November 05, 2025 11:08 AM UTC

Whoa! Democrats Win Virtually EVERYTHING on Tuesday

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• by: Colorado Pols

Whoa.

No, seriously: WHOA!

It would be hard to overstate how bigly Democrats won on Tuesday, both here in Colorado and throughout the country, but we’re going to try! The 2025 election was a MASSIVE repudiation of all things MAGA and Donald Trump that should send shivers down the spine of every Republican running for something in 2026.

How well did the 2025 election pan out for Democrats? Let us count the ways, beginning here in Colorado…

Big Wins for Two Ballot Measures

The two statewide ballot measures — Props. LL and MM — breezed to victory on Tuesday. Proposition LL (expanding funding for the Healthy School Meals for All program) is currently winning with nearly 65% of the vote, while Proposition MM (raising taxes on the rich to pay for school meals) is ahead 58-42. Both measures were approved for the ballot late this summer, but despite the time crunch voters had no problem voting YES on both. All of the recent headlines about President Trump refusing to use emergency funds to pay for SNAP (food stamp) benefits no doubt played a role as well. Iowa State Rep. J.D. Scholten explained the difference between his state and ours:

From Bad to Worse for the Colorado GOP

Republicans have been getting creamed in Colorado for the last decade or so. Things look so bad in 2026 that Republicans really aren’t even bothering with serious challenges in any of the five statewide races. The last refuge of Republican electoral success in Colorado had been in local municipal races and school board contests, but even those seats are slipping away.

In Aurora, where Republicans made certain that voters knew this was not really a “nonpartisan” election, MAGA nutball Danielle Jurinsky couldn’t even finish in the top three in the race for two at-large city council seats. Fellow Republican city council member Steve Sundberg also appears to be on the road to defeat. Progressive candidates in Aurora appear to be on track to win every contested city council race.

Perhaps the biggest head-turning results came in Douglas County, where moderate/progressive candidates swept aside right-wing Republicans in every school board contest.

Every. Single. One.

Big Wins in California, New Jersey, and Virginia

Democrats had no trouble winning the two big races for Governor. Abigail Spanberger will be the first female governor of Virginia after a 15-point drubbing of Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears. In New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill hammered Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 13 points. Some pundits, including Nate Silver, had predicted that New Jersey was on its way to becoming a swing state; instead, Democrats expanded their ranks into a supermajority in the state assembly. Democrats also now hold a supermajority in the Virginia House of Delegates, which is a big deal considering that Virginia is likely to embark on its own redistricting efforts to counter the Trump-demanded redistricting in Texas and other conservative states.

And on the topic of redistricting, voters in California overwhelmingly gave lawmakers the go-ahead to craft new Congressional maps ahead of 2026, which should all but cancel out recent Republican gains from redistricting in Texas. Proposition 50 is currently winning by a 64-36 margin with an estimated 75% of ballots counted. President Trump was very calm about this:

Sure thing, guy.

When he wasn’t threatening nonsense lawsuits, Trump acknowledged that economic worries and the federal government shutdown really hurt Republican candidates:

“I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” Trump said of the election results. “I don’t think it’s good. I’m not sure it was good for anybody.”

It was good for a lot of people, actually. Another of Trump’s sworn enemies was elected Mayor of New York, but not by the margin that self-professed socialists would have hoped. Zohran Mamdani just barely eked out 50% of the vote, which makes it difficult for far-left Democrats to claim that Mamdani’s politics will work outside of New York City.

Oh, and voters in Virginia chose Democrat Jay Jones to be the state’s next Attorney General despite a text message controversy.

When We Say Democrats Won EVERYWHERE…

Democrats even won two statewide races in Georgia on the Public Service Commission, with both Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson capturing more than 60% of the vote. Sure, seats on the Public Service Commission are not particularly sexy, but consider this: Prior to Tuesday, Democrats hadn’t won a non-federal statewide race in Georgia since 2006.  

Voters in Pennsylvania retained three Supreme Court judges despite millions of dollars spent against them by right-wing donors. Democrats in Mississippi broke a Republican supermajority in the state legislature.

Cory Bowman, the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance, was crushed in the race for Mayor of Cincinnati. Democrat Aftab Pureval earned nearly 80% of the vote.

Tuck Frump

There is no question that the 2025 election was a massive middle finger to President Trump.

As POLITICO explains:

President Donald Trump’s maximalist revenge tour of a second term ran headlong into its first electoral pushback, as voters in crucial off-year races registered their staunch opposition to him…

…Voters used the few races to send him a message, according to exit polls, which showed that more than half saw their vote as anti-Trump, according to CNN.

Trump found himself under water in New Jersey, where 55 percent disapproved of him, and in Virginia, where 56 percent gave him a thumbs down, according to NBC. In the blue bastions of New York City, amid its mayoral race, and California, amid its Proposition 50 campaign to redistrict its congressional maps, his disapproval rose to 69 percent and 63 percent.

Oof.

Republicans who continue to blindly support Trump are also in deep doo-doo in 2026 (we’re looking at you, Rep. Gabe Evans); exit polls show that Democrats did very well with younger voters, which was a big area of concern after the 2024 election.

We’ll leave the final word to Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who said this to The Washington Post:

“We were the barometer tonight for what the American public is feeling one year into Trump term two. We basically sent a message that we can do a hell of a lot better than we’re doing.”

Just in time for 2026.