Democrats crow after election wins: ‘All the momentum in the world’

House Democratic leaders are exalting in the wake of Tuesday’s election victories in states around the country, saying the results are clear evidence voters have turned on President Trump and Republicans less than a year into his second term.

The lopsided results, they said, predict Democrats will have little trouble flipping control of the lower chamber in next year’s midterms elections. 

“Democrats have all of the momentum in the world,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday during a press briefing at the Democrats’ campaign headquarters in Washington. “Republicans woke up this morning and realized that they are no longer in a 2024 electoral environment.

“That's over, and they're done.”

Tuesday’s off-year elections gave Democrats plenty to crow about. Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) easily won the race for governor in Virginia. Current Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) sailed to the governorship in New Jersey. And Californians voted overwhelmingly to redraw the Golden State’s House map to secure more Democratic seats — a direct response to Trump’s redistricting campaign in a number of Republican-led states. 

Democrats were expected to win those contests. They were not expected to win them by the large margins that they did. And Democratic leaders in Washington wasted no time attributing the results to voter backlash against Trump’s policy agenda, not least because of the rising costs of standard expenses — housing, groceries, furniture, toys, cars — that have occurred under his watch. 

“Trump and House Republicans promised on Day 1 to lower costs, and they've broken that promise over and over and over again. It's going to cost them the House majority,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, told reporters. 

“All year we've been saying that Republicans are running scared, and last night showed us why,” she continued. “By every metric possible we are seeing the American public sour on Republicans' disastrous record of broken promises, and it's why voters are going to reject them in the midterms." 

GOP leaders quickly rejected the notion that Tuesday’s results forecast a tough road for Republicans in next year’s elections. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said there were “no surprises” because former Vice President Kamala Harris had won the states where the major races took place. 

“What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue,” Johnson said at a Wednesday press briefing. “We all saw that coming, and no one should read too much into last night’s election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come. That’s what history teaches us.”

Still, some of the Democrats’ blue-state victories on Tuesday were won by margins far greater than Harris’s advantage over Trump a year ago. In Virginia, where Harris had prevailed by less than 6 points, Spanberger won by almost 15. And in New Jersey, where Harris’s margin was also just less than 6 points, Sherrill won by 13.

Democrats also did well in less prominent elections in more conservative states carried by Trump last year. 

In Pennsylvania, for instance, where Trump won in 2024, all three Democrats running to retain their seats on the state Supreme Court were victorious. And in Georgia, which Trump also carried, Democrats picked off incumbent Republicans in a pair of races for the state’s Public Service Commission — two down-ballot contests that were nonetheless considered to be harbingers of the political environment nine months into Trump’s second term. 

Jeffries said the results are evidence that the gains Trump and Republicans made in 2024 with certain demographics — including Hispanics, working-class Americans and young voters — have been erased. 

“Because the American people have had enough,” he said. “Enough of the extremism, enough of the lies [and] enough of the broken promises.”