Dem Wave Hits Virginia, New Jersey, and Elsewhere; a Dozen House Ratings Shift in California Following Approval of New Dem Map

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Democrats turned in an impressive showing in last night’s elections, and 2025 still feels a lot like 2017 did.

— Loudoun County, Virginia, whose early reporting suggested Donald Trump was on the way to a significant national win in 2024, pointed the way to Abigail Spanberger’s (D) big gubernatorial win and Jay Jones’s (D) attorney general victory.

— Following the passage of Proposition 50 in California, we are making a dozen House rating changes, all but one in favor of Democrats.

— The changes come fairly close to restoring the status quo prior to the start of redistricting, but there are many more dominoes to fall on the gerrymandering front.

Table 1: Crystal Ball House rating changes

Loudoun helps tell the tale again

A year ago, the near-complete vote from early-reporting Loudoun County, Virginia was the first major signal that Donald Trump was on the way to victory in the 2024 presidential election. Last night, Loudoun was the signal that the 2025 election, both in Virginia and elsewhere, was becoming a rout in favor of Democrats.

Wealthy, highly-educated, and diverse, Loudoun had zoomed toward Democrats throughout the 2010s, punctuated by Ralph Northam (D) winning the county by 20 points in his 2017 gubernatorial victory and Joe Biden winning it by 25 in 2020.

But by 2021, the Democratic margin in the county had contracted to 11 points, helping Glenn Youngkin (R) win the governorship. Three years later, Kamala Harris only won it by 16 points, another 9-point Democratic contraction from four years prior. The shift in Loudoun was emblematic of the overall results, in which Trump improved to varying degrees in all 50 states.

But the pendulum has swung again. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) won Loudoun by an eye-opening 29 points. And Attorney General-elect Jay Jones (D) won it by 19 points—nearly matching Northam in the county and running ahead of Harris, and giving the clearest indication that he was on the way to winning. Despite the bombshell revelation of violent, outrageous text messages from Jones that rocked the race a month ago, Jones ended up winning easily, riding Spanberger’s coattails to a 6.5-point statewide win over state Attorney General Jason Miyares (R). Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi (D) won by 10.5 in what was the sleepiest of the three statewide races, and Spanberger won by 15. Polls were correct in the sense that there would be variation in the three races, but they all ended up just being different shades of blue. Democrats also made a massive gain in the state House of Delegates, pushing their majority to 64 seats, a massive 13-seat gain in which they flipped all 8 Harris-won Republican districts and an additional 5 that Trump had carried by small margins last year.

Map 1: Jones 2025 vs. Harris 2024 in Virginia

Map 1 shows how Jay Jones did compared to Kamala Harris. Jones actually finished about half a percentage point ahead of Harris statewide. Notice that Jones was the better Democratic performer in most of Northern Virginia’s core localities (including the aforementioned Loudoun); perhaps the government shutdown gave Jones a boost there. The rest of the state was more of a mixed bag. Harris held up better in parts of the I-64 corridor around Richmond which have trended Democratic recently but have GOP history. While large swaths of Southside Virginia continued to redden, areas of the southwest, especially around Blacksburg, swung to Jones.

It is also always worth remembering that gubernatorial turnout is different and smaller than presidential turnout—as of the current count, about 3.4 million votes were cast in the Virginia governor election. That’s a little higher than the 2021 vote count, which itself was very robust for a Virginia state election, but it’s only about 75% of the 2024 total votes cast for president. After all the votes are counted we are confident that we’ll find a turnout advantage in more Democratic places compared to Republican ones, an inverse of what we saw in the 2021 gubernatorial election. The network exit poll, when first released publicly as polls closed, suggested that the electorate had voted for Harris by just 4 points for president in 2024, a couple of points lower than what actually happened in Virginia (and the initial exit poll ended up underestimating the Democratic margins in all three statewide races by several points). The 2024 presidential margin in the exit poll was later adjusted to 6 points, matching 2024, and then later to 9 points, showing a bluer electorate than 2024.

