It might not be a presidential cycle or even the midterm elections, but do not write off the 2025 political calendar. Several races across the nation could offer valuable hints about the movement of voters, messaging and momentum.
For Democrats, who have begun a sobering reassessment after losing the presidency and both chambers of Congress in 2024, the off-year elections, as they are known, cannot arrive soon enough.
For Republicans, next year’s contests will be the first opportunity to show that they can sustain the momentum that gave their party, led by President-elect Donald J. Trump, a power monopoly in Washington.
Here’s what’s on the horizon in 2025:
Virginia: Governor and Legislature
An open seat and control of the House
Virginia’s race for governor is often viewed as a bellwether nationally. The Democratic-leaning state is currently led by a term-limited Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, and it was won by Vice President Kamala Harris in November.
Mr. Youngkin’s surprising victory in 2021 propelled him to political stardom and fueled speculation that he could run for president in 2024. But Mr. Youngkin, a wealthy former private equity executive who is limited to one term in the governor’s office, put his national ambitions on hold and endorsed Mr. Trump.
Two prominent candidates have already entered the race to replace Mr. Youngkin: his lieutenant governor, Winsome Earle-Sears, a Republican who is the first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia history, and Representative Abigail Spanberger, a prominent Democrat with a track record of success in a conservative-leaning district.
In recent elections, Virginia has become a vessel for millions of dollars in spending by outside groups, and its open governor’s seat and divided legislature appears likely to continue that trend.
Democrats retook full control of the General Assembly in 2023, flipping the House of Delegates and maintaining narrow control of the State Senate. All 100 seats in the House, where Democrats have a 51-49 seat majority, will be up for election in 2025. Two members of the State Senate, which Democrats had controlled 21-19, were recently elected to Congress, prompting special elections.
New Jersey: Governor
Trump’s blue-state gains loom over an open seat
One of the most striking takeaways from the 2024 presidential election was that Mr. Trump increased his support in some blue states and cities, places that had decisively rejected him in 2016 and 2020. Circle New Jersey, where Mr. Trump, a twice-impeached felon, came within six percentage points of Ms. Harris in November (four years earlier, he was nearly 16 percentage points behind Joseph R. Biden Jr.).
Democrats, who control every branch of state government and have a registration advantage over Republicans of nearly a million voters, will be trying to avoid carry-over effects in an open-seat race for governor. They will also be looking to leave behind the corruption scandal that swirled around Robert Menendez, the state’s longtime Democratic senator who resigned in July.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy, who was elected in 2017 and again in 2021, is term-limited.
Several candidates are already lining up for his seat, including: Representatives Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill, Democrats who were recently re-elected to the House; Ras J. Baraka and Steven Fulop, the Democratic mayors of Newark and Jersey City; Jon Bramnick, a Republican state senator and Trump critic; and Jack Ciattarelli, a former state lawmaker who lost to Mr. Murphy by about three percentage points in 2021.
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania: Supreme Court
Judicial supremacy at stake
For much of the 2024 election cycle, a handful of battleground states commanded the nation’s attention — and had the presidential election been disputed, the Supreme Courts in those states could have played a decisive role in the outcome.
The power of those courts remains undeniable. With states divided over abortion rights, gun control laws and voter access, those bodies, some of which are elected, frequently arbitrate landmark cases.
In Pennsylvania, three of the five seats in the Democratic majority on the state’s Supreme Court are up for re-election in 2025. There are two Republicans on the court, which this year ruled that a Pennsylvania’s township’s ban on a backyard shooting range did not violate the Second Amendment.
In Wisconsin, another battleground state that Mr. Trump flipped in November, control of the state’s Supreme Court could hinge on the outcome of an election in April. Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, one of four liberals who make up the majority of the seven-member court, is retiring.
New York City: Mayor
An embattled incumbent
In the nation’s most populous city, Mayor Eric Adams, a first-term Democrat, finds himself in a maelstrom. In September, Mr. Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges, fueling calls to resign from within the party and from his constituents.
Mr. Adams, whose administration had already been facing significant criticism over its handling of crime, poverty and other quality-of-life issues, did not appear to win friends in the Biden administration when he complained about the influx of migrants into New York.
A brash former police captain, Mr. Adams has taken a defiant tack, saying that he plans to run for re-election in 2025. A growing group of primary challengers includes: Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens; Brad Lander, the city comptroller; Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn; Scott Stringer, a former city comptroller; and Zohran Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens.
And Andrew M. Cuomo, the former governor who resigned in 2021 amid a sexual harassment scandal, has been rumored as a potential candidate.
Mr. Adams has found at least one highly unusual kindred spirit: Mr. Trump, who has suggested that both of them are being persecuted through their criminal cases.
In the closing days of his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump, a native New Yorker, held a rally at Madison Square Garden, an audacious detour from the race’s key battleground states. When the votes were counted, he lost the city by 37 points, though he did make inroads, especially among Asian voters and Hispanic voters in Queens and the Bronx.
The post What’s Next in U.S. Elections: Races to Watch in 2025 appeared first on New York Times.
