A Navy veteran, an ex-member of Congress and a self-avowed democratic socialist won resounding victories in high-profile races on Tuesday – all carrying the banner of the Democratic party and each addressing widespread concern about affordability.
Despite varied biographies, top-of-the-ballot Democrats across New Jersey, Virginia and New York City each prevailed in contests before electorates who ranked the economy or cost of living as a top issue, according to exit polls conducted by ABC News.
The bread-and-butter advantage among Democratic nominees marked a sharp turnabout from the presidential election a year ago, when widespread discontent over inflation helped fuel the success of President Donald Trump and the Republican control of Congress.
Roughly half of Virginia voters on Tuesday said that the economy was the most important issue facing the commonwealth, and they supported Democrat Abigail Spanberger by more than 24 percentage points, according to ABC News exit polling.
Meanwhile, more than half of New York City voters said cost of living was the most important issue facing the city, dwarfing the other issues measured in ABC News exit polling – and around two-thirds of those voters cast ballots for Democrat Zohran Mamdani.
Taxes and the economy tallied as the two top issues among voters in New Jersey, and similar shares of tax-focused voters supported Republican Jack Ciattarelli while economy-focused voters supported Democrat Mikie Sherrill, ABC News exit polling showed.
Although each candidate has different proposals to lower costs — with Mamdani being the most vocal about raising the tax rate on the wealthiest to pay for services such as child care — voters in huge numbers were attracted to their messages.
Speaking to ABC News’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday, Mamdani said he saw his election victory as a “mandate” to pursue the “most ambitious” affordability agenda for New Yorkers in decades.
He described the first steps toward funding that agenda as pushing to raise taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers — along with raising corporate taxes to 11.5% from its current level at about 7.25%.
“These things together raise about $9 billion,” Mamdani, a 34-year-old member of the state assembly who identifies as a democratic socialist, told ABC News, noting such revenue “more than pays for the economic agenda and also starts to Trump-proof our city.”
The results on Tuesday contrast sharply with the outcome of nationwide elections a year ago this November, when Trump swept all seven swing states en route to a decisive electoral-vote victory over Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
Back then, about two-thirds of voters said the economy was in bad shape, according to the results of the ABC News exit poll. Forty-seven percent of voters said their own financial situation was worse than it had been four years earlier, which exceeded the share who held that view in the immediate wake of the Great Recession in 2008.
Inflation and the economy consistently ranked as a top concern among voters in polls conducted ahead of last year’s presidential election.
Price increases slowed earlier this year but they have picked up in recent months, arriving at the same level registered in January at the time Trump took office. Meanwhile, hiring has slowed in recent months, posing a risk of an economic double-whammy known as “stagflation.”
In a post on X on Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance downplayed the significance of the elections a day earlier, but he also acknowledged the importance of voters’ financial worries.
“I think it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections in blue states,” Vance said.
He added: “The president has done a lot that has already paid off in lower interest rates and lower inflation, but we inherited a disaster from Joe Biden and Rome wasn’t built in a day.”
“We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond,” Vance said.
ABC News’ Ivan Pereira and David Brennan contributed to this report.
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