s results may have been Trump’s role in the outcome. Spanberger and Sherrill both bound Earle-Sears and Ciattarelli tightly to Trump, insisting that each would place fealty to the president over loyalty to the state. (The Republican candidates helped this charge stick, refusing to criticize Trump even for actions that directly hurt their states, such as the federal government layoffs in Virginia or the cancellation of federal funding for a major transit tunnel in New Jersey.) In California, supporters of Proposition 50 portrayed the measure, above all, as an opportunity to push back against the president. Jay Jones, the Democratic Attorney General candidate in Virginia, who was facing a ferocious scandal over deeply offensive texts fantasizing about political violence, recovered enough to win by centering his campaign on promises to fight Trump in court.

Those arguments helped Democrats surf a backlash against Trump across these blue-leaning states. In both Virginia and New Jersey, about 55% of voters said they disapproved of Trump’s job performance as president, and over 9-in-10 of those disapprovers voted Democratic in the governor’s race, according to the Voter Poll. (Even the scandal-scarred Jones carried 87% of voters who disapproved of Trump.) In California, 64% disapproved and over 9-in-10 of them supported Proposition 50. Zohran Mamdani, too, relied almost entirely on voters who disapproved of Trump in his comfortable win in the New York City mayoral race.

Those results closely tracked the trend in in off-year elections over roughly the past 15 years, when around 85% to 90% of people who disapproved of the incumbent president have usually voted for the other party’s candidates in House, Senate and gubernatorial elections, according to exit polls and other Election Day surveys. (In Virginia, for instance, Democrat Ralph Northam won 87% of those who disapproved of Trump when he captured the governorship in 2017, while Youngkin carried 90% of those who disapproved of President Joe Biden when he flipped the office in 2021.)

Tuesday’s outcome suggests that despite the public’s clear concerns about Democrats, attitudes about Trump will likely remain the most important factor in next year’s midterm election. That will help Republicans in reliably red states where Trump is popular. But it also means the GOP will face a tough environment everywhere else — unless Trump can rebuild his approval rating, which has skidded to the lowest point of his second term on persistent frustration over prices and growing concern about his deportation agenda and threats to democratic safeguards.

Trump’s grip on the GOP is so tight that these sweeping Democratic wins aren’t likely to stir much questioning within his party. But the recoil from Trump’s belligerent second term was forceful on Tuesday — and not only among partisan Democrats, but among many swing voters. The results sent Republicans an unmistakable warning signal about 2026, whether or not they are willing to listen.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ronald Brownstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He is a CNN analyst and the author or editor of seven books.

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