COMMENTARY: Redistricting, violence and momentum in 2025 elections

One of the best ways to predict the future is to follow the energy. Right now, it’s not flowing how history would suggest.

Every election tells a story about America’s political current, and the 2025 off-year elections are no exception. Beneath the headlines about turnout and television ads, these races offer a preview of the realignment taking shape since Donald Trump’s 2024 re-election.

And it’s revealing something few expected: Democrats are facing headwinds in places where Democrats should be winning big.

Typically, the party that lost the White House performs better in midterm elections. With Trump back in the White House, Democrats should be running up the score in deep-blue states such as New Jersey and Virginia and in left-leaning as New York City. Yet, that’s not what’s happening.

Nationally, the Generic Congressional Ballot stands at plus 2.4 for Democrats, and it hasn’t broken plus 4 all year. At this point in the 2018 election cycle — a Democratic wave year in the U.S. House — the party led by more than 10 points.

Even in that banner year for Democrats, Republicans went on to hold the Senate and picked up two seats there. Today, Democrats’ advantage is less than a quarter of what it was then. Traditionally, Democrats need to lead that number by more than 3 or 4 points to make gains in the House.

Part of this shift stems from a rise in political violence that has shaken voters across the spectrum. The murder of Charlie Kirk shocked many nationwide. Beyond the headlines, it changed how many Americans think about politics. Voters may be seeing the left’s tolerance for political hostility as dangerous, not defiant.

Violent rhetoric, coupled with the shocking and disturbing text messages from Virginia attorney general candidate Jay Jones fantasizing about a political opponent’s assassination and comments about imagining his widow holding the bodies of their dead children, has affected Virginia races, where Republican candidates are now within striking distance — or ahead — in contests that once heavily favored Democrats.

Even in New York City, the most Democratic of cities, something remarkable is happening. American Pulse polling shows that 46 percent of voters think Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani is “too extreme,” and even though he is likely to win, a majority oppose him.

On nearly every major issue — from crime to socialism to refusing to denounce antisemitic slogans such as “Globalize the Intifada” — solid majorities of voters oppose his positions. The result is that even in New York City, the appetite for a course correction is real. When the national Democratic brand sits at a dismal minus 24.3 percent net favorability compared with the GOP’s minus 12 percent, it’s not hard to see why.

In New Jersey, the same undercurrent is visible. Despite an enormous registration advantage for Democrats, polling shows a competitive governor’s race.

In Virginia, the political gravity is unmistakable. Republicans are favored to win the attorney general’s race, and the aftershocks of the Jones scandal continue to reverberate all the way to Abigail Spanberger in the governor’s race there. Even if Democrats hang on by single digits, that would be a warning sign heading into the 2026 midterms, when Spanberger was leading by double digits just weeks ago. Voters who might not be ready to flip blue areas red are clearly signaling dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Meanwhile, Democrats are fighting to give themselves a buffer if the 2026 midterms don’t go as well as they hoped. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Proposition 50 to reopen redistricting could give Democrats as many as five new congressional seats if it passes. In Pennsylvania, three Democratic Supreme Court justices are up for retention, all of whom voted for maps that flipped key seats to Democrats several years ago. Retention races rarely fail, but these contests have become proxy battles over the struggle for control of the U.S. House. If Democrats hold those seats and push through Prop 50, expect Republican-led states such as Indiana to respond by reopening their maps. The next phase of America’s redistricting war could begin this November.

There’s also a political subplot unfolding in Washington. The federal government shutdown has become more than a policy stalemate. It’s a campaign tactic. There’s a non-zero chance Democrats are quietly using furloughed government workers in their get-out-the-vote efforts in these off-year states. It’s also not far-fetched to think that Democratic leaders hope some small symbolic wins on election night could provide the emotional “dopamine hit” their base needs to give Democrats an off-ramp toward reopening the government.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ last-minute endorsement of Mamdani before the election suggests Democrats are looking for ways to claim victory.

If Republicans manage modest gains this November or blunt big wins for Democrats — winning the Virginia attorney general’s race, closing the gap in the Virginia governor’s race, keeping it close in New Jersey, or holding the Democratic nominee under 50 percent in New York — it will confirm what the data already shows. The political gravity of the Trump era has shifted.

Dustin Olson is the managing partner of American Pulse Research &Polling and the founder of the political consulting firm Olson Strategies &Advertising. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.