| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| is welcome to go to whitehouse.gov slash visit to sign up for a tour. | ||
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unidentified
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Thanks guys. | |
| We'll see you tomorrow. | ||
| Coming up next, C-SPAN's in-depth coverage of today's elections and ballot measures. | ||
| Election night 2025 on C-SPAN. | ||
| Your democracy, unfiltered. | ||
| Good evening and welcome to Election Night 2025 here on C-SPAN Tonight. | ||
| Results from all the key races with unfiltered coverage as democracy plays out across the country. | ||
| On the East Coast, will New Yorkers elect a 34-year-old Democratic socialist as the mayor of the nation's biggest city? | ||
| On the West Coast, will California say yes or no to redrawing their congressional districts before the 2026 midterms? | ||
| There are also closely watched races in Virginia and New Jersey for governor, one year after the 2024 presidential contest. | ||
| These races will serve as a barometer of how voters feel about the party holding the White House. | ||
| Regardless of who wins tonight, the results will be viewed through the prism of national politics. | ||
| We are 364 days from the 2026 midterms and 1,099 days from the 2028 general election. | ||
| Tonight on C-SPAN, election results from New York City, California, New Jersey, and Virginia. | ||
| Candidate speeches, insights, and analysis from our guests, as well as in-depth coverage from Spectrum News in New York and California. | ||
| And we, of course, want to welcome all of you to the conversation as well tonight. | ||
| We want to hear from you, especially if you have voted in any of the contests tonight. | ||
| Here's how you can join us. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8920. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8921. | ||
| All others, 202-748-8922. | ||
| And you can text if you'd like at 202-748-8903. | ||
| Just include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Joining us in Washington this evening, Matthew Klein, who is with the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. | ||
| He's an analyst for U.S. House and Governor's races. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, who is a national political reporter with the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Thank you both for being here. | ||
| We very much appreciate it. | ||
| So let's set the scene, Sabrina, tonight. | ||
| So the big picture, what are you watching for in each of these races? | ||
| We can start with New York. | ||
| Well, I think with New York City, there's been so much focus on the unprecedented rise of Zorhan Mamdani, you know, who is a little-known, you know, council member and now, you know, is being looked at as maybe the future of the Democratic Party, not this singular future, but certainly one of the rising stars within the party. | ||
| And the through line to me, if you're looking at New York City and if you're also looking at New Jersey and Virginia, is affordability and all the emphasis that Democratic candidates, whether it's Mamdani or whether it's, you know, in Virginia or New Jersey, have placed on the economy. | ||
| You know, the presidential election last year was very much decided in large part over the issue of inflation. | ||
| And President Trump at that time, you know, not dealing with the challenges of the incumbency that Democrats did, was able to really run on this promise to rein in prices. | ||
| And now he has all the challenges of the incumbency. | ||
| And so he's, you know, the Republicans are on the defensive as voters are still looking at high prices at the grocery stores and around them. | ||
| And I think that's going to be a big story tonight. | ||
| Even you think that's a through line through all of these races for New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City. | ||
| Well, I do, because if you look at Mamdani, you know, he's been laser-focused on affordability, right? | ||
| That's actually how he beat out someone like Andrew Cuomo, who had so much more name recognition and all the institutional powers that his family has had in the state of New York. | ||
| You know, he's talking about a rent freeze, about free child care for children under the age of five, you know, about free city buses. | ||
| And then you look over at New Jersey and, you know, you have Mikey Scherell talking about, you know, a utility freeze to deal with the rising cost of utilities. | ||
| You know, obviously in Virginia, you also have Abigail Spann. | ||
| We're talking constantly about the cost of living. | ||
| And so I think that is where Democrats have focused their effort because they are looking at polls that have shown that President Trump and Republicans, who typically have been seen as stronger on issues like the economy and inflation, have lost ground on those very issues since President Trump took office. | ||
| And like I said, has struggled to reign in inflation as promised. | ||
| Matthew Klein, you're a numbers guy tonight. | ||
| So what are you looking at when you zero in on these races in New York City, Virginia, and New Jersey? | ||
| I think the first thing I'm going to be watching is the margin. | ||
| I mean, we're talking about races in New Jersey, Virginia, New York. | ||
| These are generally Democratic areas. | ||
| And so it would be a pretty big surprise if Democrats actually lost in any of them tonight. | ||
| It's possible, but more telling will be how the Democratic candidates actually perform in the end. | ||
| And so if we're seeing a double-digit victory for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia or a victory for Mikey Sherrill that outpaces the six-point margin by which Kamala Harris carried the state last cycle, that will be really telling to me about how excited Democrats are to come out right now. | ||
| We've seen poll after poll indicates that Democrats are not all too excited about their own political brand. | ||
| But if Democrats have a strong night tonight, it could be indicative of a fact that Democrats are still motivated to come out and vote against Donald Trump. | ||
| And that will tell us a lot about 2026 when Donald Trump is once again going to be at the center of the equation. | ||
| And in New Jersey and Virginia, back in the presidential cycle last year, President Trump did make inroads in those two states. | ||
| He lost by about six points in each of the states, but he did gain some ground from previous election cycles. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| And it's given Republicans a lot of hope, especially in New Jersey, where it was a particularly pronounced swing, about 10 points from 2020 to 2024. | ||
| And what I'm going to be interested in as well is, especially in New Jersey, which is a state that's heavily diverse. | ||
| It's about 15% Hispanic, the electorate there. | ||
| I'm going to be very interested to see how Hispanic voters in New Jersey actually end up swaying tonight. | ||
| There's been a lot of discussion about whether Republicans will be able to repeat the gains that Donald Trump made with those voters last cycle, if Republicans next year will be able to do that in the midterms when Donald Trump is not on the ballot. | ||
| That's a big question mark. | ||
| A lot of Republicans want to, you know, they want to believe that the Hispanic voters that came out and voted for Donald Trump last cycle are Republicans. | ||
| But a lot of the Democrats we talk to seem to think they may just be Trump voters who are more willing to kind of switch their allegiances from time to time. | ||
| And Democrats feel good about The issue of affordability right now and making sure that that's the center of the center of their conversation so that they can potentially win some of those voters back into their camp. | ||
| Jack Chittarelli not running, this is the second time around running for him. | ||
| So, how did he perform with these voters that you're talking about in New Jersey? | ||
| Last time he ran? | ||
| In 2021? | ||
| Yeah, he did very well, and particularly with a lot of the white voters in New Jersey, lots of college-educated voters he did generally well with. | ||
| Actually, it was Hispanic voters he didn't do as well. | ||
| And so, this cycle it's going to be kind of interesting to see if Jack Chitterelli can successfully manage to hold on to his performance with white voters, some of his appeal with college-educated white voters who maybe don't like Donald Trump, and perform well with Hispanic voters this cycle, then maybe that's the ticket for him. | ||
| But that's a lot, that's a lot of ifs, right? | ||
| That's going to take a lot to get that all to come together. | ||
| How big of a shadow is President Trump playing over the election tonight when you look at the president's approval rating numbers? | ||
| And we've seen polls recently, and we're seeing exit polls tonight, too, as well from voters. | ||
| But when you look at an NBC poll that was just done in recent days, his approval rating, according to their poll, 43%, disapproval, 55%. | ||
| Well, I think there's no question that he does cast a shadow over these elections, especially when it comes to Republican candidates who have struggled with, you know, not wanting to cross President Trump at the same time as trying to draw some distance from him because of the very reasons that you just pointed out. | ||
| I mean, we saw some polling in our reporting at the Wall Street Journal that showed that by 24 points, more voters disapprove of Trump's handling on inflation than they approve. | ||
| You know, his deficit on his handling of the economy overall was down 14 points. | ||
| That was according to Real Clear Politics. | ||
| So, on the one hand, you have Democrats who are struggling with their weakest brand image in decades, but at the same time, President Trump obviously now receiving lower marks on the economy, which is really still front and center for most voters I talk to, just because it's the most tangible thing for real people, right? | ||
| When they're trying to buy a house and they still can't afford to buy a house, when they're trying to fill gas and they're still contending with high gas prices, when they're still looking at food on the shelves and feeling like their grocery bill is too high, that is still what most people cite as their top motivating issue. | ||
| And they blame the person who's in office for those problems. | ||
| So, I think that's been the biggest challenge for Republicans. | ||
| And Democrats, you know, it's not just making this a referendum on national politics, but trying to localize it too and draw that through line, like I said, to affordability and specifically in Virginia, specifically in New Jersey, and blaming Trump's policies and therefore Republicans. | ||
| That's been the key message. | ||
| Now, we'll see how well they succeed in driving it home. | ||
| Matthew Klein, there has been a historical pattern that New Jersey and Virginia holds their gubernatorial races one year after a presidential contest, and their voters like to pick someone from the opposite party of who's holding the White House. | ||
| That's certainly true in Virginia. | ||
| Since 1977, only one time has Virginia actually stuck with the party that's holding the White House. | ||
| That was in 2013 under some pretty unusual circumstances. | ||
| So, yes, we would expect to see Democrats flip the governorship in Virginia tonight. | ||
| You know, New Jersey is interesting because it also, we're going to see sort of a test of two historical trends in New Jersey. | ||
| Yes, New Jersey, it tends to swing against the party in power, much like the country does as a whole in midterm elections. | ||
| But it also hasn't elected the same party to the governorship three times in some 60 years. | ||
| 1965 was the last time that happened. | ||
| So if Democrats pull off a victory tonight in New Jersey, and we think that they probably will at this point, then it's going to be a pretty, you know, that would be a pretty historic win for them in their own right. | ||
| We are in the final hours of voting this evening, and the polls close in Virginia in less than an hour. | ||
| What are you watching for when the polls close? | ||
| I'm going to be very interested to see, you know, first of all, I'm going to be very interested to keep an eye on this Attorney General's race. | ||
| In the last couple of weeks of the campaign, it was obviously rocked by a major scandal involving Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee, and a text message that he had sent to a state legislative colleague in which he seemed to support the idea of political violence against members of the Republican caucus there. | ||
| We talk a lot about candidate quality at the Cook Political Report, and this is an example of a candidate who has really struggled with candidate quality. | ||
| But also at the same time, we talk a lot about partisanship and how calcified our partisanship is these days in American politics. | ||
| And so I wouldn't, you know, I think we're going to be very interested to see, does Jay Jones actually get weighed down by that scandal or is he able to pull off a victory tonight? | ||
| And a lot of that's going to depend on the margin by which Abigail Spanberger is winning. | ||
| We've heard folks say if Spanberger is leading this race by about eight or nine points, that's probably the threshold by which Jones can be carried over with her. | ||
| We don't tend to see a ton of ticket splitting in these races. | ||
| Sometimes voters don't even know much about the races that go further down than the governorship. | ||
| So I'm going to be very interested to watch that. | ||
| When you look at the election results in Virginia and you compare 2024 to 2020 and how President Trump did against Kamala Harris in 2024 and against Joe Biden in 2020, what are the differences there? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think the really big difference was Kamala Harris had a problem and this was not just exclusive to Virginia, but certainly it was pronounced in places like Loudoun County with minority voters. | ||
| Even though she was the first Indian American candidate to run on a presidential ticket, she did very poorly with Indian American voters. | ||
| They're a large community in Northern Virginia. | ||
| Hispanic voters are also another large chunk of Northern Virginia. | ||
