By Joseph Ax, Richard Cowan and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democrats took a victory lap on Wednesday after sweeping the first major elections since Donald Trump returned to the White House, a much-needed balm for a wounded party that had spent much of the last year desperately trying to find its footing.
A new generation of Democrats, including the 34-year-old New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, won closely watched contests in New Jersey, New York and Virginia, while California voters resoundingly approved a new congressional map aimed at improving Democratic odds of winning the U.S. House next year.
"We won all over the country, in red counties and in purple counties and in blue counties. The reality is this was a huge rejection of the Trump extremism," Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee, told reporters, referring to the hues associated with Republican, mixed-party and Democratic areas.
The impressive performance - including lower-profile victories in swing states Pennsylvania and Georgia - gave a boost of momentum to Democrats, who remain locked out of power in Washington after losing the presidency, the House and the Senate a year ago to Trump's Republicans.
But the biggest contests took place in Democratic-leaning states, and there are still plenty of pitfalls for the party to confront before the 2026 midterm elections next November.
The Democratic brand remains broadly unpopular, according to opinion polls. While Trump's approval rating has fallen, voters are still split between the parties; a Reuters/Ipsos poll in late October found respondents were equally likely to say they would vote for a Republican or a Democrat for the House if the election were held that day.
Intraparty tensions may also persist. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, energized young voters as an anti-establishment insurgent, while Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, the two women who won the Virginia and New Jersey governor races, are both moderate Democrats with national security backgrounds.
However, all three candidates focused intensely on economic issues, particularly the cost of living, an issue that helped propel Trump to the White House last year but has remained top of mind for voters.
"I think the lesson for the president is that it's not enough to diagnose the crisis in working-class Americans' lives," Mamdani said at his first press conference as mayor-elect on Wednesday. "You have to deliver."
For now, Democratic Party leaders are animated about winning not just the headline races but also a range of local elections, including Pennsylvania school board seats and statewide judicial elections, as well as gains in the Mississippi legislature.
"We had huge gains with young men, we had huge gains with voters without college degrees, and Latino voters swung heavily in our favor" in Virginia and New Jersey, said Meghan Meehan-Draper, executive director of the Democratic Governors Association.
TRUMP DOWNPLAYS LOSSES
Trump, a brawler by nature, barely acknowledged his party's losses during nearly an hour of remarks in Miami on Wednesday, focusing instead on the anniversary of his own election last year, saying it had been a year since the "single most consequential election victory in American history."
After saying Americans had "restored our sovereignty" a year ago, Trump then took a dig at Mamdani, saying, "We lost a little bit of sovereignty last night in New York."
Trump later added that he wanted his hometown of New York to be successful and that he might help Mamdani "a little bit, maybe." He did not repeat his threat to withhold federal funding from New York City.
Mamdani, the first Muslim to be elected mayor of the biggest U.S. city, defeated former Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo, 67, who ran as an independent after losing the nomination to Mamdani earlier this year. Cuomo, who resigned as governor four years ago after sexual harassment allegations that he has denied, painted Mamdani as a radical leftist whose proposals were unworkable and dangerous.
Mamdani has proposed raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for ambitious policies such as frozen rents, free childcare and free city buses.
While Sherrill's and Spanberger's victories were perhaps unsurprising in Democratic-leaning states, the double-digit margins of their wins far exceeded Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris' performance last year.
Both candidates had sought to tie their opponents to Trump in an effort to harness frustration among Democratic and independent voters over his chaotic tenure.
More than one-third of voters in those states said opposing Trump was a factor in their vote, according to exit polls conducted for a consortium of U.S. networks and the Associated Press. Those voters overwhelmingly cast ballots for the Democrats.
For Republicans, Tuesday's elections were an early warning sign that the party may struggle to mobilize Trump's coalition when he is not on the ballot. Vice President JD Vance acknowledged that problem in a social media post on Wednesday, saying Republicans must do a better job of turning out the less reliable voters that backed Trump in 2024.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax, Andrea Shalal and Richard Cowan in Washington; additional reporting by Susan Heavey, James Oliphant and Bhargav Acharya; Writing by Joseph Ax and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Howard Goller and Deepa Babington)
