How Democrats swept Tuesday’s key elections

Post Reports

The Washington Post

Daily News, Politics, News

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🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

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Summary

There was little suspense after polls closed yesterday. Democrat Mikie Sherrill won the governor’s office in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger easily defeated Republican Winsome Earle-Sears for the same office in Virginia, and Californians voted to redraw congressional maps to give Democrats an edge in next year’s midterm elections. In New York City, Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani was elected the city’s next mayor after defeating established Democrats like former governor Andrew M. Cuomo in the primary.

Host Colby Itkowitz talks to Dan Merica, co-anchor of The Post’s Early Brief politics newsletter, about the lessons learned and major takeaways from each of these contests.

Today’s show was produced by Laura Benshoff and Josh Carroll. It was edited by Reena Flores and mixed by Rennie Svirnovskiy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who came at this race from the left.
0:06.6	He's very progressive.
0:07.6	Yeah, from the far left.
0:08.5	Including progressive for New York City standards even.
0:10.9	Yeah.
0:11.4	But one of the takeaways, I think, is going to be the way he campaigned, not just what he campaigned on.
0:16.7	And of course, like we should caveat New York City, though some believe it's the center of the universe, we can't extrapolate.
0:23.8	Most people exist.
0:24.8	Some people think that.
0:26.3	Some people.
0:30.8	From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics show.
0:36.1	I'm Colby Okowitz.
0:39.1	We're coming to you a little early this week to give you a post-election roundup. It is Wednesday, November 5th. On the show, we're going to
0:45.4	be unpacking the big Democratic wins in places like New York City, New Jersey, Virginia, and
0:51.8	California. I'm joined by regular guest, Dan Marica.
0:55.9	He's the co-anchor of our politics newsletter, The Early Brief.
0:59.6	Dan, thank you for joining me at this late hour.
1:01.7	Yeah, I'm honored to be here at Post Reports After Dark.
1:07.3	So let's start with the big mayor's race in New York.
1:11.5	Major victory, Zeran Mumdadi.
1:14.8	Self-described Democratic Socialist, ran his whole campaign on affordability, reached out to
1:21.8	disaffected voters.
	...

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