Don’t Get Misled by This Election

Since its defeat in the 2024 election, the Democratic Party has been loudly mocked as rudderless and slow: Its core constituencies have abandoned it, for one reason or another, and it continues to do little against a violent and tightly-run Republican Party. This narrative of failure has varied in pitch and timbre, but it has remained the fashionable view among liberal pundits — or, to be more accurate, it was until Nov. 4. 

On Election Day, the Democrats hit the jackpot. In Virginia, gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger walloped her competition, scoring some former Trump voters in the process. Her administration will be reinforced with loyal executive officials and a historic legislative advantage. Up north, Democrats in New Jersey secured another gubernatorial win in an unexpected liberal landslide and coupled it with a legislative supermajority. On the other coast, voters in California largely supported Proposition 50, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s gerrymandering scheme designed to counter Republican redistricting in other parts of the country.

But the victories weren’t all in blue states. Across the country, liberal judges and public officials notched win after win. Pennsylvania kept liberals on the state Supreme Court while Georgia unseated two Republican Public Service Commissioners. To be clear, these elections were local and bureaucratic, but they tentatively show the national salience of this “blue wave.” No matter the state, things looked good for the Dems.

But nowhere was the story as romantic as in New York City. Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani finished a storybook campaign with a clean victory, defeating the Trump-supported former Gov. Andrew Cuomo. His majority wasn’t exceptional, but the tale was still spectacular: A young progressive defeated an uninspired party veteran in front of Wall Street itself, becoming New York’s first socialist mayor. In comparison to other stunning progressive wins, this one brought real executive authority. It seemed to be the perfect touchstone for a night of Democratic renewal. 

Naturally, the media has reiterated that theme of liberal redemption, again and again. We’ve heard that President Donald Trump is the albatross of the GOP. It’s been implied that the Democrats have simultaneously won new voters in rural America, energized their base, and recouped their demographic losses from 2024. Perhaps “affordability” must now become the keyword that unites the party. And, depending on how you slice up the data, you can even serve your partisan viewpoint of choice: maybe the results reveal the unequivocal strength of centrism or, alternatively, the freshness of progressive thought. 

But let’s slow down — this storm of ideas is fraught; we are in danger of overstating the success of liberalism and the illuminatory nature of this election. Yes, the scoreboard was perfect for the Democrats and their victories came with deep, historic majorities. But this outcome comes in an off-off-year election, with lower voter turnout than both the midterms and the presidential race. 

Democrats have a history of overperforming in elections where the presidency isn’t on the line. In 2017, they flipped a Senate seat in deep-red Alabama; in 2018, a blue wave was awash in the House of Representatives, sweeping up some rural votes; in 2019, suburban voters rallied against the Republicans, electing a liberal Governor in Kentucky. Given this data, you might have expected a presidential blowout in 2020, especially given Trump’s then-record unpopularity and the sudden emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet, despite everything, former President Joe Biden won only a lean majority, with bare-bones leads in Congress. At first glance, this electoral discrepancy makes no sense; upon further reflection, it reveals a lot about the nature of both parties.

The Republicans are top-heavy. Trump enjoys a personal relation with his voters; the Make America Great Again (MAGA) gambit is to make all elections about the leader, exploiting the nationalization of politics and the modern power of celebrity. All other MAGA institutions and personalities appear only in the shadow of Trump. This strategy succeeds in reaping support for the president from the base, but leaves his down-ballot allies dry. This problem is made worse when Republicans only nominates loyal MAGA troops who frighten moderates but still remain bereft of base support as, once again, they’re still not Trump.

In comparison, the Democratic movement is amorphous and decentralized. Its nominees come from different camps, and its voters are generally more concerned about downballot institutions, including state government and congressional politics. Lacking top leadership has given the Democrats an identity crisis, yet it has simultaneously kept them awake in off-year elections. To be absolutely clear though, this does not translate to the presidential election. If liberals ignore this caveat, they will walk blindly into disaster. 

In 2022, polling painted a dark story for the Democrats in the coming midterms. But the party outperformed those expectations, leading to renewed (and unwise) confidence in the Biden coalition. The result supplied Biden staffers with ample arguments in defense of the president’s electability. How did it end? A disastrous debate performance, a chaotic nomination switch, and ultimately a decisive loss. A loss, of course, buoyed by strong turnout among the MAGA base. 

Just as in 2022, Democrats risk being misled by an off-year election. They cannot assume they have all the answers, nor can they elevate the present over broader trends. The greatest threat is a nasty triumphalism where the party expects to ride on a wave of victory into 2026 and 2028, without serious revision or consideration. Also worrying are attempts to divine the future of the party, in ideology or leadership, from this one result. 

That being said, I do not mean to dismiss all fruitful debate or ignore the revivifying effect this result has had on the spirits of some. In fact, there’s one particularly interesting new line of thought: Perhaps Democrats can find hidden strength in their amorphousness. As Ezra Klein has put it, the party does not need to be unilaterally steered by either progressives or moderates, instead, it should field whatever candidates best fit their communities and it should welcome a broad plurality of opinions. Crafting a strict, ideological party line, it has been argued, is only MAGA imitation; a multivocal coalition would better serve the base. 

This argument makes sense given the character of this election,  where different visions of liberalism have seen concurrent success. However, the theory struggles when we stretch it beyond off year races. 

In a presidential or midterm campaign, the most successful parties have a clear and coherent platform for all to see. In 1994, GOP House leader Newt Gingrich whipped his Party together behind his manifesto, titled a “Contract with America.” The Republicans went on to win 55 seats, earning command over the House for the first time in decades. The lesson was the strength of clarity and unity, and it should be all the more relevant in our era of nationalized politics. The campaign of former Vice President Kamala Harris serves as a telling example of this idea: her team’s messaging was muddy and obscure, never clearly positioned in the center or the left, while Trump never strayed from his message. 

Maybe there is still some value to this concept of pluralism. Perhaps it could overcome extreme gerrymandering or the liberal tendency to cluster in urban areas. For now, however, it's still misleading, because it arises from an election where the campaigns run in isolation. It relies on a hasty generalization of elections in America.

If the Democrats want to succeed, or if Amherst students want to understand the news, they ought to parse through the data more keenly; off-year elections bring different voters, demand different candidates, and paint different pictures. Overconfidence in the reliability of recent data doomed liberals last year. If they’re not careful, it will doom them again.