Where to look for clues on election night 

It’s not that I don’t care about New York City politics. I really do. It’s in the same way that I’m interested in the politics of Britain or Canada or Japan. What happens in these places is important, and I want good things for the people who are so closely connected to the United States. And maybe there are even some faint lessons for what’s happening in American politics.

So while I’ll definitely be tuned in to the story of what’s going on in New York tonight, my focus will mostly be elsewhere, even as I am broadcasting from the city itself. 

What I really want to know is how voters are feeling one year into MAGA 2.0 and what the trend line is looking like for the midterm elections a year from now. With that in mind, here are two places to watch for clues this evening.

Virginia: South by Southwest  

The most obvious storyline in Virginia is about the possibility of a split ticket between Democratic gubernatorial nominee Abigail Spanberger and her party’s candidate for state attorney general, Jay Jones. And certainly if Spanberger wins decisively, as polls suggest she will, and Jones loses to incumbent state Attorney General Jason Miyares, it will tell us about the willingness of voters to still split their tickets in this very partisan era. But we saw quite a bit of that in 2020 and 2024. The only lesson there would be that candidate quality still matters, which is hardly a revelation.

Virginia will, however, teach us something useful about what’s going to happen in 2026 and the nature of the partisan coalitions. 

If you only wanted to know who was going to win the gubernatorial or attorney general races this year, you could just watch five jurisdictions: Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties in the D.C. suburbs; Henrico County in suburban Richmond; and the city of Virginia Beach.

These are mostly Democratic-leaning places — of these, Gov. Glenn Youngkin won only Virginia Beach four years ago — but combined, they have so much of the electorate that Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears can’t afford to get blown out. If she or Miyares get less than a third of the vote in Fairfax or less than 40 percent in Prince William, Loudoun and Henrico, they probably won’t be able to make the difference in the lower-population, bright-red counties to the south and west.

But it’s those red counties that have the most to tell us about 2026, and that’s why we look to state legislative races. If the new MAGA coalition proves to be durable, it will be because the lower-propensity, working-class voters President Trump brought into the GOP coalition will vote even when he’s not on the ballot.

I’ll be watching House District 34, which is around Harrisonburg in the Shenandoah Valley; House District 41 to its south; and House District 49 on the North Carolina border. These are all districts Trump carried last year and that Republicans won in 2023 and should win again this year. Any losses in districts like these or even extremely close races would be suggestions that the GOP hasn’t found an answer for its non-presidential-year turnout woes.

New Jersey: Inner Circle

The shift in New Jersey from 2020 to 2024 was seismic. Like neighboring New York, the Garden State saw not the modest movement of the swing states, but a hard shift to the right. Kamala Harris’s victory by less than 6 points was the closest result in New Jersey since 1992 and 10 points worse than Joe Biden’s showing in 2020. 

Was that a fluke or the start of something bigger? Trump flipped five counties outright from 2020 to 2024 and in several others saw huge gains, particularly in the New York and Philadelphia suburbs. We shouldn't compare Republican gubernatorial nominee Jack Ciattarelli to Trump’s performance in these places. The electorates are dramatically different. But we do have a very useful comparison for Ciattarelli: his own performance as nominee four years ago.

Watch Passaic, Bergen, Essex and Hudson counties in the New York metro area. The northern two, wealthy Bergen and suburban sprawling Passaic, were pretty good to Ciattarelli in 2021. He lost Bergen by 5.6 points and Passaic by 3.7 points, far better than the 2017 GOP nominee, who lost Passaic by 22 points and Bergen by 15 points. Even a small improvement by Ciattarelli in these two counties compared with four years ago could be enough to make Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill sweat.

But the southern two counties, Essex and Hudson, hold even better clues about New Jersey’s political future and the nature of the new MAGA coalition. Ciattarelli got about a quarter of the vote in both counties four years ago. Not great, but substantially better than the GOP candidate in 2017, who got less than 20 percent in each county. 

Hudson and Essex feel a lot more urban than most American suburbs and have a demographic mix to match. These are a lot of the nonwhite voters whom Republicans were gaga over in the wake of Trump’s 2024 win, and with good reason. Trump improved 18 points in Hudson County and 11 points in Essex County. 

If the new working-class GOP has staying power, we should see that reflected to some degree in Ciattarelli’s performance in Hudson and Essex. Certainly he should be able to hold his quarter of the vote from 2021 if not add to it if there’s a lasting change afoot. Again, not on the order of Trump’s improvement, but measurable movement from four years ago.

There are a lot of good clues to be had tonight, including a suddenly hot Supreme Court contest in swing-state Pennsylvania, but looking a little deeper in New Jersey and Virginia is a great place to start.