| And then, of course, just, you know, sort of typical sway in some of the places like Virginia Beach, which has some more of the working class population where Joe Biden may have just had a little bit more appeal, and she didn't quite have that same match. | ||
| But I think the really interesting tell tonight will be with these minority voters. | ||
| I'm going to be very, very eager to watch how that turns out. | ||
| Let's turn our attention to the California redistricting battle. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, what are you watching there? | ||
| Yes or no? | ||
| On redrawing the maps for the 2026 midterm elections? | ||
| Well, I expect that Governor Newsom's effort will succeed. | ||
| Look, I think it's very interesting because when you talk to Democrats, Democratic voters, I should say, they really want to see party leaders fight back against President Trump and Republicans in a more meaningful way. | ||
| And this is one of the more tangible ways in which they are presenting voters with the opportunity to do that. | ||
| Because, you know, this is obviously a response. | ||
| The first major response, if you will, from Democrats against these unprecedented efforts by President Trump and Republicans to redraw congressional maps this year. | ||
| Obviously, this happens once a decade, the redistricting process, but because it's happening outside of the typical process, and President Trump has been pretty open about the fact that he wants more Republican states to redraw their maps in order to help prevent Republicans from losing control of the House in next year's midterm elections. | ||
| So, you know, when I talk to Democratic voters, they actually often feel like Democrats are bringing a knife to a gunfight. | ||
| And so this is one of those moments where they can see a tangible opportunity to try and stand up to the Trump administration. | ||
| I think he'll pass. | ||
| Matthew Klein, let's talk to the map here. | ||
| We're showing our viewers what the current map looks like. | ||
| And if Proposition 50 passes tonight, this is what Governor Gavin Newsom and Democrats are proposing, that it shrinks down Republican districts and you go from nine to four and two toss-ups. | ||
| These numbers coming from Cook Political Report, what the prediction is for how these districts turn out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, California's effort was largely spurred by Texas. | ||
| You know, Donald Trump pushed Texas over the summer to try and grab an additional three to five seats. | ||
| That map passed despite Democratic opposition. | ||
| And now Governor Gavin Newsom has basically stood up and he's said that he is going to push very hard for a map that very much cancels out the Texas map. | ||
| And so the California map, as we see it, looks very similar. | ||
| Three to five potential pickup opportunities for Democrats. | ||
| They're almost certainly going to pick up a couple of seats in the state and then there are a few that might get a little bit better for them. | ||
| There are also a number of Democratic incumbents who get shored up on the new map in California that will probably save the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other political action groups quite a bit of money from having to spend in the Los Angeles markets, San Francisco markets that tend to be very expensive. | ||
| Who are we talking that's endangered, possibly endangered for Republican representatives in Congress? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, three Republicans are effectively in serious trouble. | ||
| Doug LaMalfa in the first district, which is northeastern California, that district was drawn, redrawn so that it goes down further into the Bay Area, essentially makes his path to victory just impossible. | ||
| Kevin Kiley in the third district, the Sacramento area, that district gets redrawn and he would be in serious trouble. | ||
| Also, Ken Calvert, who was a longtime member of the Appropriations Committee, Titanic Force, been in Congress since 1992. | ||
| His seat is essentially wiped off the map. | ||
| We're hearing rumors about the possibility of a member-on-member race between him and Young Kim for the seat that she currently holds. | ||
| There would be a Republican PAC seat down there closer to Orange County. | ||
| That would potentially become one of the few places where Republicans actually have a place on the map where they actually have power. | ||
| And then two other incumbents, David Valladeo, a Republican in the Central Valley, his seat would get a little bit less Republican. | ||
| Democrats would maybe have a better shot at picking him, picking off his seat. | ||
| And also Darrell Issa, who is another longtime member. | ||
| His seat would go from being solidly Republican to about a Harris plus three. | ||
| So Democrats would probably have a good shot at picking that one up. | ||
| Earlier today, I spoke with Seema Meta, who covers California politics for the Los Angeles Times, about Proposition 50 and the people and the money behind the push for this pre-midterm redistricting. | ||
|
unidentified
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The yes side raised exponentially more money. | |
| I don't have the exact figures in front of you, but I mean, just exponentially more money. | ||
| And you can see it. | ||
| You can see it on television. | ||
| They're airing ads during the World Series, which is the Dodgers launch. | ||
| That's like a really, really good way of targeting California voters. | ||
| They're airing ads during NFL games. | ||
| I mean, there was a bunch of mail early on. | ||
| There hasn't been as much mail recently. | ||
| Digital ads, social text. | ||
| So, and actually, I mean, honestly, the no side, which I think they raised about close to $50 million or $40 some million dollars, they have not been on air as much recently. | ||
| I can't recall the last time I saw one of their ads on television. | ||
| So that was also kind of telling. | ||
| What do the polls say? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean, the polls, you know, when this was first put on the ballot in August, you know, when state lawmakers voted to put it on the ballot, it was really everyone on both sides of the aisle. | |
| And polls showed that it was really like a coin, like a jump ball. | ||
| No one knew what was going to happen. | ||
| But after all of this spending, the most recent polls, including one by UC Berkeley that was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times, show that this is likely to pass. | ||
| I mean, it's an off-year. | ||
| It will depend on turnout because We don't know what the turnout is going to look like. | ||
| But so far, I mean, as of last night, I think 29% of California's 23 million registered voters had already cast ballots before election day, through mail ballots or through early voting. | ||
| So it depends on what turnout looks like today because a lot of the ballots that were cast early were Democratic. | ||
| Democrats obviously outnumber Republicans in the state by quite large numbers. | ||
| But a lot of Republicans were saying in our poll that they were going to wait to vote until Election Day. | ||
| So the question is how many Republicans turn out today. | ||
| Yeah, and on those numbers, the Associated Press says that the Democrats are about 45% of registered voters, while Republicans are about 25%. | ||
| So for those that support redistricting in California, those that are going to vote yes on Proposition 50, how do they view their vote? | ||
|
unidentified
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It's, I mean, it's an interesting thing because, you know, actually, you know, when redistricting was first proposed for both legislative districts in 2008 and congressional districts in 2010, both the state Republican and state Democratic parties opposed it. | |
| And it's rare to have them agree on anything. | ||
| So that's kind of remarkable. | ||
| So now you have the two parties taking like a very, you know, totally 180 opposite views about this. | ||
| But among those who, Democrats who are supporting this, who generally I think, you know, there's a lot of voters that we talk to who they do believe in the independent redistricting commission and then not gerrymandering and not having partisan influence on how districts are drawn. | ||
| But they also believe that this is such a critical moment in history and that they need to fight President Trump's agenda. | ||
| Honestly, obviously we saw the immigration rates that started in Los Angeles in June. | ||
| We saw the expiration of SNAP benefits this weekend. | ||
| I mean there are sort of very real-life effects or impacts that the supporters of Prop 50 like they're they seem to be willing to put aside like their principles about independent redistricting because they're just so concerned about what else could happen in the premise of the president's final two years in office. | ||
| And how do those that oppose Proposition 50 view their vote? | ||
|
unidentified
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I mean they it's it's you know it's interesting because like on both sides they're both arguing for democracy but they're coming up at it you know with a different conclusion. | |
| And so the opponents say you know that California has the gold standard in terms of our independent redistricting commission. | ||
| And it's really interesting because the number of the people who are opposing this and talking about how wonderful the independent commission is, they oppose the creation of the commission. | ||
| But they're arguing that this is against the will of the electorate, that California voters voted to create this and that the commission has done a good job the two times it's done redistricting. | ||
| So that this is like an affront to the electorate. | ||
| How does Gavin Newsom view the outcome of tonight's ballot initiative? | ||
| What does it mean for him? | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, I mean, I mean, obviously everyone, you know, he's admitted that he's considering running for president. | |
| And I think, you know, I mean, he was able to use this to increase his national platform, you know, to increase his small dollar fundraising base. | ||
| The number of emails, cell phone numbers that are from across the country that his campaign got, you know, when people donated, you know, obviously you had like the labor unions, et cetera, and the billionaires giving a ton of money, but the small dollar donors, I mean, he really exponentially increased his fundraising base there. | ||
| So if he does run for president, it could give him a little bit of a boost, you know, in terms of donations. | ||
| Seema meta with the Los Angeles Times on the ground in California earlier today. | ||
| It's election night 2025. | ||
| Thank you for tuning in to C-SPAN. | ||
| We will be here throughout the night delivering election results in key races across the country. | ||
| We have with us this evening joining us in Washington Matthew Klein, who's with the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Sabrina Siddiqui, who's the National Political Reporter with the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| We are including all of you in the conversation as well. | ||
| We'll go to Leah, who's in Staten Island, New York, Democratic Caller. | ||
| Leah, did you vote today? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, I early voted a week ago. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Can you share with us who you voted for and why? | ||
|
unidentified
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I voted for Mamdani. | |
| And tell us why. | ||
|
unidentified
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So I voted for Mamdani because I feel like there needs to be a desperate change in New York. | |
| The past few mayors really didn't speak to us. | ||
| I mean, Eric Adams, for example, the rent raised so high with him. | ||
| They, you know, he doesn't seem like he was doing much of like fighting back with Trump and his scandals. | ||
| You know, really doesn't seem like he was a really good mayor. | ||
| And Cuomo, we've dealt with him from, you know, for about 11 years himself. | ||
| And, you know, after what we saw, New York is not that much better. | ||
| I mean, I know he did something with Penn Station, but he really didn't make the MTA any better. | ||
| I feel like the Democratic Party in itself abandoned their values to go more center-right. | ||
| And I'm ready to see a change for that. | ||
| Leah, do you have any concerns when you hear the Republicans talking about a Democratic socialist? | ||
|
unidentified
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No, I mean, I live in Staten Island and a lot of the population has changed. | |
| There's a lot of Middle Eastern and South Asian people. | ||
| And when I hear the Republicans going back and forth about, you know, sticking with the party, or we know that Flea Law is not going to win, so we have to vote Cuomo, it feels like how I felt, you know, arguing about what to do to stop Trump coming into presidency. | ||
| So I'm not very concerned about the socialist aspect because to be honest, Mamdani's policies are very Democratic and not as socialist as they're trying to make him seem he is. | ||
| Leah, can I ask you, how old are you? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm 29. | |
| You're 29. | ||
| And how are your friends voting? | ||
| Your other New York resident city friends? | ||
|
unidentified
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My community, my friends around my age are all voting Mamdani. | |
| I don't know anybody who's voting Cuomo. | ||
| All right, Leah in Staten Island, Sabrina Siddiqui, your reaction to hearing that caller. | ||
| It very much fits into what I've heard when I've talked to voters about Zorhan Mamdani and when I've talked to Democrats, strategists, pollsters, people who've been studying his campaign. | ||
| And one of the key points that they make is that most of the people who are voting for Mamdani are doing it because they genuinely support him. | ||
| Whereas one of the challenges that Andrew Cuomo, just insofar as he's the main opposition to Mamdani, has faced is that there's more of a split between those who are voting to support Cuomo and those who are voting for him simply because they don't want Mamdani. | ||
| And a lot of that speaks to just how much Mamdani's message has resonated. | ||
| You know, polls show that most New York City residents believe that cost of living is their top issue. | ||
