An absolute drubbing

Last night was an absolute drubbing for conservative politics across America, and I couldn't be happier about it. Zohran Mamdani demolished Andrew Cuomo for the second time this year, and will be the next mayor of New York City.

And California's Prop. 50 passed with an overwhelming majority, nearly 2-to-1. Am I pleased that we're doing mid-cycle redistricting? Not really, but Republican states started doing it explicitly to swing electoral power to them, so our options are to deal with an impossible electoral map or fight back, and I guess here we are.

What really stuck out to me were Virginia's results. Virginia had lots of state legislature elections as well as governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. This is a state that went for Harris in the 2024 Presidential election, although it's one that shifted right compared to 4 years previous. This rightward shift was something we saw all over the country last year, and it made election night pretty tough for people like me. Every single county in the state shifted right compared to the last election…oof. That's what made this year's results especially encouraging to me. Here's an image with a ton of data:

The data point we're looking at here is the arrow that is either blue or red and shifts right or left. As you can see, with scant few exceptions, every part of Virginia shifted left, sometimes by significant margins, over just one year ago. Yes, the Republican candidate won a decent number of counties. However, even in those cases, the margins came down from what they were a year ago. There are multiple variables here, and it could represent a general distaste for Republican policies, and it could also be an indicator that Donald Trump has a unique popularity that not all Republicans can replicate. Whatever the case may be, Virginia has a Republican governor today, and soon their new Democratic governor will be sworn in with a convincing victory.

The Attorney General and Lieutenant Governor elections also went convincingly for the Democrat, in one case ousting the Republican incumbent. And then the state legislature had a massive shift. Going into the election, Democrats held a two-seat majority, 51 to 49, and coming out, it looks like they'll have a 64 to 36 majority. It's a certified catastrophe for Republicans in a state that was decidedly purple.

I can only hope Democrats take the lessons from last night (very liberal policies can be very popular in the right areas, a diversity of candidate types can massively swing a state like Virginia, and charismatic candidates like Mamdani can do things many thought was impossible) into the midterms.