A series of consultations or elections have just taken place in the United States that, under other circumstances and with other results, would not have been particularly significant, but in the era of Trump 2.0 polarization, they require analysis to understand the extent to which the current president can continue his national and international agenda without restriction and to begin to sketch out a scenario for the so-called “midterm elections” that will take place in November 2026.
To begin with, it is useful to mention the main results to which we refer:
1.- In the gubernatorial elections in the state of Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger was elected, going down in local history as the first woman to hold the office. In that state, the Democrats regained the majority they had lost in the House of Delegates.
2.- In the same state, where its slave-owning past still exerts some influence on current political thinking, another Democrat woman, Ms. Ghazala Hashmi, was elected lieutenant governor. She possesses a third quality that was previously unthinkable for that position: she is Muslim.
3.- In the state of New Jersey, one of the most corrupt in the country (remember the legal proceedings against former Senator Robert Menendez), a Democratic woman, Ms. Mikie Sherrill, was also elected.
4.- In California, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, a possible candidate for the 2028 presidential elections, who has publicly confronted Trump on several occasions, presented a proposal for the redistribution of electoral districts to ensure his party’s continuity in power and it also won.
5.- The result that has attracted the most attention and where possibly the most resources have been spent by both the Republicans and the traditionalist Democratic apparatus was the election of the mayor of New York City, the country’s commercial, financial, and political center, where the masses chose a young man from an immigrant family, a Muslim who defines himself as a “democratic socialist” and is not ashamed of it. The highest elected executive of the city of 8.3 million inhabitants is named Zohran Mamdani (34 years old).
6.- In Miami-Dade County, home to the largest concentration of Cubans and anti-Chávez Venezuelans, the race was won by a wide margin (still pending a second round) by Democratic candidate Eileen Higgins, who defeated three “Cuban-American” candidates, one sponsored by Governor DeSantis and two others who are former mayors of the city of Miami and considered until now to be “heavyweights” in local politics (and especially corruption).
There are other results that could be linked to a Republican debacle during these state and local elections, but those mentioned above are enough to point to certain changes. It is also important to cite the results of some polls that can help us understand the fundamental concerns of the citizens who participate in these political elections, because it is known that around 50% of Americans eligible to vote do not show up at the polls, that is, they turn their backs on the “democratic process.”
Although the results of the samples taken by different sources and services do not coincide, nor are they accurate, between 80 and 85% of those who voted in these elections as a whole (different cities and states) said that the state of the economy was their main motivation. A slightly lower figure, 70-75%, expressed dissatisfaction with the direction of the country in general. Among them, around 40% said they went to the polls solely to “punish” the country’s president.
Specifically in the case of New York, according to NBC, Mamdani received 26% less support than his rival from voters whose priority was tackling “illegal immigration,” had a 41% disadvantage among those who prioritized “tackling crime,” but was 36% ahead among those concerned about the “cost of living,” who make up 55% of all registered voters.
Put more simply: ordinary people do not understand that “America” (the United States) is “great again,” according to Trumpist mythology, and do not consider hatred of immigrants or the supposed evils they allegedly bring with them to be a top priority on the national agenda.
Even more significant is the fact that voters in New York and Virginia have brought militant Muslim politicians to the forefront, after so much ideological and monetary investment by the so-called Jewish lobby in the wake of the genocide in Gaza to revive the specter of anti-Semitism.
But while this result is surprising in terms of the population as a whole, what is expressed on some anti-Zionist Jewish digital platforms (a minority) such as Jewish Voice is relevant:
“New York Jews supported Zohran Mamdani despite the lies of Israel and the Zionist lobbies and press, and all New Yorkers won. The Jews of NYC are not going anywhere. We are not ‘leaving’. We are not in danger. We are here to stay in our beloved NYC.”
Another striking aspect of Mamdani’s victory is the success of the methods used to get the message across to voters. His campaign brought together 100,000 volunteers (hundreds of millions of dollars if they were hired operatives) to knock on the doors of 3 million households. It will be remembered that this was the winning method used by then-candidate Barack Hussein Obama in 2008, just before the massive presence of digital networks and algorithms in cell phones and the neurons of every American.
These and other results from last November 4 have already motivated and will continue to provoke many projections for the 2026 elections, in which Democrats aspire to recapture the majority in both the House and the Senate.
For now, there is at least one conclusion that seems to be universal: when Democrats choose the right candidates with the right platforms and use the right methods to communicate them, then they have a chance of winning. These are obvious truths that were not taken into account in the 2024 campaign and that brought Trump and his clique back.
The conclusion that there has been a rise of left-wing or socialist forces is unfounded for now, if we remember that Ms. Spanberger is a former CIA official and Ms. Sherrill is a former US Navy pilot. Mamdani, for his part, has already gone so far as to refer to Maduro as a “dictator.”
The idea that does seem to have some basis is that in a very short time (11 months in office), Trump has managed to provoke a reaction in part of the US electorate that has been able to articulate alternative proposals. This is a commotion that has manifested itself much more quickly than in 2017, during his first term.
Given that the traditional structure of the pre-Trump Republican Party is a thing of the past, it does not seem that coherent and rational approaches can be taken to reverse these results by methods that go beyond blackmail, extortion, pressure of all kinds, and even violence, which will lead to greater social polarization.
On the Democratic side, the moral recovery from the self-inflicted defeat (rather than Trump’s victory) of 2024, the transition in both ideological and generational leadership, and, above all, how to deal with a very high percentage of young people who do not exclude the word socialism from their everyday language, remain pending.
At this point, the 50 families of major donors in U.S. federal elections are also doing their math, strategizing, and selecting their future “winning horses.” It cannot be ruled out that some Republican figures with future prospects will begin to distance themselves from the Trumpist agenda, in the style of Mike Pence after January 6, 2021, nor can the change of prominent government figures and advisors be ruled out, as happened in 2018.
In any case, Americans have shown that they do not believe the discourse that the country’s main problems stem from “external threats” and have no interest in supporting the chaos generated by military conflicts.
It is symptomatic that, barely 24 hours after these events, an important (non-partisan) group of former senior officials from the intelligence and defense communities, gathered under the name Professional Intelligence Veterans for Sanity, released a public letter addressed to Trump in which they warn, in language understandable to minors, about the negative consequences for the United States of escalating attacks against Venezuela.
Even with the House of Representatives enjoying its longest recess in history, a bipartisan group of senators scheduled a vote 48 hours before the aforementioned elections to prevent Donald Trump from carrying out military strikes against Venezuela, as part of the escalation already taking place against vessels allegedly involved in drug trafficking. Regardless of the outcome, it will not be the last.
