QUEENS, United States: New Yorkers looked set to elect a young Muslim leftist as mayor Tuesday as US voters cast judgment for the first time on Donald Trump’s tumultuous second presidency in nationwide local elections.
While Zohran Mamdani’s rise has dominated headlines, elections for governor in Virginia and New Jersey could also be revealing gauges of the US political mood nearly 10 months since Trump’s return to the White House. Democratic wins in those states may indicate a revived opposition ahead of next year’s midterm elections to decide control of Congress.
In New York City’s mayoral race, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, faces 67-year-old Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat running as a more centrist independent after losing to Mamdani in the primary, four years after resigning as New York state’s governor in disgrace. 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.
Polls close first in Virginia at 7 p.m. ET (0000 GMT), followed by New Jersey, New York and California throughout Tuesday evening. Democrats will be 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 in the U.S. illegally and impose costly tariffs on imports of foreign goods, the legality of which is being weighed by the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
More than 3 million people voted early in Virginia, New York and New Jersey, in each case far exceeding the totals from four years ago. In New York City, there were 735,000 ballots cast, according to the city elections board, more than four times the number in 2021.
The New Jersey race is the most hotly contested campaign, with opinion polls showing Democrat Mikie Sherrill, a congresswoman and former Navy pilot, holding a narrow lead over her Republican challenger, former state lawmaker and small-business owner Jack Ciattarelli.
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.
In New York, Mamdani, who was a little-known lawmaker in New York’s state legislature only a few months ago, 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, is also widely expected to pass.
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.
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.