In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill (D) did seem like she was in a closer race than Spanberger, and she was, but only modestly—she won by 13 points. Democrats also easily retained control of the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court in another series of races we were watching, and they decisively flipped a couple of statewide-elected Public Service Commission slots in Georgia, giving Democrats a rare breakthrough in a pair of state-level races there. We’ll give these races, and others, a closer look after the dust settles.

Much has been made of the Democrats’ poor party favorability, but the Tuesday results adds some backing to the idea that an important segment of people who say they view Democrats unfavorably are actually reliable Democratic voters, at least presently. In both the New Jersey and Virginia exit polls, roughly 10% of voters said they did not hold a favorable view of either the Democratic or Republican parties. Democratic gubernatorial candidates won landslides with these voters, a version of the famous “double-haters” who disapproved of both major party candidates but broke toward Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2024: Sherrill won them by 65 points, and Spanberger won them by 55.

Back in April, when Democrats retained control of the Wisconsin state Supreme Court and overperformed Harris’s showing in a couple of U.S. House special elections in Florida, we wrote that 2025 felt a lot like 2017 in terms of election results. Certainly last night was reminiscent of 2017 too—if anything, it was stronger for Democrats.

One silver lining for Republicans is that the significant races last night were taking place in states that ranged from purple to blue. Georgia and Pennsylvania are purple states. New Jersey and Virginia are light-to-medium blue states. California is dark blue; New York City, which elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor, is as well. Remember that for Democrats to win the Senate, they would have to win at least two Senate seats in states that voted for Donald Trump by double digits. That is not an impossible task, but those kinds of states were not part of last night’s top elections. The House picture, meanwhile, is complicated by the ongoing redistricting battle. Speaking of…

Rating the new California map, and the overall House picture

Now that voters have approved Proposition 50 in California, we are going to formally move a number of ratings to reflect the new map. We have a dozen ratings to change, all of which are in favor of Democrats except for one.

Table 2, reprinted with minor updates from our initial analysis of the map in August, shows how all of the districts we’re moving changed, using 2022 gubernatorial and 2024 presidential results as a guide.

Table 2: 2022/2024 district election results on new California Democratic gerrymander

Source: Dave’s Redistricting App

Additionally, the table notes a couple of other members—Reps. Raul Ruiz (D, CA-25, Inland Empire) and Mike Levin (D, CA-49, coastal northern San Diego)—who remain in Likely Democratic-rated races but who see their districts’ Democratic performance improve under the new lines. All told, we currently have 8 of the Democrats’ 43 current districts in California rated as something other than Safe Democratic, and all 8 of those districts got better for Democrats as part of this plan. Meanwhile, these changes allow Democrats to compete for 5 of the map’s 9 currently Republican-held districts.

Let’s briefly go through the changes—for more information, go back to our piece from August.

— Reps. Jim Costa (D, CA-21, Central Valley), Josh Harder (D, CA-9, Central Valley), Dave Min (D, CA-47, Orange County), and George Whitesides (D, CA-27, northern Los Angeles exurbs) all get varying levels of support from the new map, which pushes all of their districts from Leans Democratic to Likely Democratic.

— Reps. Derek Tran (D, CA-45, Orange County) and Adam Gray (D, CA-13, Central Valley) both get some help, enough to flip CA-13 from voting for Donald Trump to narrowly backing Kamala Harris and to flip CA-45 from voting against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) in 2022 to voting for him. That’s enough for us to move these districts from Toss-up to Leans Democratic, although Republicans could still compete for them, if not strongly in 2026, then quite possibly in 2028.

— Rep. Ken Calvert’s (R, CA-41) competitive, Leans Republican-rated Riverside County district is effectively eliminated, re-emerging in Los Angeles as a Safe Democratic Latino-majority seat. Calvert could try to seek reelection in CA-40, a Southern California district represented by Rep. Young Kim (R) that was turned into a Republican vote sink and thus is now rated Safe Republican, up from Leans Republican (this is the single pro-Republican rating change today).

