Democrat Spanberger wins Virginia governor's race as Trump's agenda faces early test

By Joseph Ax, Tim Reid and Maria Tsvetkova

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democrat Abigail Spanberger won Virginia's election for governor on Tuesday, U.S. media said, the first of several contests that will serve as an early gauge of how Americans are responding to President Donald Trump's tumultuous nine months in office.

Spanberger, 46, a former congresswoman and CIA officer, will be the first woman to serve as Virginia's governor after easily defeating Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears.

Polls closed in New Jersey's gubernatorial contest, where Democrat Mikie Sherrill was locked in what opinion polls suggested was a tight battle with Republican Jack Ciattarelli.

Across the river in New York City's mayoral race, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, faces 67-year-old Andrew Cuomo, the former governor who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary. The campaign has laid bare the Democratic Party's generational and ideological divides as it seeks to rehabilitate its damaged brand.

And in California, voters will decide whether to give Democratic lawmakers the power to redraw the state's congressional map, expanding a national battle over redistricting that could determine which party controls the U.S. House of Representatives after next year's midterm elections.

Democrats were watching Tuesday's results carefully, with the party locked out of power in Washington and struggling to find consensus on the best way to oppose Trump, a Republican, and find a path out of the political wilderness.

Former President Barack Obama, still the party's most popular figure, headlined 11th-hour rallies over the weekend in New Jersey and Virginia, exhorting voters to elect Democrats to counter what he branded Trump's lawlessness.

In interviews at polling stations on Tuesday, some voters said Trump's most contentious policies were on their minds, including his efforts to deport immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and to impose costly tariffs on imports of foreign goods, the legality of which is being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

Turnout appeared high across the board.

In New York City, nearly 1.75 million ballots including early voting had been cast as of 6 p.m. ET, according to the board of elections, far exceeding the 1.1 million cast in the last mayoral race in 2021. Early vote totals in Virginia and New Jersey also outpaced the previous elections in 2021.

The New Jersey race was the most hotly contested campaign, with the contest shattering spending records after both national parties poured millions of dollars into advertising.

A spate of hoax bomb threats sent by email briefly closed down New Jersey polling stations in seven counties in the morning, state officials said.

TRUMP STILL ON VOTERS' MINDS

Trump remained top of mind for many voters despite not appearing on the ballot.

In Virginia, Juan Benitez, a self-described independent, was voting for the first time. The 25-year-old restaurant manager backed all of Virginia's Democratic candidates because of his opposition to Trump's immigration policies and the federal government shutdown, for which he blamed Trump.

Jennifer Manton, 47, said she had voted for Trump all three times he ran for president, and backed Republican candidates on Tuesday, citing Trump's tariffs as a major issue.

In New York, Mamdani, who was a little-known lawmaker in New York's state legislature before his surprising rise, has led by double digits over Cuomo, with Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, 71, a distant third in most opinion polls.

California's ballot measure, Proposition 50, which would install a new Democratic-backed congressional map that aims to flip five Republican seats in response to a similar move by Texas, was also widely expected to pass.

AFFORDABILITY, TRUMP WEIGH ON RACES

While Tuesday's results will offer some insight into the mood of American voters, the midterm elections are a year away, an eternity in politics.

"There's nothing that's going to happen in Virginia or New Jersey that's going to tell us much about what will happen in a congressional district in Missouri or a Senate race in Maine," said Douglas Heye, a Republican strategist.

For Democrats, Tuesday's candidates offer a chance to assess differing playbooks.

Spanberger and Sherrill, both moderate Democrats with backgrounds in national security, have put Trump front-and-center, seeking to harness anger at the president's no-holds-barred agenda.

In New York, Mamdani has proposed ambitious left-wing policies, including freezing rents for nearly a million apartments and making the city's buses free.

A day after endorsing Cuomo, Trump said on Tuesday that any Jewish New Yorker who voted for Mamdani, a critic of the Israeli government who would be the city's first Muslim mayor, was a "stupid person."

It was the latest in a string of comments over the course of the U.S. president's career suggesting that Jewish Americans vote against their own interests. Mamdani, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, rejects Republican accusations of antisemitism.

For Republicans, Tuesday's elections will test whether the voters who powered Trump's victory in 2024 will still show up when he is not on the ballot.

But Ciattarelli and Earle-Sears, each running in Democratic-leaning states, have faced a conundrum: criticizing Trump risks losing his supporters, but embracing him too closely could alienate moderate and independent voters who disapprove of his policies.

Trump remains unpopular: 57% of Americans disapprove of his job performance, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed. But Democrats are not gaining support as a result, with respondents evenly split on whether they would favor Democrats or Republicans in 2026.

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Stafford, Virginia, Maria Tsvetkova in New York and Joseph Ax in Washington; Additional reporting by Ashraf Fahim, Julia Harte, Jonathan Allen and Andrew Hofstetter; Editing by Paul Thomasch, Ross Colvin, Alistair Bell and Howard Goller)