| You know, and I think that's certainly the case for Mamdani's voters. | ||
| Cuomo voters are a little bit more divided on cost of living and crime, but the majority of the city believes that cost of living is the city's most important issue. | ||
| And they talk about the cost of housing and rent, and they also talk about just the fact that the city has become so expensive that many of them can't afford to live there anymore. | ||
| And I think you're going to hear that a lot from people who cast their ballots for Mamdani today, and it's going to be a really big part of what we anticipate is going to be a fairly significant victory for him. | ||
| If Mamdani wins tonight, what does it mean for the Democratic Party? | ||
| Is it a house divided going forward? | ||
| I think there are a lot of divisions around his candidacy, and you've seen some establishment Democrats refuse to endorse him or do so very tepidly. | ||
| I hear caution when I talk to, for example, like I said, former Obama advisors who say that people are missing the desire for generational change. | ||
| Look at President Trump's appeal because everyone's talking about the socialism tag with Mamdani. | ||
| He promises a lot of free stuff, and he connects with voters on a very personal level. | ||
| And that's what Zorhan Mamdani has been doing. | ||
| Now, it's just the socialist tag is used to scare people away, but a lot of why voters have been drawn to people like Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is because they are tired of the kind of recycled talking points, the doublespeak that you hear from politicians. | ||
| And that was also a very big part of President Trump's appeal. | ||
| I do think that, you know, the groups, some of these groups that Democrats have lost were key parts of their coalition, Mamdani is the kind of person who's bringing them back. | ||
| Now, New York is not necessarily a microcosm of the country, but at the same time, I think he's shown that if they learn the right lessons from 2024 and they are not afraid to maybe be a little bit more bold in their messaging and to not shy away from some of the scare tactics that people have used around someone like Mamdani, then there is an ability to make inroads with the very types of voters that they lost in last November. | ||
| You've mentioned some of the highlights of Zorhan Mamdani's bio. | ||
| New York State Assemblyman endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, calls for a rent-free city-owned grocery store pilot free buses. | ||
| He has been pushed by and propped up by the likes of Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | ||
| What does it mean for AOC's future if he were to win tonight? | ||
| I think AOC's future was probably pretty bright no matter what. | ||
| I think the real question about her is whether she'll choose to run for president in 2028 or potentially to primary Chuck Schumer. | ||
| Chuck Schumer finds himself in a very uncomfortable position. | ||
| And it's worth noting that unlike Hakeem Jeffries, who did eventually endorse Zorhan Mamdani, Chuck Schumer never did. | ||
| And so Schumer finds himself in this very awkward situation where he now represents a city that's going, most likely, going to have Zorhan Mamdani as his mayor. | ||
| He's going to have to figure out how to address that one way or another because the questions are not going to stop. | ||
| Yeah, and there was reports today that Chuck Schumer told reporters he voted, but he didn't say who he voted for. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So going forward then, when you're looking at results tonight, where do you expect Zorhan Mamdani to get much of his support? | ||
| You heard that voter in New York City talking about previous mayors haven't done much for us, and it's been a lineup of Democratic mayors in New York City. | ||
| The last Republican mayor was Rudy Giuliani. | ||
| Michael Bloomberg, but yes, Certainly true. | ||
| And I think one of the things that we're going to be watching, I'll be keeping a very close eye on Brooklyn. | ||
| Brooklyn has become, Brooklyn has changed dramatically. | ||
| It's become this very left-wing sort of real progressive powerhouse. | ||
| You see a lot of recent college graduates that have ended up there, young people, the sort of the backbone of the Mamdani coalition that has really powered him. | ||
| So I expect he's going to do very well in Brooklyn tonight. | ||
| Cuomo obviously is going to try and do his, is looking to do well with Jewish Americans, particularly in the upper west side of New York and Manhattan. | ||
| And I think we're going to be, you know, some of the other areas like the Bronx, which were originally expected to be sort of a Cuomo stronghold and where he did very well in the primary, may actually end up, we could see sort of a shift tonight as Mamdani has become better known and his message about affordability seems to have resonated more with working class voters there, particularly with working class minority voters in the Bronx, which is one of the lowest income counties in the entire United States. | ||
| Let's turn our attention to Virginia. | ||
| We're about 30 minutes out from the polls closing in Virginia. | ||
| Olivia is calling from Alexandria, Virginia, an independent caller. | ||
| Olivia, did you vote? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I did. | |
| And how did you vote? | ||
| Who did you vote for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Republican. | |
| Okay, all the way down the ticket? | ||
|
unidentified
|
All the way down. | |
| Okay, and tell us why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of the things was: I would be appalled if the Democrat wins, because for people to vote for the Democrat who called for the killing of Millares and violence on his kids, they are crazy to vote for that guy. | |
| Lately, I've been here for 30 years. | ||
| Democrats have become so hateful and angry against anybody who says anything against what they stand for. | ||
| That's why I voted Republican. | ||
| I'm also against killing babies because it's killing babies. | ||
| Let's call it by its name. | ||
| That's criminal. | ||
| That's why I voted all the way Republican. | ||
| And I hope and pray that not all the names are, you know, for the governor and Miller's and the other person. | ||
| I hope at least one of them gains the Republican vote and maybe all three of them. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, Olivia, Matthew Clinton, let's talk about the Republican ticket. | ||
| Well, the Republican ticket, abortion has been a central issue in this campaign. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger has, you know, really tried to define Winsom Earl Sears by statements that she herself had made, the lieutenant governor had previously made, on the issue of abortion, in which she had expressed the view that it was wicked. | ||
| That is not a particularly popular position in Virginia, although certainly there are people who feel passionately about it on both sides. | ||
| I think Winsom Earl Sears really struggled early on. | ||
| In many ways, these off-year cycles, the cake is almost baked from the beginning. | ||
| And that's, I think, particularly true when the president in question is Donald Trump, who is, of course, such a polarizing figure, especially in the D.C. area. | ||
| But when Trump came in and started implementing really aggressive federal layoffs with the Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk, that was an opportunity. | ||
| That was an early opportunity for Winsom Earl Sears to demonstrate that she was a Virginian first, that she was running for this race for governor. | ||
| She was going to stand up for Virginians against the President of the United States. | ||
| And ultimately, she chose not to do that. | ||
| She largely stuck by this sort of idea that it's unfortunate. | ||
| Virginia's going to maybe try and help people who have been laid off. | ||
| But that really isn't the message that I think a lot of people wanted to hear. | ||
| It came across to a lot of people as if it was a little bit tone deaf. | ||
| And it's dogged her throughout this campaign, especially as now we're in the midst of a government shutdown, which tomorrow will become the longest in American history. | ||
| That obviously is top of mind for a lot of people in Virginia. | ||
| National politics is a local issue in Virginia. | ||
| It's one of the few states where that's the case. | ||
| And in this moment, that isn't helping the Republicans. | ||
| And on the lieutenant governor candidates, let's talk about those a little bit in Virginia. | ||
| Yeah, John Reed is a Republican. | ||
| He is openly gay. | ||
| He at times has had disagreements with Winsom Earl Sears about that. | ||
| And she is, again, same-sex marriage, expressed that view as late as October in the debate against Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| He's running a sort of trying to be a pragmatic candidate. | ||
| He's willing to talk to anyone and go anywhere. | ||
| And obviously that's a resonant message. | ||
| He's had a few scandals of his own this cycle. | ||
| Democrats have largely rallied around Ghazalah Hashmi, their nominee. | ||
| She's, you know, Republicans have tried to argue that Ghazalah Hashmi is too left-wing to represent the state of Virginia. | ||
| But ultimately, I think the reality is these lieutenant governor races often just go the way that the governor races go. | ||
| We know that from 2021, right? | ||
| Glenn Yunkin won, and he swept in Winsom Earl Sears. | ||
| And Jason Millar is now that there's more scrutiny on Winsom Earl Sears' record, she's having a tougher time defending herself against some of these Democratic attacks. | ||
| But odds are, however the governorship goes, the lieutenant governorship's going to go the same way. | ||
| And these candidates for Attorney General, the caller mentioned Jay Jones in those controversial text messages. | ||
| Is he dragging down the top of the ticket or are we not seeing an impact on Abigail Spanberger? | ||
| I don't think we've seen much of an impact on Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| You know, he continues to pull behind her, for sure, but most indications that we've seen have her still in the high single-digit to double-digit range in terms of a lead. | ||
| And I think it's safe to say if Abigail Spanberger and her campaign had data, had evidence that suggested that Jay Jones was a serious liability for their campaign, they would have tossed him to the wolves a long time ago. | ||
| We'll go to Burke, Virginia. | ||
| Paul, a Democratic caller. | ||
| Paul, how did you vote? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I voted early last week. | |
| And who did you vote for, Paul? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I voted for the Democratic ticket and the school bond funding. | |
| Okay, and tell us why. | ||
| Well, I think, yeah, it is a little bit of the national thing. | ||
| I think the Trump administration across the board has been really bad for us, bad for Virginia, bad for federal workers. | ||
| And I think Spanberger and her crew is kind of standing up for us. | ||
| You think they're standing up for you, and you think that she can push back against President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I don't know that she would stand up against be able to push back against President Trump as much as she is articulating a position that says that we don't accept what he's doing, whereas Republicans seem to be supporting what he's doing. | |
| All right. | ||
| Paul there in Burke, Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
| We'll stick with Virginia. | ||
| Joining us this evening is Braxton Booker. | ||
| He is the political reporter for, national political reporter for Politico, here to talk about the state of Virginia tonight. | ||
| Braxton Booker, what are you watching for specifically as the results start to trickle in when the polls close at the top of the hour? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the biggest question, I think there are two big questions here. | |
| How big is the margin for Abigail Spanberger? | ||
| I'm currently at the Winsom Earl Sears campaign headquarters in Leesburg, Virginia. | ||
| It is not a big crowd here just yet. | ||
| Now, there's still a little over 20 minutes before polls close. | ||
| So maybe we'll see kind of a trickle of supporters come in here. | ||
| But it's a pretty empty room where we are. | ||
| And it's well lit. | ||
| The stage looks really good from my vantage point. | ||
| there's really just nobody in the room at this point um so we're looking at the how big uh oh there was there's a shot right there um We're looking at how big the margin will be for Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| She hit that that little double digit UH plateau there to to send a real message that Democrats are strong and then obviously down down the ticket at the at the Uh attorney general's race. | ||
| That is probably the marquee race. | ||
| If i'm being completely honest with you. | ||
| How big of a scandal was the Jay Jones, were the Jay Jones texts? | ||
| We saw Republicans kind of coalesce behind Jason Muron the, the incumbent, and like Nothing before those texts came out, Republicans were really coalescing and got on the same page and were able to really hammer Jay Jones and indirectly hammer Abigail Spanberger for not completely distancing herself and not retracting her endorsement of Jay Jones. | ||
| So we'll see how big of a deal that is. | ||
| Democrats have been, you know, quietly excited about how big of a lead that Spanberger has. | ||
| And really, Democrats think that she will have enough coat channels to bring Jay Jones along. | ||
| But that remains to be seen tonight. | ||
| And when do you think it is that we know the outcome of that race tonight? | ||
| Will it be well into the evening? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, from a personal standpoint, I hope not. | |
| I would like to go to sleep. | ||
| But I do think that's going to be the race to watch. | ||
| I don't know if we're going to get a call on that right at 7 o'clock Eastern when polls close. | ||
| I think that race is going to be a lot tighter. | ||
| Republicans have been pushing even before the tech scandal came out that there was a real opportunity for ticket splitting, something that really hasn't happened in Virginia in about 20 years. | ||
