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Takeaways from an eventful 2025 election cycle

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Takeaways from an eventful 2025 election cycle

Is there such a thing as an “off year” for U.S. elections? The elections in 2025 were not nearly as all-encompassing as last year’s presidential race, nor as chaotic as what is expected from next year’s midterms. But hundreds of elections were held in dozens of states, including local contests, mayoral races, special congressional elections and two highly anticipated governor’s races.

Many of the elections were seen as early tests of how lasting President Trump’s 2024 gains might be and as a preview of what might happen in 2026.

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Here are five takeaways from the 2025 election cycle.

In Elections Seen as Referendums on Trump, Democrats Won Big

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Democrats did well in nearly all of this year’s elections, continuing a pattern that has played out across off-year elections for the last two decades: The party that wins the White House routinely loses ground in the next round of elections.

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Virginia and New Jersey have historically swung away from the president’s party in governor’s races

The change in the final margin from the presidential election to the next election for governor

Sources: Virginia Department of Elections, N.J. Division of Elections, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Elections. The New York Times

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Elections in these years are often viewed as referendums on the president’s performance. And Mr. Trump’s approval ratings, after months of holding steady, took a dip in November.

A notable shift came in New Jersey, where the majority-Hispanic townships that swung toward Mr. Trump in 2024 swung back to Democrats in the 2025 governor’s race. That contributed significantly to the victory of Representative Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate, over Jack Ciattarelli, the Trump-backed Republican.

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New Jersey’s majority-Hispanic towns snapped back left in 2025

Each line is a township whose width is sized to the number of votes cast in 2025

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Note: Includes townships where more than 500 votes were cast in 2025. Sources: N.J. county clerks, N.J. Division of Elections, U.S. Census Bureau. The New York Times

The leftward swing was viewed by many political commentators as a reaction to Mr. Trump. If that is the case, it remains to be seen how much of it will carry over into 2026.

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Progressive and Moderate Democrats Are Both Claiming Victories

Democratic strategists continue to debate whether the party should embrace progressive candidates or more moderate ones. And in 2025, the election results had both sides feeling emboldened.

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In New York City, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who struggled to garner support from the Democratic Party, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by nine points. A similar story played out in Jersey City, where James Solomon, a progressive, crushed former Gov. James McGreevey of New Jersey in a mayoral runoff. Progressives also prevailed in cities like Detroit and Seattle.

Centrist Democrats, meanwhile, came away with arguably the two biggest wins of the year against Trump-endorsed Republicans. Abigail Spanberger and Ms. Sherrill, both Democrats, outperformed their polling estimates and decisively won the high-profile governor’s races in Virginia and New Jersey.

The debate will continue among Democrats as several 2026 primaries have prominent progressive and moderate candidates going head to head.

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In Texas, Representative Jasmine Crockett, a progressive, entered the primary race for a U.S. Senate seat against the more moderate James Talarico. A similar situation has developed in Maine, where Graham Platner has pitched himself as a more progressive alternative to Janet Mills in the party’s attempt to unseat Senator Susan Collins, a Republican. Other progressives, like Julie Gonzales in Colorado and Brad Lander in New York, are challenging incumbent Democrats in primary races.

A Record 14 Women Will Serve as Governors in 2026

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Virginians elected Ms. Spanberger as their first female governor. In New Jersey, Ms. Sherrill became the second woman to secure the position. Both women significantly outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris’s margins from the 2024 presidential race, improving on her results by almost 10 points.

Female candidates also did well down the ballot. Eileen Higgins will be the first female mayor in Miami after defeating Emilio González, who had the support of Mr. Trump. And, in Seattle, Katie Wilson defeated the incumbent mayor, Bruce Harrell.

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States that will have female governors in 2026

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Source: Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. The New York Times

Come 2026, a record 14 women — 10 Democrats and four Republicans — will serve as governors, with six of them expected to run for re-election next year. (More than a dozen states have yet to elect a female governor.)

In New York, it is likely that both candidates will be women: Representative Elise Stefanik, a Republican, began a campaign last month against the incumbent, Kathy Hochul.

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Special Elections Are Still Very Special (for Democrats)

Despite not flipping any House seats, Democrats outperformed Ms. Harris’s 2024 results in every House special election this cycle. Their wins, however, offer limited insight into what might happen in 2026.

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Special elections, which happen outside of regular election cycles to fill vacated seats, draw fewer voters than those in midterm or presidential years. Special election voters tend to be older and highly engaged politically, and they are more likely to be college educated. That has given Democrats a distinct advantage in recent years, and 2025 was no exception.

