When ballots are counted across America in less than two weeks, the punditry will focus on the New York mayoral race and the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial contests. Knowing that these races could be predictive of next year’s midterms, who won and why will dominate headlines. But there’s another important question to ask: Compared with what?
In our highly polarized politics, small deviations from the norm in race results could reveal factors that prove decisive next year.
New York is a good example. Socialist Zohran Mamdani is likely to win. But he is the Democratic nominee, and registered Democrats make up 65% of the city’s rolls. What if Mr. Mamdani’s vote count falls well short of that number? Even in the current three-way race—he faces Republican Curtis Sliwa and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent—such a result would suggest that Democratic candidates from the far left might underperform in the midterm.
Look, too, across the Hudson River to New Jersey. Democrats make up 38.2% of the Garden State’s voters, Republicans 25.3% and unaffiliated voters 35.5%. Despite the party’s 13-point registration advantage, Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Mikie Sherrill leads by only 4.1 points in the RealClearPolitics average of recent polls.
The race has tightened in part because of candidate quality. Ms. Sherrill is wooden, coming across as overly scripted, inauthentic. Her time at the Naval Academy coincided with a massive cheating scandal. Ms. Sherrill wasn’t accused of cheating, but she hasn’t been all that forthcoming—reinforcing the idea that she’s inauthentic.
By contrast, her Republican opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, has authenticity in abundance. He nearly beat incumbent Gov. Phil Murphy four years ago, against all expectations. Mr. Ciattarelli comes across as an everyman, concerned about his state’s future and offering common-sense ideas.
But there’s a potentially bigger story in the Garden State race than charisma or lack thereof. Voters’ desire for change is helping Mr. Ciattarelli. Now under a Democratic governor, 55% of voters in the latest Fox News poll said they aren’t satisfied with “how things are going in New Jersey.” The top two issues, “high taxes/property taxes” (34%) and cost of living (19%), are indictments of the current state government.
If Ms. Sherrill pulls it out, her margin will matter. The same is true of races for the state General Assembly, where Republicans hold 28 seats and Democrats 52. If Democratic candidates merely scrape by, that indicates that anti-Trump appeals are insufficient to win voters. The results will also indicate that Republicans have kept the remarkable jump in Hispanic and black support that Donald Trump received in New Jersey in 2024.