| It used to be the norm where voters in Virginia would split their allegiance and have divided government. | ||
| But for the last two decades, voters tend to do straight ticket as the parties themselves have gotten more polarized and retreated to their individual polls there. | ||
| So look, I think there are some people that were really just turned off by the contents of Jay Jones' texts and really feel like that is just a bridge too far. | ||
| But I really think what the polls are having a difficult time capturing is, because there was real anti-Trump sentiment, particularly where I am in Northern Virginia, from Dogecuts, from the government shutdown, and then the firings of the federal workforce, not to mention that Abigail Spanberger has put a premium on the affordability issue, something that we've seen in New Jersey with Mikey Sherrill. | ||
| She's also put a premium on that, as well as Zora Mamdani in New York. | ||
| It seems to be like if the Democrats are successful in all these kind of marquee races that we're seeing, we're going to see the affordability issue reign supreme in 2026. | ||
| And so Democrats are really hoping that these three Democrats go across the finish line, hopefully with some large margins. | ||
| And then you'll see Democrats use that as a springboard to get into 2026 with their messaging and try to move beyond the 2024 losses that were quite stinging for the party. | ||
| Breckenberger, also preview races for the Virginia House of Delegates tonight. | ||
| What are you watching there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's another close thing that we're watching. | |
| Democrats have been very, very excited about those races. | ||
| They think they can expand their margins. | ||
| They have a slight margin in the lower chamber of the General Assembly in Virginia. | ||
| They think they can build on those margins. | ||
| And Republicans have really been trying to hammer Democrats, especially last week when Democrats called the surprise special session to bring up redistricting in the state to counteract some of the things that we're seeing in other states, including Texas. | ||
| But Democrats feel like they did the polling. | ||
| They did the messaging. | ||
| feel like, hey, we are on the right side of history and this is what the voters of Virginia actually want. | ||
| So if Democrats can sweep the statewide office, expand their margins in the state house, it's going to be a really good night for Democrats. | ||
| I've heard predictions that they could pick up as many as 10 seats. | ||
| I think that might be a little high, but that's what some folks are telling me to look for tonight. | ||
| All right, Bracton Booker, Politico's National Political Reporter, joining us tonight from Virginia. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for having me. | |
| Matthew Klein, if there is a pickup of 10 in the House of Delegates, what does that give Democrats on redrawing the maps? | ||
| Do they need a supermajority to do that with ease, or what are they looking for here? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, obviously, there are a lot of Democrats who are going to not want to have to take the vote on redistricting. | ||
| But of course, if the party leadership needs them, they will end up having, probably end up having to do it. | ||
| So the more seats that the party picks up, the fewer members, the more Democrats can avoid having to take that particularly challenging vote. | ||
| But yes, you know, Democrats still look like they're going full steam ahead on redistricting in Virginia. | ||
| As far as we can tell, that could result in a net pickup of potentially two or even three seats for the Virginia Democratic Party, and that would help Democrats quite a bit. | ||
| Yeah, let's look at the map as you're talking about it in Virginia on your screen for our viewers. | ||
| And you can see this is what the current map looks like. | ||
| And go ahead and talk to that. | ||
| We've got six Democrats, five Republicans serving in the House right now. | ||
| What are they hoping to do? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think the most obvious thing that they would do, they would probably target the first and the second districts very easily. | ||
| The first district held by Republican Rob Whitman. | ||
| He has been in Congress for a long time, really has never faced a particularly competitive race. | ||
| Even if they don't end up redrawing the lines, he probably will this cycle. | ||
| Democrats feel very good about their potential nominee there. | ||
| And also the second district, which is one of these classic bellwether seats in the Virginia Beach area, swings all the time, political wins. | ||
| That is currently represented by Republican Jen Kiggins. | ||
| It also would be fairly straightforward to draw her out of a job. | ||
| And then in the fifth district, which is currently represented by John McGuire, that stretches down from Charlottesville all the way to the North Carolina border. | ||
| You could potentially do some reworking there if you expand Northern Virginia, some of those seats out a little bit more, could potentially draw him out. | ||
| I've seen maps that go as high as 10 to 1 in favor of Democrats in Virginia. | ||
| I'm not sure they would end up ultimately pulling the trigger on that, but it is in the conversation. | ||
| And we are about 15 minutes away from the first polls closing in Virginia. | ||
| By the way, on c-span.org, you'll be able to follow along county by county with election results. | ||
| The data on our website comes from the Associated Press. | ||
| We rely on them tonight to make projections, to declare winners. | ||
| You'll be able to follow along with all that data, play around with the maps as you continue to watch here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Let's go to New Jersey. | ||
| Ethan is in Marlborough, New Jersey, a Republican caller. | ||
| Ethan, who did you vote for tonight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I voted for Jack Kitterelli, and I voted Republican down the line. | |
| And I'm going to tell you why. | ||
| I'm not somebody who's super ideological, but I am a member of the Jewish community. | ||
| And New Jersey, we pay very close attention to what happens in New York. | ||
| And I have never seen my community so fired up to back Republicans. | ||
| The Momdani campaign has awoken a sleeping giant, especially in places, more religious places in here, like Lakewood and Keeneck. | ||
| And it is something that I've never seen my community so united behind the Republican ticket. | ||
| So the Democrats who have relied on Jewish votes for decades really, I think, should check themselves. | ||
| Even if Mamdani becomes mayor of New York tonight, which he probably will, they're alienating a voter bloc that has been loyal to them for a long time. | ||
| And that's something they want to consider for future elections. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, your reaction to hearing that about what's happening in a New York City mayoral race having an impact on the New Jersey gubernatorial race. | ||
| Well, I think one of the issues that has obviously been raised by Zorhan Mamdani's opponents is his very sharp criticism of the Israeli government and its conduct in Gaza. | ||
| And, you know, he's called it a genocide. | ||
| He said that he would issue an arrest warrant for Prime Minister Netanyahu if he were to come to New York. | ||
| You know, and I think it was a big focus, actually, for former Governor Cuomo's campaign to try and use that as a liability and especially appeal to Jewish New Yorkers who are more supportive of Israel. | ||
| And clearly, there's a trickle-down effect in that messaging if you're thinking about what we just heard even in New Jersey. | ||
| But by and large, if you just look at the margin by which he's expected to win and just the support that there's been for his campaign, it's quite clear that the election has not really been about Israel and his views on a foreign policy issue. | ||
| And that the election in New York, and I think still in New Jersey and Virginia overall, is very much going to be about the economy, which is why Mamdani has been successful. | ||
| Because even when people have raised comments that he's made about the Israeli government and its prosecution of the war, he addresses them, but he kind of pivots right back to the issue of affordability, right? | ||
| He's just relentlessly on message because I think there is an acknowledgement that that is ultimately what's driving voters as they go to the polls. | ||
| And just also, I do think that there are also key constituencies that Democrats lost in 2024 because the base did not believe that they were sufficiently critical of Israel and the way that it was prosecuting the war and of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. | ||
| There was a lot of anger and frustration over the Biden administration's support for Israel and continuing to arm Israel despite mass civilian casualties, despite famine in Gaza. | ||
| So, you know, I think there are also a lot more Democratic, parts of the Democratic base that actually agree with Mamdani's criticism of Israel, and that's why it hasn't necessarily been a deal breaker. | ||
| Matthew Klein? | ||
| Yeah, I think that's probably true. | ||
| I think for Democrats, in particular last cycle, thinking about some of the problems the Democrats faced, particularly with regard to the war in Gaza, Democrats were sort of in a complete bind. | ||
| They lost a lot of support from the Muslim community, particularly in places like New Jersey. | ||
| I'm going to be very interested to see how Passaic County votes tonight, where there was a lot of frustration. | ||
| A lot of longtime Democrats didn't come out, didn't turn out to vote in Michigan, places like Dearborn, where there's a large Arab American community. | ||
| And then also at the same time, lost a lot of support among Jewish voters for the same reason. | ||
| And so I think we're going to see this continue to play out. | ||
| Republicans have made, you know, they have made a much more concerted effort to appeal to the Jewish community. | ||
| In recent cycles, they've made the campus anti-Semitism. | ||
| Elise Stefanik made a big, you know, that was a big deal at the congressional hearings on that. | ||
| And so I think, you know, obviously it's the Jewish community, like every other community, is a large, varied group. | ||
| There's a large difference between the Orthodox community and Reformed Jews, of which New York City has many. | ||
| But yes, it's going to be very interesting. | ||
| Jewish vote has been the backbone of Andrew Cuomo's campaign. | ||
| It's probably not large enough by itself to carry him to victory tonight, but it certainly has powered quite a bit of the opposition to Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| In New Jersey, Passaic County, why is this county interesting to you and other political observers? | ||
| Gosh, well, Passaic County is one of those places that just swung so fast from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. | ||
| And last cycle, it voted for Donald Trump by about three points. | ||
| It had previously backed Democrats by 20, you know, back when Obama was on the ballot, 30 points. | ||
| I mean, this was really a traditionally Democratic area, especially because it has a lot of Latino voters and a lot of Muslim voters, a huge Palestinian-American community in Patterson. | ||
| And so that, you know, that county swing has been so dramatic, it's been so sharp that one wonders how anomalous the 2024 results were. | ||
| One has to, you know, I'm very curious to see. | ||
| Mikey Sherrill has put in a decent amount of investment there. | ||
| Jack Chittarelli has also made quite a few appearances up there. | ||
| So I'm very interested to see how that area votes this time compared to how it voted in 2024, whether that could be part of a permanent shift, permanent realignment among those communities, or if it's really more just a one-off. | ||
| All the results happening here on C-SPAN tonight as part of our election night coverage of 2025. | ||
| And as we said, we're relying on the Associated Press to make the calls this evening. | ||
| Earlier today, we spoke with David Scott. | ||
| He's the Associated Press's vice president of election services. | ||
| And we talked to him about how the Associated Press collects the data on Election Day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a huge operation for us. | |
| And it's part of the core of our mission as a news company that's rooted in facts and nonpartisan reporting. | ||
| We are collecting data. | ||
| We are collecting the vote count at literally thousands of local, what we call reporting units, counties in most places, towns and cities in New England, where elections happen in America. | ||
| I mean, we like to think about elections as a national event or statewide events, but really elections in America are local events. | ||
| And all of our local counties and our jurisdictions, they conduct the elections locally. | ||
| That's where we vote. | ||
| And the mechanism for adding all those votes up on election night in real time is the Associated Press. | ||
| That's something we've done since the founding of the cooperative way back in 1848, two years actually after the cooperative was founded, because we thought that there needed to be a source for fact-based, independent reporting of what the voters had decided. | ||
| We didn't want to wait for the process to play its out. | ||
| We want to know on election night who's won. | ||
| So we go out and we count the vote. | ||
| How quickly do you count the votes? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, certainly as quickly as we can, and it varies. | |
| In some states, they have local election rules that are set at the state level or at the local level that are designed to facilitate a very fast count. | ||
| They want to have a process that's designed to count very quickly. | ||
| In Florida, for example, not a state that's voting tonight, but after what happened there in 2000, they redid their election system to facilitate that. | ||
| California, which is a state that's voting tonight, they take a very different approach. | ||
| They look to maximize participation. | ||
| And so it could be weeks until we know all the votes and what the final totals are in California. | ||