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Democrats did well in the 2025 special elections

Democratic candidates in this year’s special congressional elections outperformed Kamala Harris’s 2024 margins.

Sources: Special election results are from The Associated Press, and 2024 presidential margins by congressional district are estimates from The New York Times. The New York Times

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Democratic strength in special elections extended to lower-profile races held this year. In Virginia, Democrats secured 64 out of 100 seats in the House of Delegates. In Georgia, Democrats won two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission, the first time the party won a non-federal statewide office since 2006. Pennsylvania Democrats swept the major Bucks County contests, electing a Democratic district attorney for the first time. And, in Mississippi, Democrats broke the Republican supermajority in the State Senate.

Odd-Numbered Years Are Still Very Odd (for Election Polls)

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Polling in off-year election cycles is challenging because it’s hard to know who will turn out to vote. This year, the polls significantly overestimated the Republicans in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races, which both had particularly high turnout for an off year. In 2021, polls had the opposite problem, as they overestimated Democrats.

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Polls missed in opposite directions in 2021 and 2025

Each dot is a poll from the relevant governor’s election, positioned according to its polling error in the election.

Notes: Chart includes polls fielded in October or November of the election cycle. Polling error refers to the difference between the actual result margin and the poll margin. Sources: Polls from 2025 were collected by The New York Times, and polls from 2021 were collected by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research and 538. The New York Times

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Polling misses don’t necessarily carry over from cycle to cycle: Despite the leftward bias of the polls in 2021, they performed very well in 2022. After each election, pollsters look at the result and evaluate their performance, and then note where they went wrong. Analysis from groups like the American Association for Public Opinion Research frequently indicates that errors come from an incorrect sense of who shows up to vote. Pollsters then try to adjust for this error in the next election cycle.

The errors of 2025 may prove largely irrelevant, however, as the midterm elections will feature a larger, very different pool of voters with a new set of races, and a new host of lessons for pollsters to learn.

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Off years are weird, and the polling errors they produce often are as well.

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

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Supreme Court financial disclosures reveal how their books add to their income

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Reagan Library on Sept. 9, 2025, in Simi Valley, Calif. Barrett discussed and signed copies of her new book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.

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Mario Tama/Getty Images

Even as the Supreme Court was handing down one legal thunderbolt after another last week, the justices were quietly releasing their annual financial reports. Justice Samuel Alito was the only sitting justice to request an extension, which he has done for 15 years. The disclosures do not give a complete account of the justices’ total income and wealth, but they give insights into their concertgoing, guest professorships and even their involvement in youth sports.

In addition to their salaries, much of the justices’ reported income came from their book deals. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson led the pack earning more than $1.1 million last year for a total of roughly $4 million since her memoir, Lovely One, was published in 2024.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and retired Justice Anthony Kennedy also reported income from published books. Earnings from their books ranged from $849,000 for Barrett, to $300,000 for Gorsuch and $88,000 for Sotomayor, whose books include her 2013 autobiography and five children’s books. Justice Clarence Thomas, who previously earned $1.5 million for his 2007 memoir, listed no publisher payments last year, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of 13 co-authors of a 2016 legal treatise, also received no payments last year. Kavanaugh is said to be working on a memoir but he listed no payments for the anticipated book. Alito does have a book coming out in the fall, but with his financial report still outstanding, there is no data on how much he was paid for the work in 2025.

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The only two sitting justices who have not written books are Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan.

Many justices also earned income from teaching at law schools. Roberts reported income from New England Law, located in Boston, and Gorsuch reported teaching income from George Mason University in Virginia. Thomas taught classes at Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and Barrett and Kavanaugh taught at Notre Dame Law School. Barrett graduated from the school and began teaching there 23 years ago; Kavanaugh has family connections to Notre Dame.

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

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Manhattan Building’s Columns Buckled Beneath New Addition, Images Show

At least two structural columns buckled and failed in a 37-story office tower in Midtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prompting evacuations of nearby streets and buildings. While city officials asserted that the tower was in no danger of collapsing completely, outside engineers said further failures in the structure could not be ruled out.

A pair of columns that failed completely were part of the tower’s existing structure. A New York Times review of images and videos from inside the building has found that several floors were added atop these columns.