— In Northern California and the Sacramento area, respectively, Reps. Doug LaMalfa (R, CA-1) and Kevin Kiley (R, CA-3) both see their districts transformed into ones that voted for Kamala Harris by low double-digits. Both move to Likely Democratic, and their next stop may very well be Safe Democratic. Rep. Ami Bera (D, CA-6, Sacramento) has said he will run in CA-3, and CA-6 is now a Harris +9 open seat. We are holding it at Safe Democratic and it might move to Likely Democratic later, but we doubt it’s an actual Republican target.

— Finally, Rep. Darrell Issa (R, CA-48) moves from Safe Republican to Toss-up as his Inland San Diego seat adds bluer turf, including Palm Springs. And Rep. David Valadao (R, CA-22, Central Valley) moves from Leans Republican to Toss-up as Trump’s winning margin in his red-trending district was reduced by a few points. CA-22 is likely the heaviest Democratic lift of the five current Republican districts that this map targets.

Following Ohio’s remap late last week and the approval of California’s Proposition 50, there are now five states with new House maps so far this cycle: California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas. For the time being, we are assuming all of these maps are set for 2026, although there may be twists and turns to come. Missouri, for instance, could see its map put on the statewide ballot in 2026, therefore preventing it from being used next year.

Many other states are in flux. The White House is leaning on Indiana to redraw, but Republicans do not appear to have the votes there in the state Senate, at least not yet. Kansas just threw in the towel on a redistricting effort, perhaps fearing a senatorial run by Rep. Sharice Davids (D, KS-3), a strong electoral performer whose district would be targeted in a remap. Florida Republicans could redraw, potentially giving them multi-seat gains or at least some new offensive targets. Utah is moving toward a new map that could give Democrats one or two new targets, thanks to court action. Virginia Democrats want to ask voters to give them the power to redraw the state’s map next year, which could result in a multi-seat Democratic gain, and what appears to be a huge win by Democrats on California redistricting (combined with the Democratic wave in Virginia itself) likely will give Virginia Democrats more confidence they could win a statewide gerrymandering vote next spring. National Democrats are also leaning on Illinois and Maryland to redistrict. And looming over everything is the U.S. Supreme Court’s pending decision on Section Two of the Voting Rights Act; a maximal decision could essentially allow Republicans in several Southern states to eliminate Democratic districts with significant Black populations if the decision is issued far enough in advance of next year’s election (a decision in late June, the customary time for landmark SCOTUS decisions, would likely be too late to impact 2026, but the decision hypothetically could come earlier). The VRA decision, and how sweeping it is, is probably the most important (and hardest to assess) variable on the House playing field.

But let’s take stock of what redistricting has done so far.

Before any states drew new maps, we had 209 districts rated Safe, Likely, or Leans Democratic, 207 Safe, Likely, or Leans Republican, and 19 Toss-ups. The only changes we have made to our House ratings over the past few months have been directly related to redistricting (our last non-redistricting-related rating change was on July 10 when we moved the special election in TN-7 from Safe Republican to Likely Republican—that election is coming up on Dec. 2).

Following today’s rating changes in California and other changes based on redistricting, we now have those categories split 209 to 209 for each side, with 17 Toss-ups.

Table 3 shows the changes in each category.

Table 3: Crystal Ball House ratings before and after recent redistricting

Notice that the number of districts in the most competitive categories—the Toss-ups and the Leaners—is reduced by 6, from 45 to 39. Still, in what is a nearly evenly-divided House, there are enough competitive seats that the majority could go either way.

Overall, though, not a whole lot has changed so far at the topline level despite the nation’s two largest states and three other decent-sized ones redrawing—states that account for nearly 30% of all the nation’s House seats (127 out of 435). Last night does not have to be predictive of next year’s midterm, but certainly if November 2026 mirrors November 2026, Democrats would be well-positioned to win the House on this kind of playing field.

But as we spelled out above, there is a long way to go in determining what the playing field actually is.

Kyle Kondik is a Political Analyst at the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and the Managing Editor of Sabato's Crystal Ball.

See Other Political Commentary by Kyle Kondik.

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Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports. Comments about this content should be directed to the author or syndicate.