| But as soon as election officials are reporting those votes tonight and all the places that are having elections, we'll be adding those totals to our tally and reporting them out to the world. | ||
| How does the Associated Press decide to call a race? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's a pretty simple calculation for us at the top line. | |
| And then there's a lot of things that go into that. | ||
| But the underlying mission for us is we don't declare a winner in any election until we are confident that the trailing candidates can't catch up. | ||
| And so that's the thing that we're looking for. | ||
| What's votes are outstanding? | ||
| What types of votes are outstanding? | ||
| Where are the votes that haven't been counted yet in a state or in a district or in a jurisdiction? | ||
| Where are they coming from? | ||
| And all of that gets fed into our analysis for us to be able to answer that question. | ||
| Can the trailing candidates catch up? | ||
| And until we are certain that they cannot, we don't declare a winner. | ||
| And it's only when we're certain that the person who's in the front will remain in front that we say that that person has won the election. | ||
| What is exit polling and will it play a role tonight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so exit polling is the sort of the traditional way to describe a survey of the electorate that takes place when a pollster is interviewing people as they leave a polling place, as they exit the polling place. | |
| For the last eight years, we at the EP have used a different methodology that was more focused on talking to people where they are, so by mail, by phone, text message, and email, because of so much of the vote and is conducted in advance. | ||
| This year, we're partnering with the U.S. Broadcast Networks as well as a firm called SSRS to combine the methodology that we've used over the last eight years plus exit polling, interviewing people as they leave polling places, to try to get that snapshot of the electorate. | ||
| And that's really at the core of what that exit poll, or we're calling it the voter poll, does. | ||
| We're trying to understand who's voting, what issues they cared about, and what motivated them to cast their ballots. | ||
| We certainly look at the results of the poll to see what we might learn about what's going to happen and who's going to win, but we're really trying to understand the electorate and who's come out to vote and what motivated them. | ||
| What impact did you think these combined efforts will have tonight? | ||
| You're doing it a little bit differently than previous elections. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know, I think that it's great that we'll have all of America looking at one source of vote tonight, you know, one numbers from AP about what the numbers are in terms of who the country has chosen to lead them in all these states that are doing elections tonight. | |
| You know, we work really hard and have for more than 170 years to count the vote from a nonpartisan, transparent perspective. | ||
| We add up the votes, and it's great that we're all going to be looking at one set of data that says what the voters have decided. | ||
| Because it's really a night that's not about the politicians or the candidates, at least to me. | ||
| It's not about the media. | ||
| It's about the voters. | ||
| It's about the people who have gone out, cast the ballot either early or today, and what decisions they have made. | ||
| And thinking about them and what that data is. | ||
| It's a reflection of the choices that all those voters have made about who they want to lead them. | ||
| And we try to keep them front and center in our mind. | ||
| Dave Scott of the Associated Press in our conversation earlier. | ||
| And again, we're relying on the Associated Press tonight to call races. | ||
| You can find all of the results if you go to c-span.org. | ||
| And of course, we hope you stay here with us on C-SPAN tonight because it's election night in America. | ||
| We'll be giving you the key results in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, and California. | ||
| Joining us this evening is Matthew Klein. | ||
| He is with the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. | ||
| He analyzes house races as well as gubernatorial. | ||
| And Sabrina Siddiqui is the National Political Reporter with the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| And we thank you both for being here with us tonight. | ||
| We are just about, what, four minutes away here from Virginia Poll's closing. | ||
| Matthew Klein, do you think we get a call right away? | ||
| Oh, right away. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| That's a good question. | ||
| It will probably come fairly quickly. | ||
| Based on everything we've seen so far, if this is really going to be the decisive night for Abigail Spanberger that a lot of the polls have indicated that it might be, then yeah, we'll probably get a call fairly soon. | ||
| It'll take a little while longer to call the Attorney General's race. | ||
| Obviously, that has a history of voting very competitively. | ||
| The Attorney General contests often take a little bit longer in Virginia. | ||
| And I think because of the circumstances of the current contest between Jay Jones and Jason Mear as the incumbent Republican, it's probably going to be a fairly long night before we have an answer on that one. | ||
| One of our first callers came from Arlington, Virginia, suburbs here of Washington, D.C. Talk about Northern Virginia. | ||
| How populated is this part of the state, and how quickly do they count votes there? | ||
| Yeah, Northern Virginia is the engine of Democratic strength in Virginia. | ||
| And it's part of the reason that the state swung from being sort of a Republican stronghold back in the 80s and 90s, really one of the few Southern states that was Republican, to now being one of the few Southern states that votes Democratic. | ||
| The growth of Northern Virginia, Arlington, but Fairfax County, Loudoun County in particular, Prince William, some of those counties where it's really expanded out has just been a huge, huge asset for Democrats. | ||
| And it's also been particularly hard hit by the federal workforce layoffs that have happened and the government shutdown. | ||
| And government shutdown doesn't just affect people who have been directly laid off by the federal government. | ||
| Around here, it affects the people who are contractors for the federal government or who work closely with federal employees, rely on federal employees getting them to and from for their businesses. | ||
| And so, yeah, absolutely. | ||
| Northern Virginia is an extremely crucial part of this equation. | ||
| Some parts of it count faster than others, so we'll keep an eye on which parts do and don't. | ||
| But I think we'll get a pretty good sense of it pretty early on. | ||
| When you look at the state, where are their Republican strongholds versus the Democratic strongholds that you just talked about? | ||
| Yeah, Republicans have much stronger bases of support out in rural Virginia, particularly out in Western Virginia, more Appalachian. | ||
| It's more mountainous, culturally more conservative out there. | ||
| Republicans also do fairly well in some of the suburbs of Richmond, the exurbs of Richmond. | ||
| They've really lost a lot of ground here in Northern Virginia, so they used to have a decent base of support in Fairfax County. | ||
| And in recent years, that's kind of gone away and they've become a much more rural-centric party. | ||
| There is some Republican strength still in the Virginia Beach area. | ||
| That continues to be represented by a Republican in Congress. | ||
| But by and large, Republicans have seen their, while they may have seen their geographical footprint expand a little bit, they've taken over some more of the rural area, their actual share of the vote has diminished in recent cycles, and it seems like tonight's going to be another example of that. | ||
| So when you look at the votes coming in right away when polls close at seven, as we see the percentage start to trickle in, what will it look like? | ||
| Could it look lopsided at first? | ||
| Yeah, certainly. | ||
| And I think it's important not to make too many predictions based on anything that we're seeing right really very quickly. | ||
| We'll want to wait until we have some counties that have fully reported, which may take a little while, before we can start actually comparing them to where things were last cycle in 2024, 2021, 2020. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger, if she wins tonight, Sabrina, what does that mean for the Democratic Party? | ||
| She's a national security candidate, a moderate Democrat. | ||
| What does the party do with that? | ||
| Is that a winning formula for them? | ||
| I think the party believes that it is, because I think they're looking at all of this depending on where that candidate is elected, right? | ||
| So Abigail Spanberger is a very different type of candidate than Zaran Mamdani. | ||
| And it's very likely that both of them will win their races tonight. | ||
| And in some ways, it's the best of both worlds for Democrats as they are trying to reassemble this coalition that they lost in the last election cycle, where they were really struggling between appealing to centrists, you know, in a race ultimately between eventually between Vice President Harris and President Trump at the same time as trying not to contend with the fact that they had turned off a lot of the progressive liberal-leaning base. | ||
| So, you know, I think Democrats are pretty enthusiastic about her candidacy. | ||
| Also, she will make history. | ||
| Either way, history will be made. | ||
| Virginia will be electing also its first female governor, which is also worth marking, even though they didn't talk about it a lot on the campaign trail. | ||
| But coming back to just the themes that we've seen, I think, you know, if this election is, if tonight is ultimately about cost of living, the economy, inflation, then I think Abigail Spanberger is going to have a really good night. | ||
| Again, the margin is what Democrats are looking for. | ||
| They really want it to be a very decisive victory because the more decisive, then the more confident that they'll feel about rebuilding the party's image rather than simply a protest vote against President Trump. | ||
| All right, the polls closed 90 seconds ago in Virginia. | ||
| We are just a minute in change after 7 p.m. Eastern Time here on the East Coast. | ||
| And we are watching the candidates in the Virginia gubernatorial race. | ||
| We've got cameras at the headquarters tonight. | ||
| On your left is the headquarters for Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| She's in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the state. | ||
| And the lieutenant governor, the Republican candidate, Winsom Earl Sears, she is in Leesburg, Virginia. | ||
| When the candidates come out to speak, we will bring you live coverage of their remarks. | ||
| That's all part of C-SPAN's Election Night 2025 coverage. | ||
| While we wait for results to come in, Brand is in Williamsburg, Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
| Brandon, we are watching this race closely right now here at 7:02 p.m. | ||
| It's Eastern time. | ||
| Who did you vote for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I voted Abigail Spanberger. | |
| And why did you decide to go with Abigail Spanberger? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Because she needs to help President Trump their trains to run again because his she's Abigail Spanberger is wonderful. | |
| All right, Brandon there in Williamsburg, Virginia, Democratic caller. | ||
| And again, we are watching Virginia tonight to see if the Associated Press calls this race on the early side. | ||
| We heard from the Associated Press earlier. | ||
| They want to see a good representation of votes in the counties. | ||
| And they're also basing their call on the exit polling. | ||
| That's talking to the viewers, excuse me, the voters as they go into the polls and they come out of the polls tonight. | ||
| And we've heard also from exit polling done by networks. | ||
| And Sabrina, you've been talking about this, that the economy is the number one issue for Virginia voters. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I mean, it's what we hear anytime I get on the phone with voters and I ask them what is top of mind. | ||
| It always comes back to cost of living. | ||
| And in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger's campaign, what they framed their agenda as was affordable Virginia. | ||
| That was what she referred to her agenda as. | ||
| And there were promises to rein in pharmaceutical middlemen, to streamline permitting for certain home construction. | ||
| And then, you know, I've heard from voters who are talking about how car sales tax is one of the highest in the country. | ||
| I mean, you know, and then there's also the important piece about the layoffs here in Washington and how that's really impacted federal workers and contractors in Northern Virginia. | ||
| So, you know, I really think that that has been the key issue of the night. | ||
| And what's striking is that that is where President Trump has typically been at his strongest. | ||
| So even when you have those, a lot of times you talk to his voters and say, well, I don't like the guy. | ||
| I don't love everything he says. | ||
| I don't like the way he says it. | ||
| But I think that he's better on the economy. | ||
| I think that he's going to improve my personal cost of living, my way of life. | ||
| And that's where he's lost the most ground. | ||
| And that's where I think Democrats saw an opening. | ||
| And that's certainly the story, like I said, not just of Virginia, but I also think of New York City and of New Jersey as well. | ||
| Matthew Klein? | ||
| You know, Winsom Earl Sears did not campaign on the economy nearly to the extent that Abigail Spanberger did. | ||
| And Winsom, the lieutenant governor went all in very early on on the transgender messaging, particularly with regard to youth sports. | ||
| And that was a message that did help Glenn Young back in 2021. | ||
| There was a backlash. | ||
| Education was a really central issue in part because it was still so fresh in everyone's minds after COVID and the handling of that under the Democratic governor. | ||