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City officials said in a news conference on Tuesday that the building was continuing to move, while they simultaneously assured the city that the building would not suffer “total collapse.” “The way this building is constructed, it’s a steel-frame building,” John Esposito, a chief in the Fire Department in New York, said at the afternoon news conference. “So, it would not be a total collapse. It would be more of a localized collapse.” Still, he said, “that remains our concern, that it’s moved.”

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Engineers said that the movement itself was cause for concern. In a properly designed steel building, they said, loads should redistribute quickly to surviving structural supports if columns failed.

Joe DiPompeo, a former president of the Structural Engineering Institute at the American Society of Civil Engineers, said that if the structure had been overloaded, he would expect any movement “to happen very quickly,” rather than gradually.

“Generally when a column buckles, it’s a sudden failure,” Mr. DiPompeo said. He said that a full collapse remained unlikely given the redundancies built into the building codes.

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Engineers often refer to the most dangerous possibility as a progressive collapse, a process in which structures near the initial failure become overstressed and also fail, potentially bringing down the building if the sequence continues. While unlikely, it cannot be ruled out, Mr. DiPompeo said.

Footage recorded from inside the building shows at least two structural columns appear to have failed completely, Mr. DiPompeo said. Other nonstructural, interior walls — or at least the metal “studs” that were in place to hold them up — also appear to have deformed.

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“The only way that really happens is if the floor above them dropped. It looks like the floor above could have dropped a foot or two, which is obviously not a good situation,” Mr. DiPompeo said.

@fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @fernando40tiktok.commarc via Storyful

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Image from @Bogs4NY via X

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The 37-story building is in the process of being converted from office space into residential units. Four new floors and a large vertical portion were added onto the existing building in recent months. The vertical portion consists of a stack of over a dozen new floors cantilevered out over the existing building below.

Engineers said that there was nothing inherently wrong with adding residential floors or the cantilevered section above the columns that failed, as long as the original structure and the modifications had properly accounted for the added weight and wind loads.

“The cantilever alone doesn’t change anything,” Mr. DiPompeo said, but it does put additional load on the columns underneath — a factor that should have been reflected in the design.

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Nathan Berman, managing principal and founder of MetroLoft, the developer overseeing the conversion, said on Tuesday that “this incident is nothing more than a typical construction mishap.”

He said two columns near the northwest corner of the tower had bent under the weight of additions to the building above, most likely because those columns had not been properly reinforced, though he said an investigation would determine the cause. The rest of the columns, he said, “picked up the weight.” He estimated the affected floors above the failed columns had sagged by a maximum of four inches.

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Mr. Berman said that he expected the problems to be fixed and the project to be completed with, at most, a slight delay.

On Tuesday evening, installation of temporary shoring was set to begin shortly, in order to help stabilize the 20th and 21st floors of the building.

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

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DOJ warns of criminal charges for state election officials if noncitizens vote

The Justice Department sent letters warning election officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia that they could face criminal prosecution over noncitizen voting, a spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed Tuesday.

The letters, signed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who heads up the department’s Civil Rights Division, give states five days to explain how they will comply with federal voter eligibility laws and how they will maintain “clean voter lists.”

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“The Department sent these letters to all 50 states and the District of Columbia, asking for voluntary compliance in a timely manner with their obligations under federal law to ensure only citizens vote in federal elections,” a Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement.

Noncitizen voting in federal elections is extremely rare, but Trump and his administration have falsely portrayed it as a widespread issue.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Nevada Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar and Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson are among those who said they received the letters from the Justice Department.

The letters say state election officers “could be criminally prosecuted for aiding and abetting” noncitizen voting. They further specify that any election officer who knowingly retains noncitizens on a statewide voting registration list or who facilitates noncitizens’ receiving and casting ballots could be subject to criminal liability.

“An intentional act that is aimed at diluting the votes of citizens could also constitute a violation” of federal law, the letters said.

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Henderson wrote on social media that the threats constitute “truly bizarre behavior.”

“Got another love letter this morning from the DOJ sprinkled throughout with threats of criminal prosecution,” she wrote. “I’m sure I’m not the only chief election officer of a state who is being targeted for following state and federal laws by resisting DOJ’s demands for private voter data that have thus far been ruled illegal by at least a dozen courts.”

The letters are the latest move in the Justice Department’s campaign to assert more federal control over state elections.

While some states have complied with the administration’s demands that they hand over voter roll data, the Justice Department has sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for resisting. So far, 11 different federal courts have dismissed the Justice Department’s efforts to seize voter rolls.

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