After a year in the political wilderness, Democrats rode frustration over high prices and President Donald Trump’s disruptive economic policies to win a raft of elections across the country on Nov. 4. In Virginia and New Jersey, voters handed the party the keys to the governor’s mansions by larger than expected margins. In California, voters overwhelmingly approved new congressional districts to benefit Democrats, after Texas passed its own new map to favor the GOP.
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But it was a series of decisive wins in down-ballot races in places like Pennsylvania and Georgia that stunned leaders in both parties and bolstered Democrats’ hopes that they had landed on a viable playbook for next year’s midterm elections.
The Democratic National Committee is describing its performance on Nov. 4 as a “blue sweep,” one that provides a blueprint for winning in 2026, according to a memo obtained exclusively by TIME from DNC Chairman Ken Martin on the party’s key takeaways from Election Day. As they pivot to the midterms, Democrats plan to continue to hammer the affordability issue, emphasizing to voters that Trump’s policies are dragging the country into a “gilded recession” that will benefit CEOs at the expense of working families, the memo states.
“Our candidates, no matter where they are, no matter how they fit into our big-tent party, are meeting voters at the kitchen table, not in the gilded ballroom,” Martin writes.
The way forward, the memo continues, is rolling out coordinated campaigns at every level of government. “For too long, we have ceded ground to Republicans at the local and state levels,” Martin writes.
There are signs that strategy paid off in unexpected places on Tuesday. Pennsylvanians voted to keep three justices backed by Democrats on the state Supreme Court. Democrats in Georgia won two utility commission seats by double digits, the widest margins Democrats have seen in statewide contests there in two decades. In Mississippi, where absentee ballots were still being counted days later, Democrats appeared poised to flip two seats in the state Senate, breaking a GOP supermajority.
In the wake of months of polls showing much of the electorate was dissatisfied with both parties, the initial response from many Democrats at running the table in such a hodgepodge of contests was a mixture of jubilation and disbelief. Martin says the Democrats are now “full steam ahead to take back the Congress next year” as the “party of affordability.”
Read more: Democrats Debate Potential End to Shutdown in Light of Election Wins
Republicans are scrambling to chart their own path forward. The party has a year to show they’re making a difference on the issues the electorate cares about most, says Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP strategist. He called the margins of victory voters gave to Governors-elect Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey “pretty remarkable,” and the Republican losses in Mississippi and Georgia concerning. “The less visible races are as much of a concern as the most visible races,” Ayres said.
Democrats are giving a particularly close look to the upset in Georgia, where they managed to flip two seats on the Georgia Public Service Commission which oversees the Georgia Power Co. Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson both won with more than 60% of the vote. Party leaders see the results as a sign that utility bills has emerged as one of the most salient issues for voters. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, home electricity bills rose 6.1% from August 2024 to August 2025.
But a widespread Trump backlash is also part of the story. Exit polling suggests Trump dragged down Republicans in multiple races. In New Jersey, 97% of voters who voted for Sherrill said their vote was to oppose Trump, according to NBC exit polling. A year after Kamala Harris carried the state by 6 points, Sherrill won it by 13.
Democrats won back young voters between the ages of 18 and 29 who had swung toward Trump in 2024. Spanberger won Virginia men under 29 by 17 points, the DNC memo states, and Sherrill won that group in New Jersey by 14 points.
Trump had some excuses for the GOP’s poor performance, including the fallout from a government shutdown that his party has tried to blame entirely on Democrats. “I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” Trump told GOP senators at the White House the morning after. Vice President JD Vance posted on X that “it’s idiotic to overreact to a couple of elections” but acknowledged that Democrats’ focus on cost of living broke through with voters. He argued that Trump’s policies had helped lower interest rates and inflation, and that making “a decent life affordable” is “the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”
But the other GOP strategy appears to be tying Democrats to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist set to be New York City’s next mayor. Mamdani drew more than a million votes on a campaign focused on hiking taxes on the wealthy to pay to make child care, rent and transportation more affordable.
In the run-up to the election, some Democrats held Mamdani at arm’s length. Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a New York City resident, refused to say who he voted for in the race. Republicans insist he is a warning sign that Democrats are veering further to the left. “Working families watching this play out have a right to know that socialism and communism are not just confined to New York City,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on the steps of the Capitol the morning after Mamdani’s win. “They are quickly coming to a town near you unless you stand up and let your voice of common sense be heard.”
But Democratic leaders say the results show them that the party does best when candidates reflect the local electorate, pointing to the moderate campaigns of Spanberger and Sherrill. Democrats also flooded Virginia and New Jersey with volunteers and calls. In Virginia, the campaign used DNC phonebanking tools to make 2.8 million calls, knocked on more than 1 million doors and had more than 220,000 in person conversations. New Jersey Democrats worked with the national party to recruit more than 6,000 volunteers and make more than 4.1 million calls.
A flood-the-zone approach focused on affordability appears to have landed with voters. In her victory speech as Virginia’s first woman elected governor, Spanberger delivered lines that Democrats will likely echo over the next 12 months. “We chose our Commonwealth over chaos,” Spanberger said. “You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most: lowering costs, keeping our communities safe, and strengthening our economy for every Virginian—leadership that will focus on problem solving, not stoking division.”