President Donald Trump’s name may not have been on the ballot Tuesday, but he suffered a resounding defeat anyway as voters rejected Republican candidates and registered their strong disapproval of how the president is doing his job.
From gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, to the mayoral race in Trump’s hometown, to a redistricting measure in California, Americans opposed Trump’s endorsed candidates and expressed deep dissatisfaction with the country's direction while signaling their dismay with the cost of living and their financial situations.
In that sense, Tuesday’s results — a Democratic rout — served as a warning sign for the president and Republicans headed into the 2026 midterms when the party out of power historically makes significant gains.
As the results became clear, the president took to social media to say the first election during his second term had nothing to do with him. "'TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT,’ according to Pollsters,” Trump posted.
Some inside the White House, however, viewed the results differently.
“Hopefully POTUS starts focusing less on international stuff and more on domestic issues,” one White House official told MSNBC after losses in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City rolled in.
The White House official admitted they were beaten across the board, adding that “tonight shouldn’t be ignored at all.” But, the official added, the results weren’t “completely indicative” of what could come in the midterms.
Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, said the results followed a pattern for the party in power during off-year elections. Ayres said he’ll be watching the exit polls closely to see if Democrats reverse Trump’s 2024 gains with Latinos and Black voters.
“Very clearly, people are dissatisfied with the state of the economy, and particularly with the cost of living and inflation,” Ayres said, but the extent to which those issues motivated voters will become clearer in the coming days.
“There was no distance between them, between the Republican candidates and the president, and I don’t know how they thought running as a clone of Donald Trump in a state that he lost three times was going to lead to victory,” Ayres said, referring to both Virginia and New Jersey.
The off-year elections in a smattering of blue states provided the first real window into voters’ views of Trump’s norm-shattering second term. In just 10 months, Trump has bent the GOP-controlled Congress to his will as he has implemented sweeping global tariffs, fired thousands of federal workers, deployed National Guard troops into American cities, unilaterally clawed back congressionally appropriated funds and urged federal immigration agents to use more aggressive tactics when rounding up immigrants.
I don’t know how they thought running as a clone of Donald Trump in a state that he lost three times was going to lead to victory."
Trump advisers and GOP strategists are already acutely aware that Republicans could be facing a replay next year of 2018 when a swell of anti-Trump voters led to a 40-seat Democratic House gain.
Trump sounded off his social media platform throughout the day and night, pleading repeatedly with Senate Republicans to nuke the legislative filibuster so he can push through his wishlist without having to engage in bipartisan negotiations with Democrats.
“The Democrats are far more likely to win the midterms and the next presidential election, if we don’t do the termination of the filibuster,” Trump said Tuesday morning a lengthy Truth Social post. “FOR THREE YEARS, NOTHING WILL BE PASSED, AND REPUBLICANS WILL BE BLAMED. Elections, including the Midterms, will be rightfully brutal.”
Once the results rolled in on Tuesday night, Chris LaCivita, campaign co-manager for Trump’s 2024 bid, downplayed the Virginia election results and took a swipe at the losing GOP candidate, Winsome Earle-Sears, posting on X, that “a Bad candidate and Bad campaign have consequences — the Virginia Governors race is example number 1.”
The losses in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races didn’t surprise most Republicans, but a GOP strategist told MSNBC that Democrats’ performance “shows enthusiasm and that’s what should worry us.”
There is a significant amount of data in preliminary exit polls conducted by NBC News that points to dissatisfaction with Trump. At the same time, many voters held negative views of Democrats, too.
The majority of voters in Virginia and New Jersey disapproved of the way Trump is doing his job, according to the early exit polls. In New York City, where Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race, just 29% of voters approved of Trump’s performance in office. In California, where voters backed a ballot measure aimed at adding Democratic seats to the House, approval for Trump stood at 36%, according to the exit polls.
In New Jersey, Trump was a distinct drag on GOP nominee Jack Ciattarelli, who lost to Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill. Thirty-eight percent of voters said they cast their ballot in the gubernatorial race to oppose Trump, according to the exit polls, although 47% said the president had no effect on their choice.
A similar dynamic played out in Virginia where Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger — who first won her House seat in the 2018 Democratic wave — bested Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. In Virginia, 37% of voters cast their ballots to reflect opposition to Trump, while 47% said he didn’t influence their decision. The percentage of voters casting ballots in California who said they turned out to oppose Trump was 50%, the highest of anywhere, per the exit polls. The lowest percentage of voters trying to send a negative message to Trump was in New York City at 30%.
Despite making last-minute appeals to voters in New Jersey and Virginia, Trump never explicitly endorsed Earle-Sears. Trump endorsed Ciattarelli in New Jersey, but he didn’t personally campaign with the businessman who Democrats labeled the “Trump of Trenton.” Trump campaigned fiercely against Proposition 50 in California, and he labeled Mamdani a “communist” while endorsing his opponent, Andrew Cuomo, in the final days.
Trump gained in both Virginia and New Jersey in 2024, losing by about 6 points in each of them. And he’s repeatedly opined that New Jersey was “becoming more Republican.”
The president held no public events on Tuesday, but shot off post after post on his social media site Truth Social, fretting that the midterms would be “brutal” for Republicans. After Democratic victories in Virginia and New Jersey in 2017, Democrats flipped the House the following year.
Fearing a 2018 repeat, Trump pressured Texas earlier this year to launch an unprecedented mid-decade redraw of their congressional map to skew the political odds in his party’s favor. The move launched a redistricting arm’s race when Newsom responded with Proposition 50.
In recent months, Trump continued to squeeze Republican state leaders to redraw their maps to shut out Democrats. North Carolina and Missouri did the president’s bidding with Indiana now exploring its options.
On Tuesday, Trump baselessly called the California redistricting effort “rigged” and said mail-in ballots in the state are “under very serious legal and criminal review.” Newsom responded on X calling Trump’s post “the ramblings of an old man that knows he’s about to LOSE.”
Asked about the president’s comments, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the White House is “looking into” an executive action to ban mail-in voting, again claiming without any evidence that widespread fraud is occurring in California.
Trump’s last-minute bid to topple Mamdani failed in New York City. But the White House and Republicans are eager to make Mamdani a boogeyman similar to their past efforts to label the entire Democratic Party as “socialists” or “radical leftists,” following orders from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, N.Y.
“Long-term messaging” will focus on making Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party and future ads will tag all Democrats as “communists,” one former Trump adviser told MSNBC.
On Monday night, Trump threatened to cut federal funding to the city if Mamdani wins, a move that is sure to spark lawsuits if it actually happens. The White House didn’t respond to questions about whether officials were crafting plans to withhold funds from New York City, and which programs could potentially be affected.
Economy and personal finances were top of mind for many voters in states like New Jersey and Virginia. Sixty percent of New Jersey voters said the state’s economy is not so good or poor, according to early NBC exit polls. Some 49 percent of Virginia voters surveyed said the economy was the most important issue for them, followed by health care at 21 percent, according to these polls.
Some Republicans who spoke to MSNBC warned that tariffs were hurting their party and that consumer costs needed to be urgently addressed for the GOP to turn things around by the midterms.