Oh my God, Matt, What Do Democrat Wins in Blue New Jersey, New York City, and Virginia Mean?

The Democrat Party is becoming more and more wedded to its socialist fringe that won’t play well outside of very Blue states and big cities, which are emptying out.

Nothing. Literally nothing. Yet, here is what Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy had to say about the losses this year:

There’s two key lessons for Republicans, listen carefully. We got our a--es handed to us in New Jersey, Virginia and New York City. Democrats swept all three. Our side needs to focus on affordability. Make the American dream affordable, bring down costs: electric costs, grocery costs, healthcare costs and housing costs. And lay out how we’re going to do it. Number two, cut out the identity politics, it doesn’t suit Republicans, it’s not for us, that’s the woke left’s game, not ours. We don’t care about the color of your skin or your religion. We care about the content of your character, that’s who we are.

What the hell is he talking about? Other than moderate aberrations (see Chris Christie in New Jersey and Michael Bloomberg in New York City), we have lost races in all three (and California) most of the time over the last twenty-five years. Republicans have spent the better part of the last four years talking endlessly about affordability due to Joe Biden’s runaway inflation and the high interest rates he caused. Those numbers are coming down under Donald Trump. As for identity politics, who on the Right has been doing that? If that is some subtle reference to Zohran Mamdani, given that the man appeared with a 1993 World Trade Center unindicted co-conspirator, lied about his “aunt’s” treatment after 9/11, and has projected aspects of antisemitism, it was perfectly appropriate to raise his background and possible adherence to radical Islam.

C’mon, Vivek, you can do better, or at least should leave the political analysis to people who understand politics (rich, book smart, and charismatic ≠ politically astute). At least J.D. Vance got last night right in his tweet this morning.

Here is my analysis: Democrats won two states and one major city that they should win. Mikie Sherrill won the governor’s office by thirteen-percentage points in New Jersey. Mamdani won the mayor’s office in New York City by nine-percentage points. Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s office by nearly fifteen-percentage points in Virginia. Even Jay Jones won the Attorney General’s office by six-percentage points in Virginia despite his sociopathic wishes to kill Republicans and their kids. In 2024, Trump lost New Jersey and Virginia by roughly six percentage points each. and lost New York City by thirty-nine-percentage points.

Keep in mind, since the start of the COVID pandemic, right-leaning Americans have been voting with their feet by fleeing places like New York and New Jersey and moving to places like Florida and Texas. So, it isn’t surprising in an off-year election that Democrats did better than in a presidential year. Sure, we can do a better job getting out the vote when Trump isn’t on the ballot, but show me a major race in a Red state we lost this year? 2025 is not 2026. Republican wins in those three places has been rare. Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 less than two-percentage point win in Virginia over Terry McAuliffe had more to do with McAullife than Youngkin. McAullife is a slim ball who already had been governor eight years earlier and was deeply unpopular.

Instead of mistakeningly seeing Virginia as winnable because of 2021, Republicans should have seen it for what it was—the exception to the rule that Virginia is a deep Blue state at this point due to the massive number of Democrats in the Northern Virginia (NoVa—i.e., Washington, D.C.) portion of the state. It was like Republican Cory Gardner’s U.S. Senate win in Colorado in 2014, which didn’t mean Colorado was turning purple. It just meant Democrat Mark Udall ran a terrible campaign and Gardner got lucky. As in New Jersey and New York, Republicans who could leave, have. Trump’s solid showing in 2024 in those places, like McAullife in 2021, had more to do with Kamala Harris’s unlikeability than some changing trend in New Jersey or Virginia. Who had the biggest incentive to vote in Virginia on Tuesday? Democrats who work in the federal government or who are contractors in the federal government. They’ve been losing bigly under Trump, so sending a message was very personal to them.

The only people who pushed the fantasy that Republicans would win in the Democrat strongholds of New Jersey and Virginia in an off-year either made money to say it to push up television ratings or just don’t get how Blue those places really are post-COVID pandemic. As for New York City, no Republican can win there, so the issue was between a card-carrying socialist, Mamdani, or a has-been Democrat, Andrew Cuomo. As I’ve noted in my “Bell Curve Electorate” pieces, the issue for common sense and moderation in New York City is it is populated far more by educated liberals than Main Street Americans. In last night’s election, 58% of voters had college or higher degrees, which Mamdani won 57% to 37%. That twenty-percentage point gap with a majority of voters was far too large for Cuomo to catch up with via voters without a college degree, as those voters only made up 42% of all voters and Cuomo only won those voters by 3% to 9%. Similar outcomes occurred with religious voters, as Mamdani won huge among non-Christian/non-Jewish/non-religious voters and Cuomo marginally won the non-Muslim religious voters.

Do you know who is the big winner from Tuesday? Texas and its business environment. No sane Wall Street bank or financial institution that can move to a less hostile state won’t begin the process now given Mamdani’s explicit promise to make the city unfriendly to businesses. As Joel Kotkin notes, “Between 2011 and 2021, New Yorkers with more than $1 million in adjusted gross income averaged 0.7% of all tax filers, but paid 42.4% of municipal personal Income Tax. Between 2018 and 2022, the city lost some $10 billion in revenues just to south Florida.” Several big banks already started with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan leading the charge down to Texas. Texas now has more financial workers than any state except New York. Expect Texas to overtake New York in the next four years. And, Texas isn’t resting on its laurels. It launched its own trading market and just passed a series of tax measures to make Texas even more hospitable to the financial industry. If finance leaders don’t make the move out of New York City, expect shareholders to push via proxy votes and lawsuits, as staying in an inhospitable location because of Michelin-rated restaurants and fancy apartments puts shareholder value on the back-burner. That won’t fly.

Actually, it isn’t exactly true that the results don’t mean anything. The results do say a lot about the Democratic Party. The Democrat Party is becoming more and more wedded to its socialist fringe that won’t play well outside of very Blue states and big cities, which are emptying out. I fully expect America to continue to grow apart based on politics. Last night’s results only solidify that view, with left-wing Blue locations electing more left-wing leaders, as Red states create safe havens for opportunity and prosperity.