| But Earl Sears really came into this campaign and was laser focused on that when most polls indicated that just wasn't a top of mind issue for them. | ||
| And attempting to convince swing voters that that was going to be more important than some of the economic messages that Abigail Spanberger was articulating, generally, it just didn't help her. | ||
| And it also didn't put her in a very good position to capitalize on the potential for a scandal like what happened with Jay Jones. | ||
| Her campaign has tried to pivot very quickly, make that a top issue, and she just wasn't really in a position from the beginning to be able to utilize that effectively for her benefit. | ||
| We are watching the races in Virginia as well as New Jersey, New York City, and California tonight, all part of C-SPAN's coverage of Election Night 2025. | ||
| And of course, including all of you in a conversation as well. | ||
| You can join us, Republicans, at 202-748-800. | ||
| Excuse me, I'll start over. | ||
| Democrats, 202-748-8920. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8921. | ||
| All others, 202-748-8922. | ||
| And you can text if you'd like at 202-748-8903. | ||
| Those are the lines for all of you tonight. | ||
| We want to hear from you, especially if you voted. | ||
| And in any of these contests, please call in tonight and let us know who you voted for and why. | ||
| Matthew Klein, speaking with Virginia, is there a Bellwether county that we haven't talked about yet that you'll be keeping an eye on tonight? | ||
| Yeah, I'm always watching Virginia Beach. | ||
| It's large. | ||
| It's the largest city in the state. | ||
| It's sort of got this working class area, a lot of retirees. | ||
| It flipped to Joe Biden, flipped to Donald Trump. | ||
| We see it swing all the time. | ||
| And it's going to be very important in part because unless Virginia redraws its congressional map, which is certainly a possibility at this point, but as of right now, the second district in Virginia, which includes most of Virginia Beach, is a potential swing seat. | ||
| It's a potential pickup opportunity for Democrats next cycle. | ||
| If they want to make inroads in the House, that's one of the places where they're going to have to do it. | ||
| And so I'm going to be very intrigued to see how Spanberger does there, to see if Jay Jones manages to pull off a victory there. | ||
| That will be telling as well for just how dire the situation is for Republicans in Virginia. | ||
| Chesterfield County, fourth largest county outside of Northern Virginia. | ||
| Here's an interesting one too. | ||
| President Trump lost ground in 2024, losing by nine percentage points compared to a seven-point loss in 2020, a two-point pickup in 2016. | ||
| Here's a county that Glenn Young won in 2021 by five points. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| Yeah, it's some of the suburban voters that Glenn Young was very successfully able to appeal to. | ||
| He campaigned on the economy. | ||
| He campaigned on education. | ||
| Terry McAuliffe had sort of that infamous gaffe toward the end of the cycle where he argued that parents shouldn't have a role in their children's education that obviously a lot of Democrats do feel really came back to haunt them. | ||
| And Young was a businessman. | ||
| He was just a better fit for it. | ||
| He hasn't been as outspoken on many issues, social issues, as Donald Trump has. | ||
| And so where Trump hasn't been a popular figure, there are a lot of folks in the suburbs and Richmond area who are still willing to vote for a Republican if they feel like that Republican is independent, has his own brand. | ||
| And I think you saw that with Yunkin, and I'm not sure you're going to see that tonight with Winsom Rural Sears. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, Glenn Young, when you look at his 2021 performance, he did better than Donald Trump in 2024 in many areas in Virginia. | ||
| Now, Joe Biden was in the White House. | ||
| How big of a factor was that? | ||
| Huge. | ||
| Huge. | ||
| I mean, we know that in Virginia, the party in power in the White House almost always suffers a loss in the governor's race. | ||
| It's really the first opportunity for voters anywhere in the country to express their discontent with the political, with the party in power in Washington. | ||
| In this case, Republicans have a trifecta and they have been particularly active in using their executive authority. | ||
| And so I think you see a lot of Democrats very frustrated about that in Virginia. | ||
| This has been an early opportunity for them. | ||
| In 2021, it was the reverse. | ||
| Republicans were very upset about COVID. | ||
| They were upset about how Democrats handled it, how governors handled it, schools being closed, mask mandates, right? | ||
| These are things that we haven't even talked about in years, right? | ||
| They're no longer issues that really resonate with the electorate right now. | ||
| And that's part of the reason that this cycle hasn't been as good for Republicans in Virginia. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, exit polls, CNN exit polls out of Virginia showing that six in ten voters say they're dissatisfied or angry with the way things are going in the country today. | ||
| So back in 2020, Joe Biden was in the White House. | ||
| It's 2025. | ||
| Donald Trump's in the White House. | ||
| I mean, now President Trump has all the challenges of the incumbency. | ||
| And it's a lot easier to blame someone else for what voters see as the nation's shortcomings when you're not in the White House or when you're not in office. | ||
| And I think that that's such a key distinction, as we were just talking about, between when Glenn Young was running and now with Winsom Merle Sears. | ||
| And, you know, when you think about even just the cultural flashpoints that Glenn Young centered a lot of his campaign around, you know, it's easier to do so when there's sort of a more national narrative that Republicans could construct around the Biden administration and this is Biden's America, liberal America. | ||
| And look what they're teaching your children in schools and look at all the ways in which they've refused to return back to normal after COVID era policies that at some point people wanted to put behind them. | ||
| I think those are all really important points. | ||
| And now, when you're looking at the state of the country, the dissatisfaction very much has to do with President Trump. | ||
| And you've seen that reflected in poll after poll. | ||
| Now, I did have an interesting conversation with some Democratic pollsters who told me that there are some warning signs here for Democrats because even if they have a good night, this shift does not necessarily have much to do with anything that Democrats are actually doing more so than this deep dissatisfaction with the Trump administration and their inability to bring costs down. | ||
| So, you know, I think that it's a little bit more of a way of expressing to the party to be a little bit cautious and not necessarily take a huge victory lap when there's still a lot of problems with the Democratic Party's image. | ||
| And I don't think that those issues are going to resolve themselves tonight, even if they have a strong night. | ||
| All right, let's just take a look at Virginia right now. | ||
| This is 0% of votes in. | ||
| And you can see here that Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate here, leading by 2,609 votes, her share of the vote, 64.7% to 35.2. | ||
| Again, very early. | ||
| The Associated Press has 0% of votes in. | ||
| This is the lieutenant governor race. | ||
| And you can see, again, the Democratic candidate there, Ghazala Hashmi, is in the lead over John Reed. | ||
| And then look at the Jay Jones numbers right now. | ||
| Again, this is very early on. | ||
| We expect this to change. | ||
| We're just showing you this now as polls just closed minutes ago in Virginia. | ||
| And we're going to keep an eye on it. | ||
| You can do so as well. | ||
| If you want to follow these races closely, you can go to our website, c-span.org, and we have the map there of Virginia, the Associated Press results. | ||
| They will update in real time. | ||
| You can keep your fingers on these Virginia results. | ||
| If that's what you're interested, go on to New York, New Jersey, California. | ||
| We're monitoring it all tonight. | ||
| Speaking of New York, let's go up to New York Spectrum News 1. | ||
| Bobby Cusa is joining us, New York One Spectrum's political reporter to give us an update on the mayor's race there. | ||
| Bobby Cusa, what do you have for us? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Well, all eyes are on Zorhan Mamdani, of course. | ||
| I mean, this race has become a national story because he has really came out of nowhere. | ||
| I mean, going back to the primary here, which took place back in June, he emerged from a pretty crowded field as having been somebody who was a virtual unknown here in New York City. | ||
| He was kind of an obscure state assemblyman from Queens. | ||
| But Momdani, he's really a uniquely talented politician. | ||
| He's a young guy. | ||
| He's only 34 years old. | ||
| He had a talent for making and has a talent for making these social media videos that got a lot of traction. | ||
| He got a lot of young people excited about this race. | ||
| And on top of that, he had a single-minded message that was all about affordability. | ||
| At a time when some of the other candidates in the primary were talking about public safety and policing here in New York City, he was relentlessly focused on bringing down the cost of living. | ||
| And that really is what resonated with people. | ||
| So he won kind of a stunning upset in the primary back in June. | ||
| And then, as those who have been following the race know, we saw the former governor, Andrew Cuomo, who lost in the primary, then decided to go ahead and run in the general election in November as an independent candidate. | ||
| So this has really been a clash, sort of a rematch, really, between those two. | ||
| And it has gotten kind of ugly in the last few weeks. | ||
| But at this point, Momdani is considered the overwhelming favorite. | ||
| He's been ahead in the polls. | ||
| And so we're watching tonight to see if he wins by how much he wins, whether he can break that 50% threshold. | ||
| Because it's not just him and Andrew Cuomo. | ||
| We've also got Curtis Sliwa, who is the Republican candidate in this race. | ||
| And interestingly, President Donald Trump has come out behind Andrew Cuomo rather than the Republican in the race. | ||
| So there's a lot going on. | ||
| Also, the current mayor, Eric Adams, dropped out of the race a few weeks ago. | ||
| Usually we don't have this kind of exciting general election race here in New York City because a lot of times things are decided in the primary. | ||
| So a lot of attention on New York City here tonight. | ||
| Yeah, and where does the support for Zoran Momdani come from? | ||
| Which boroughs are you watching for and what type of voters? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, what Momdani did in the primary back in June was almost unprecedented, the level to which he was able to activate young voters, young voters, voters who were first-time voters registering for the first time. | |
| He brought them out in droves and they supported him overwhelmingly as compared to some of the other candidates that were running in that primary. | ||
| So he really banked on that. | ||
| The older voters tended to skew more in favor of Andrew Cuomo. | ||
| But geographically, he has support all over the city, although he did best in Brooklyn, but he won three out of the five boroughs in the primary. | ||
| We're going to see what happens tonight, whether he can potentially sweep all five boroughs. | ||
| The one borough here in New York City that tends to go Republican is Staten Island. | ||
| So we'll see whether they might vote for the Republican candidate or for Andrew Cuomo. | ||
| But what he has done also, and remember, the other thing about Zorhan Mamdani, he's a Democratic socialist. | ||
| And so he has been branded as being an extremist, somebody whose views are out of step with the mainstream. | ||
| I mean, that's what Andrew Cuomo has said about him throughout this campaign. | ||
| And so there is some, I think, trepidation from moderate Democrats, more conservative-leaning Democrats about Momdani. | ||
| But what he did after the primary, he really tried to broaden his appeal. | ||
| He moderated some of those views, including the fact that he had been a fierce critic of the NYPD. | ||
| He had talked about defunding and dismantling the NYPD in years past. | ||
| He sort of took that back and kind of remade himself in a way that would broaden his appeal to a larger electorate. | ||
| And I think that is what has been successful these last few months in allowing him to win if he does go ahead and win once these polls close at nine o'clock in this election, despite the fact that he started out as a pretty far-left candidate. | ||
| I mean, even within the primary field in the Democratic primary here in New York, he was by far the furthest to the left, politically speaking. | ||
| And here he is now on the cusp of winning. | ||
| What does the ballot look like when the voters go in and New York City residents go in to vote today and tonight? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What does the ballot look like? | |
| Well, I'll tell you, I voted today and I had four pages on my ballot, if you count front and back, because this is a year where we've got city elections. | ||
| And so mayor, all the other citywide offices, city council, there's 51 city council districts here in New York City. | ||
| There's judgeships, there's borough presidencies for all five boroughs, a couple district attorney races. | ||
| So it's a very crowded ballot. | ||
| There's also some ballot questions that pertain to building affordable housing here in New York City, sort of streamlining that process. | ||
| But look, New York City is a Democratic town, right? | ||
| I mean, we're talking about a city council that has 51 seats. | ||
| Out of those 51 seats, only six of them are held by Republicans. | ||
| So in a city like this, what happens a lot of time is you get a very competitive Democratic primary for some of these races, but then not so much in the general election when the Democrat ordinarily kind of cruises to winning that election. | ||
