With their election night triumphs on Tuesday, Democrats showed that their demoralized party — which spent the past year mired in self-recriminations and soul-searching — could still accomplish the most important goal in politics.
They can win. And win big.
The decisive victories for governor in Virginia and New Jersey and mayor of New York City and a major ballot initiative in California — which is likely to yield as many as five House seats for Democrats next year — demonstrated crucial signs of life for a party that was soundly defeated in all seven presidential battleground states, lost control of the Senate and failed to win the House just a year ago.
The results showed a level of determination and energy among Democratic voters that was missing in that 2024 election. This time, their candidates were stronger, their campaigns focused intensely on affordability and an intense desire to deal a blow to President Trump. If the huge No Kings protests last month were the shot, Tuesday’s election was the chaser, with Democrats showing once more that they could turn out to deliver a powerful vote when Mr. Trump is in the White House.
Yet for all the invigoration that success brings, the Democratic Party still hasn’t coalesced around a coherent political identity or a clear electoral playbook that can win in swing states and safe states alike. The results on Tuesday suggest that an intraparty battle may be looming for the Democrats as they get ready for difficult House and Senate midterm elections in 2026 and a wide-open presidential primary contest in 2027 and 2028.
Are they more competitive as a centrist party in the mold of Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, the moderate new governors-elect of New Jersey and Virginia, both of whom focused their campaigns on attacking Mr. Trump rather than offering bold new ideas? Or is the party better positioned to make gains with a populist vision like that of Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who won New York’s mayoral election with a sweeping critique of the excesses of capitalism and the promise of defeating the old guard of Democratic politics?
Prominent Democratic leaders want to have it both ways, saying on Tuesday that it’s time for a new era of “big tent” politics within the party, accommodating both Mr. Mamdani’s fellow progressives and center-left establishment Democrats. These leaders think the key for Democrats — and a lesson from Tuesday’s results — is combining winning issues like the high cost of living with a be-everywhere, be-authentic style of campaigning and communicating, while focusing less on policies and litmus tests that divide the party.
“What works in Manhattan will not work in Virginia, and what works in Virginia won’t work in Michigan — and that’s all right,” said Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from the swing state of Michigan, which Mr. Trump won in 2024. “Winning in different places around the country with very different voters and experiences should be celebrated, not attacked.”
Pete Buttigieg, a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 and the transportation secretary under President Biden, said that Tuesday’s wins — in disparate parts of the country with diverse electorates — demonstrated that the party “can only succeed if it’s a big coalition.”
“What this is showing is that we can have candidates who have different prescriptions and different styles,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “To me, kind of by definition, if they’re all succeeding, the big lesson isn’t about going one way or the other in a national fight. The big lesson is to focus on the things that matter most to voters.”
But even in victory, the Democrats remain a party teeming with tensions over age, ideology, tactics and tone, and they are still rebuilding their damaged brand. Democrats already appear headed into fierce ideological clashes in Maine, Michigan and Texas, where primary fights between more progressive candidates and establishment Democrats are underway.
“There will now be a battle within the Democratic Party between the people who will point to Spanberger and Sherrill as models for the kinds of campaigns we need to run, and Mamdani as a model for a different kind of politics,” said Howard Wolfson, a former deputy mayor of New York City and a Democratic strategist. “What it all comes down to is the Democrats need to figure out who they want their standard bearers to be in 2026 and 2028.”
At times, the bickering in Democratic backrooms, strategy sessions and text chains over Mr. Mamdani alone has exploded into the public domain.
Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont progressive, heralded him as “the future of the Democratic Party.” When asked if he agreed, Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader and a New York Democrat, quickly rejected the idea, after endorsing Mr. Mamdani only just before early voting had begun. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader and another New Yorker, declined to endorse Mr. Mamdani.
There are also signs that those in a frustrated liberal wing may channel some of their frustration about the Trump administration against their own leaders in the 2026 midterms, as Republicans did during the 2010 midterms when an insurgent Tea Party movement created contentious party primaries across the country.
Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York felt that anger from the stage at a recent rally for Mr. Mamdani, as progressive voters drowned out her remarks with chants of “Tax the rich!” Mr. Mamdani ended the shouts by appearing on the stage besides Ms. Hochul, who had endorsed his campaign, and clasping her hand high.
But he has not publicly pledged to support Ms. Hochul in her re-election bid next year.
“It’s an incoherent squabble that will not become orderly until we have a nomination fight,” said Matt Bennett, the founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank based in Washington, referring to the 2028 presidential race. “When you are out of power, parties are all over the place.”
Whether the party becomes entangled in such fractious debates, or unites in an ongoing single-mindedness to repudiate Mr. Trump and Republicans, remains to be seen. What is clear is that the 2026 midterms will play out amid a wave of redistricting efforts across the country that are likely to give Republicans an advantage in an already contested House map. And to win back control of the Senate, Democrats must confront a landscape largely fought in states that Mr. Trump carried by at least 10 percentage points in 2024.
Still, even with an uncertain future, the Democrats got a much-needed psychological boost on Tuesday night. In New Jersey, Ms. Sherrill blew past the three-point margin that Gov. Phil Murphy notched in 2021 against Jack Ciattarelli, the same Republican opponent she faced. Democratic turnout was more than 20 percent higher than in that race.
In Virginia, the Democratic wave was so strong that it even boosted Jay Jones, the party’s nominee for attorney general, to victory, overcoming the damage from a series of violent text messages Jones sent in 2022.
And in New York City, Mr. Mamdani captured large swaths of the city and was poised to win more than 50 percent of the vote — a significant level of support in a multicandidate race with the highest voter turnout in more than half a century.
Democrats benefited in part from Mr. Trump’s demands of fealty from Republican candidates in states where a majority of voters disapprove of how he’s handling his job as president. Ms. Sherrill, who spent much of her campaign labeling her opponent the “Trump of Trenton,” seemed mystified by his continued allegiance to the president.
“It’s pretty shocking that the Republican Party is so coalesced behind Trump that even a candidate here in New Jersey is completely going against the interests of New Jersey in defense of the president,” Ms. Sherrill said in an interview late last week.
But some Democratic strategists say such a Trump-focused strategy has limitations, given that many independents and swing voters, and even some Democrats, have dim views of their party.
“There’s mounting evidence that voters want to fire Donald Trump and the people loyal to him, but we still have more to do convince people to hire us,” said Jesse Ferguson, a veteran Democratic strategist with experience in Virginia. “Voters right now feel like their government is betraying them and it’s costing them. We have to be not just the response to that but the antidote.”
For years, Democrats have prevailed in elections when Mr. Trump is not on the ballot because their coalition has become more reliable as voters in nonpresidential races. Winning in swing states and presidential years will require rebuilding their identity in ways that connect with the concerns of broader swaths of voters.
The three major Democratic candidates on Tuesday all offered the kind of laser-sharp focus on affordability that many Democrats believe will form the start of a road map back to power.
Mr. Mamdani organized his campaign and message around lowering the costs of rent, child care, groceries and bus fare for New Yorkers and particularly the city’s working class. Ms. Sherrill promised to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office to freeze electricity prices. And Ms. Spanberger made economic issues a centerpiece of her candidacy, vowing to tackle the high costs of health care, housing and energy in a state hit particularly hard by the federal government shutdown.
Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Sherrill and Ms. Spanberger also benefited from showing independent streaks and a willingness to break with party leaders, which strategists said had helped them build winning coalitions despite their party’s record-low approval ratings.
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Whether Democratic leaders are willing to make space for a wide range of ideologies within the party — not to mention debate and dissent — is an open question that the 2026 midterms will shed light on.
Standing amid cheering supporters at Mr. Mamdani’s victory party, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive leader from New York, implied that Democratic officials might have little choice.
“We have a future to fight for, and we’re either going to do that together or you’re going to be left behind,” she said in an interview on MSNBC. “It’s not about progressive. It’s not moderate, it’s not liberal. This is about do you understand the assignment of fighting fascism right now? And the assignment is you come together across difference no matter what.”
Lisa Lerer is a national political reporter for The Times, based in New York. She has covered American politics for nearly two decades.
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