| So a lot of times these November elections are not that interesting. | ||
| And again, this year there are not a lot of competitive races down ballot, but there is so much attention on the mayor's race because it is so unusually competitive this time around with Cuomo against Momdani and the fact you've got three pretty viable candidates. | ||
| And until recently, there was a lot of attention on the current mayor, Eric Adams, and whether or not he was going to follow through with his run. | ||
| So crowded ballot, but really all of the attention tonight is on that top of the ballot with the mayor's race. | ||
| And Eric Adams dropped out of the race. | ||
| Is he still on the ballot? | ||
|
unidentified
|
He is on the ballot. | |
| Interestingly, he only dropped out a few weeks ago, and that was well past the time when he could have legally had his name removed from the ballot. | ||
| So it's going to be interesting to see whether some folks who either haven't been paying attention or decided that they are so loyal to Eric Adams, they're going to fill in that bubble next to his name anyway. | ||
| We'll see whether he can end up, actually ends up winning one or two or three percent in this election. | ||
| But what Adams did, he came out and he backed Andrew Cuomo, even though the two of them have a lot of animosity for each other and had clashed earlier on in this campaign. | ||
| But Adams, Eric Adams, says that Zoron Momdani is an existential threat to the future of New York City and that he has to be stopped however possible. | ||
| And if the only way to do that is to back Andrew Cuomo, then that's what he decided to do. | ||
| And that's actually a very similar rationale to what we heard from Donald Trump saying that Momdani had to be stopped. | ||
| than if it was a choice between a communist, as Trump calls him, even though he's really a Democratic socialist. | ||
| But Trump says if it's a decision between a communist and a bad Democrat, which is what he called Andrew Cuomo, I'll take the bad Democrat every time. | ||
| So Cuomo has gotten some support from some pretty interesting places. | ||
| Bobby Cousa, New York One Spectrum political reporter with an update on the New York Mayor's race. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right, thank you. | |
| We will, of course, bringing you New York One, Spectrum New York One's coverage of the New York Mayor race later this evening, their in-depth analysis and coverage of that race. | ||
| That's coming up on C-SPAN's Election Night 2025. | ||
| Let's go to Virginia. | ||
| Polls have closed there and give you an update. | ||
| With 2% of the vote in, Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat, former congresswoman, former CIA agent, still in the lead here. | ||
| Just again, though, 2% of the vote in. | ||
| For Lieutenant Governor, we can show you the results there. | ||
| Ghazala Hashmi also in the lead with just 2% of the vote in. | ||
| And in this closely watched Attorney General race, this is the one that we're watching to see what happens here with Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate. | ||
| He's challenging the incumbent Jason Maeres. | ||
| Mieres there, the Republican there. | ||
| He's challenging him, controversial text messages proporting political violence. | ||
| So we're watching to see closely what happens with this race. | ||
| Matthew Klein, you were talking about this earlier. | ||
| We heard from Politico. | ||
| Politico was referring to this Attorney General race as the marquee race tonight. | ||
| I think that's probably fair, in part because the governor's race has been sort of, the outcome of it has been fairly well known for a while now. | ||
| And based on what we're seeing right now, there's not much indication that that's going to look any different. | ||
| There's going to be a big surprise there. | ||
| But the Attorney General's race does look like it's competitive, a little bit more competitive. | ||
| Certainly he's Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee, is running behind Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| You know, not by a ton, maybe not by as much right now as some people expected. | ||
| Again, it's very early, so we want to make sure we wait before making any big projections. | ||
| But I do think that he'll probably run behind, and it could take a little while longer before we make a call in that Attorney General's race. | ||
| Sabrini Siddiqui. | ||
| You know, I think Matthew brought a really important point earlier, which is let's see how big Abigail Spanberger's margin is. | ||
| And can she actually help carry Jay Jones over the finish line? | ||
| You know, I think that political violence has obviously taken center stage in recent months, especially after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. | ||
| And we hear from voters constantly that they are deeply concerned about the climate, the ratcheting up of the rhetoric, and the threat of political violence. | ||
| And I think that that's why this scandal did break through. | ||
| Now, you know, you hear, when I talked to some Democrats, they felt like maybe if it had happened a little bit later in the final weeks of the campaign or final days, and it could have been a little bit more of a curveball. | ||
| And I thought Matthew brought up another important point earlier when he said that Earl Sears also just was not positioned to capitalize on it. | ||
| She tried. | ||
| During the gubernatorial debate, she kept going after Spanberger for refusing to call on Jay Jones to drop out of the race. | ||
| I remember her saying something like, you know, would it take him pulling the trigger? | ||
| Is that what would do it? | ||
| And, you know, obviously Spanberger condemned the remarks, but did not call on Jay Jones to drop out of the race because I think, as Matthew pointed out earlier, if Democrats saw, if her campaign saw polling suggesting that he was truly a liability, they would have called for him to go. | ||
| But I think they saw it as more of a distraction from the campaign that Spanberger was trying to run. | ||
| How it all plays out, that obviously remains to be seen. | ||
| I want to show our viewers, if they go to c-span.org, how you can play around with the maps tonight and what you're going to see from the Associated Press results, looking at the state of Virginia, and you can see how they're shading in counties based on how the vote is trending at this point. | ||
| Matthew Coyne, if you look at this map, what are you seeing? | ||
| This is just initial, obviously. | ||
| Initial votes in, 2% the last time we checked with the Associated Press. | ||
| But is this following along with historical patterns? | ||
| So far, yes. | ||
| It does look like Republicans are having much stronger night than Democrats out in the western part of the state. | ||
| You see a lot of that bright red area out there, that sort of mountainous area, coal country. | ||
| Maybe used to be more Democratic back in the 1980s, and nowadays it's solidly Republican. | ||
| Not much yet from Northern Virginia. | ||
| I think that's worth noting, although seeing that start to fill in a little bit there. | ||
| We would expect that to become very, very blue. | ||
| Arlington, it looks like a small portion of Arlington County has maybe reported. | ||
| And also we're still seeing some Democratic strength around Richmond. | ||
| I'm going to be keeping an eye on Virginia Beach, which is in the southeast corner of the state right now. | ||
| It's shaded red. | ||
| It's early. | ||
| I have a feeling that by the time it's all said and done, Abigail Spanberger will probably be leading there, but it's going to be an important bellwether. | ||
| What do you make when you look around Richmond, around the capital there? | ||
| You were talking about the suburbs shaded blue there. | ||
| Is that trending a different direction? | ||
| Does that seem to be in line? | ||
| So far, it seems to be in line. | ||
| I think, you know, the Virginia, the Richmond suburbs have been one of the parts of the state where Democrats actually have improved, nationally improved from 2020 to 2024. | ||
| There's a lot of growth happening in the Richmond suburbs. | ||
| Richmond area has become a lot different than it was back when it was the seat of the Confederacy, that's for sure. | ||
| And I think, yeah, I mean, we continue to see Democrats do fairly well in that area, continue to make some gains in places like Henrico and Chesterfield County. | ||
| And those are going to be ones we'll be watching tonight. | ||
| Yeah, we were talking about Chesterfield County earlier today, and I've got that highlighted for our viewers on the screen. | ||
| Fourth largest county, as we talked about, the president lost ground in 2024, losing 9 percentage points. | ||
| Compare that to seven points that he lost in 2020, a two-point pickup in 2016. | ||
| And this is a county Glenn Young won in 2021 by five points. | ||
| So how important is Chesterfield? | ||
| It's important. | ||
| Yeah, it's crucial. | ||
| I mean, you need to, you know, these are the types of voters that if Winsom Earl Sears is going to win with, if she's going to be able to pull off a victory tonight, she's got to get those folks who voted for Glenn Young and maybe who weren't all that excited about Donald Trump, don't like Donald Trump. | ||
| Was she running a campaign that's capable of doing that? | ||
| It remains to be seen. | ||
| I think most operatives would tell you that she probably wasn't. | ||
| There was some frustration from the start, even among a lot of Republicans, about how she was running this campaign, the issue set that she leaned into. | ||
| But I just think about a recent debate that she had with Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| One point that really complicates Winsom Earl Sears' path to winning in some of these suburban areas was on the issue of same-sex marriage. | ||
| Most people consider that to be a settled issue. | ||
| And it has been for 10 years. | ||
| And obviously in the state of Virginia, that it's overwhelmingly supported. | ||
| And Winsom Earl Sears, you know, during that campaign, during that debate, made a comment about how she did not believe that firing somebody because they were gay constitutes discrimination. | ||
| The Spanberger campaign seized on that. | ||
| That has been featured in advertisements in the home stretch of the campaign. | ||
| It's been a challenge for Winsom Earl Sears, and it doesn't do her much help in those suburban communities. | ||
| What role has the president played here for the Republican candidate for governor? | ||
| Well, I think that when you go back to this issue of dissatisfaction, that's been the key challenge for Winsom Earl Sears. | ||
| And we've talked about it a few times, so I wanted to actually pull up the number. | ||
| Virginia is home to more than 300,000 federal workers. | ||
| So you take the double barrel of the Trump administration's efforts to slash the federal workforce through Doge, and then the ongoing government shutdown, which tonight will become the longest in U.S. history. | ||
| And then you look at polling that shows that a fifth of voters in the state of Virginia said that someone in their household was employed this year by the federal government or worked as a federal contractor. | ||
| Most of them say that they have been affected by the recent federal cuts. | ||
| So I think that has been one of the biggest liabilities for Republicans in a state like Virginia, where, you know, you can make, you can take any state or any local race and try and turn it into a national referendum on the president. | ||
| Virginia is in the unique position because of its sharing the board of D.C. and because of the composition of its workforce, where you see that effect in real time, it's so much more tangible for the voters of Virginia to feel the impact of the administration because they're living it. | ||
| So I think that's been the Trump factor very much so. | ||
| Because otherwise, voters in Virginia actually have a fairly more positive outlook on the economy compared to voters in other states. | ||
| I just think that on this specific issue and the cuts to the federal government workforce and the shutdown, they are actively living through it. | ||
| As Sabrina Siddiqui reminds us, it's election night 2025. | ||
| It's also day 35 of a government shutdown, and it will become the longest government shutdown in U.S. history tonight. | ||
| Richard in New York, Democratic caller, let's turn to you. | ||
| How did you vote today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I voted against the socialist. | |
| You vote, and are you a Democrat? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I'm a registered Democrat. | |
| But when it comes, I voted in all the elections available. | ||
| And usually I vote for the person more than the party, especially when it's for president. | ||
| But being in New York, as you said before, we're a heavily Democratic city. | ||
| So I usually vote for the Republicans because I would like to see in my lifetime at least a 55-45 split. | ||
| I don't think I'll ever see it, but I vote that way with the hopes. | ||
| But in this case, I voted against the socialists. | ||
| So the young people. | ||
| Yeah, go ahead, Richard. | ||
| The young people? | ||
| Richard, are you still there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I'm here. | |
| Okay, so I was going to ask you: who did you vote for? | ||
| Did you say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I did not. | |
| I just did not vote for the leader in the polls. | ||
| I voted for the second option. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, there were three for the mayor's race. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The third one, I like him on the radio. | |
| I think he's very charismatic, but he can't run the city. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And Richard, how have you voted in the past in these previous mayoral races? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I have voted based on the person. | |
| I voted for Koch, I voted for Giuliani. | ||
| I voted one time for Bloomberg. | ||
| I didn't like the idea that he ran for the third time. | ||
| The election with Adams, I was not available, so I did not vote in that election. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Richard in New York, calling on our line for Democrats, says he's a Democrat, but often votes for Republicans. | ||
| Matthew Klein, who is this voter in New York City? | ||
| Actually, surprisingly common in New York City. | ||
| A lot of people in New York City are registered Democrats. | ||
| State has closed primaries, so you can't vote in Republican primaries, Democratic primaries, if you're not a member of the party in question. | ||
| And since so much of New York politics is dominated in these Democratic primaries, we've seen a lot of people who consider themselves Democrats might be more conservative Democrats by some national standards. | ||
| And that's part of the reason that Andrew Cuomo managed to get a fairly robust share of the vote in the primary, even though he has been substantially more moderate on a lot of issues. | ||
| And he has a strong base in the Italian-American community. | ||
| There's still a lot of registered Democrats around there who are willing to consider voting for somebody like that who may not want to be a part of the vote for a Democratic socialist. | ||
| They may not be comfortable with that. | ||
| And I also think it's important to note, Republicans, this was an opportunity for them. | ||
| This was an opportunity to put the city in play. | ||
| And they have competed there in recent years to some extent. | ||
| And this could have been an opportunity to show that after they're making all those inroads last year in Queens and in the Bronx, that they could put up a formidable candidate. | ||
| Instead, they re-ran Curtis Slewa. | ||
| He is not regarded as a serious candidate. | ||
| He's polled in a distant third place for most of this campaign. | ||
| It was a missed opportunity for them. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, according to the Associated Press, New York City residents, voter registration is around 5 million, 65% Democrats, 11% Republicans. | ||
| I mean, Democrats outnumbering Republicans by almost six to one in New York City. | ||
| Yeah, and I think that's why Andrew Cuomo running as an independent was the most viable alternative for people who were looking to stop the rise of Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| I did think what was telling from the caller is it kind of circled back to a point I was making earlier, which is one of the biggest challenges for former Governor Cuomo is people are not necessarily voting for him. | ||
| They're voting against Mamdani. | ||
| Whereas the enthusiasm is on Mamdani's side. | ||
| You know, people are not just voting for Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| He's ignited this call for generational change that we haven't seen. | ||
| Certainly Democrats haven't seen they feel since President Obama. | ||
| Again, New York City is unique. | ||
| We're not going to necessarily draw too many national implications from New York City, but I just think that it speaks to the level of enthusiasm that Mamdani has had. | ||
| And we were kind of talking even about the kind of campaign he's run, the strategy, the social media strategy. | ||
| You know, he just pretty much trying to reach every pocket of the city. | ||
| He was visiting with taxi drivers at LaGuardia Airport the other night. | ||
| He was going clubbing, trying to appeal to voters there. | ||
| Sort of the everyday man, everyday mayor. | ||
| And I think that image has really stuck. | ||
| And I think it's going to serve him really well tonight, despite concerns that some voters might have about his platform and his agenda, because he is someone who has come across as a fundamentally likable guy. | ||
| And that's something that voters feel like they haven't seen in a while. | ||
| And he's appealed to young voters on social media as well. | ||
| He's appealed to young voters on social media. | ||
| And I think what's been smart about the Mamdani playbook is once he locked down the nomination, you know, he's managed to keep up that appeal to young people by remaining focused on issues like affordability and the cost of rent, the fact that many young people cannot afford to pay rent in New York City, at the same time moderating on other issues where some of the more centrist Democrats or centrist voters in the city had concerns. | ||
| I mean, he said he would keep Jessica Tisch as NYPD commissioner, even though she opposes bill reform. | ||
| He's embraced plans to build new jails in the city. | ||
| That was something he was previously opposed to. | ||
| He's even suggested that he might be able to enact or fund his policies without raising income taxes on the wealthy. | ||
| He's somewhat distanced himself from the Democratic Socialists of America. | ||
| He's not shying away from the socialist tag, but he's said that he doesn't fully subscribe to the national DSA's platform. | ||
| So I think they've been really smart in holding on to the appeal that he has with young people, to the appeal that he has with his base of support, and also trying to draw in other voters by saying, hey, I'm amenable. | ||
| I'm open to listening to everyone. | ||
| Let's go back to Virginia, run through the results again here, starting with the governor's race. | ||
| 17% of the vote in Abigail Spanberger retaining her lead right now. | ||
| Again, 17% of the vote in. | ||
| When you go to the lieutenant governor race, the Democrat also in the lead, Gazala Hashmi over John Reed. | ||
| And moving on to the Attorney General race, this one we expect to tighten in Virginia. | ||
| Jay Jones, though, with the lead right now over the Republican incumbent Jason Mieres. | ||
| 17% of the vote in much more to go here. | ||
| We'll see what the Associated Press does, if they call this race soon or not. | ||
| Matthew Klein, let's go back to the map that's on c-span.org for our viewers. | ||
| And if you take a look at where the counties are getting shaded in, let's just focus on Prince William, though, here, because it's a light pink right now. | ||
| What do you make of that? | ||
| I make that it won't stay light pink for very long. | ||
| That's going to end up being a Democratic county by the end of the night. | ||
| Only 1% in there right now. | ||
| I think Loudoun County is probably a little bit more telling at this point. | ||
| It looks based on what we've got. | ||
| We've got 79% of the vote in in Loudoun County. | ||
| That's a decent amount. | ||
| We can start making some pretty good inferences there. | ||
| 26-point lead for Abigail Spanberger in Loudoun County as of this current moment. | ||
| Kamala Harris won that by 16 points. | ||
| So that's a 10-point overperformance from what was a six-point statewide victory for Kamala Harris last cycle. | ||
| That's an Abigail Spanberger on pace to win by double digits. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, we'll keep watch on that as we continue here tonight on C-SPAN election night 2025. | ||
| Let's go to Sean in California, Democratic caller. | ||
| Sean, did you vote today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, Greta, I didn't vote today because I work so much. | |
| I received my mail-in ballot on the 7th or the 8th of October. | ||
| I put my mail-in ballot back in the mail on the night and I called a week ago. | ||
| They received it, made sure my signatures were checked, and that's for my entire household. | ||
| And I voted for Prop 50. | ||
| And why did you vote for Prop 50? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Reason being is we're supposed to, as Americans, be on a playing field. | |
| Things are supposed to be equal. | ||
| And when we have a president, which I haven't seen in my time for 42 years of voting, when we have a president that comes out and they're asking states to get more seats for their favor, then now it's not on an even playing field. | ||
| So we're going to put it on an even playing field for everyone because it's not just for one culture. | ||
| We are Americans and we stick together. | ||
| I also wanted to make a comment as to why a lot of other people are mad, like really upset with our government because of the fact that we started with DEI. | ||
| We said we were going to do things to make the country better. | ||
| And there is nothing put in place of that. | ||
| And we're seeing that all our hard-earned money is going to other countries. | ||
| And, you know, our east wing, are we seriously kidding me? | ||
| Like, if you want benches with an umbrella, go to the beach or go to the park. | ||
| I am a very hardworking person. | ||
| I worked two jobs. | ||
| I have not seen anything for me. | ||
| And it's not because of this Trump. | ||
| It is because of the administration. | ||
| It's because of what I'm seeing on the streets when I'm going to see my clients. | ||
| I'm not knowing if I'm going to get caught up in it, blocked in it, or anything. | ||
| So this is, it's just too much drama. | ||
| And Americans, we like to have a lot more peace, not drama. | ||
| All right, Colin, let me ask you before you go then. | ||
| So was your vote in favor of Proposition 50 also about voting against this administration, not just the redistricting battle? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, my vote was in favor of Prop 50 and was also against your district, against this administration destroying our democracy because we've worked hard for our democracy. | |
| And I don't like being called names, very negative names. | ||
| I am African-American indigenous too, and I really don't like it. | ||
| So yes, I voted against 50 for Eden Plainfield, also the administration. | ||
| Also, I voted against all of this corruption that's going on that I believe. | ||
| And we need to get our country back together. | ||
| It's making us really, really look bad, Greta, another country. | ||
| All right, I'm going to leave it there. | ||
| Our California voter there voting in favor of Proposition 50 at the Mikey Sherrill headquarters in New Jersey. | ||
| There is Senator Corey Booker talking to reporters ahead of the polls closing there in just about 20 minutes. | ||
| We can see if we can listen in and hear if we can hear what the senator is saying to reporters. | ||
| Nope, just music there at the headquarters as they prepare for the polls to close. | ||
| A crowd there gathering around Senator Corey Booker. | ||
| I'm sure he's talking about his candidate tonight, and that's Mikey Sherrill, Sabrina Siddiqui, as we wait for the polls to close in New Jersey. | ||
| Let's talk about this candidate for Democrats. | ||
| Congresswoman, she turned a Republican seat blue. | ||
| She also is a national security candidate. | ||
| I mean, I think that you're seeing sort of different trends obviously play out in the Democratic Party. | ||
| And when you talk to party leaders, they would probably want to make the case that there's room for, you know, both types of candidates, the National Security Centrist candidate and, you know, the more left-leaning Zoran Mamtanis of the world. | ||
| I think what's been really impressive to Democrats about Mikey Sherrill is she's been able to take this narrative around President Trump and his impact on voters and localize it for the state of New Jersey. | ||
| I mean, one of the key issues that came up was this Gateway Tunnel project, building two new rail tunnels under the Hudson River connecting the city to New Jersey. | ||
| And one of the challenges for the Republican Siderelli is that President Trump essentially came in and threatened funding for the project. | ||
| And that was a clear example that Mikey Sheryl was able to seize on to say that, you know, the Republican candidate is not willing to stand up to Trump on an issue that is going to have a very real impact on voters in New Jersey. | ||
| And, you know, Siddirelli tried to blame it on the government shutdown and say, well, look, actually, this is because Democrats are blocking a funding bill. | ||
| But he was done no favors by President Trump, who effectively announced that the project was over. | ||
| Whether or not that's actually going to be the case remains to be seen. | ||
| But rather than really fighting back in public, I think because Republicans are afraid to pick fights with Trump, the response from Citarelli was fairly muted. | ||
| And so I think that's an issue where Mikey Sheryl was able to take something at a national level with Trump and really make it a referendum in the state of New Jersey. | ||
| And the people, the strategists and pollsters I've spoken to who've worked on her campaign said they saw a real impact on that issue specifically. | ||
| What about the demographics in the garden state for Mikey Cheryl? | ||
| What are you watching for tonight and where she pulls support? | ||
| I mean, I'm very interested in seeing, obviously, what happens with the suburban swing voters, but the types of voters who Democrats struggled with in 2024, where the margin of victory for Vice President Harris narrowed in 2024 compared to President Biden's in 2020. | ||
| We've also talked a lot about minority voters tonight and realignment. | ||
| There are a lot of Muslim voters we were talking about in the state of New Jersey, a lot of whom swung away from Democrats in 2024. | ||
| And I think there's a bit of a misconception that it was only over the issue of Gaza, because actually we were also talking about Michigan. | ||
| And so I just, you know, if you're talking about this group more broadly, some of it also has to do with taxes or more hardline views that they may have on immigration, social issues such as LGBTQ issues, transgender issues. | ||
| So I think the party was, the demographic was already shifting away from Democrats and toward Republicans at a state level anyway. | ||
| But I think there's just a lot of dissatisfaction with Democrats, as we said, over their handling of the war in Gaza and just inroads that they struggled to make with minority communities in 2024. | ||
| I'm very curious to see if candidates like Mikey Sharl are able to gain ground there, even if they were talking about other issues. | ||
| And just to see if there is really any inroads that they make in rebuilding the kind of coalition that Democrats have leaned heavily on in the past. | ||
| Matthew Klein, when you look at the state of New Jersey, a vertical state, where does it run red? | ||
| Where does it run blue? | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| There's sort of a blue strip that runs along the, you know, all along 95 and the Jersey Turnpike. | ||
| Sort of in the middle. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| It goes right up the middle from the Philadelphia suburbs, Camden, and some of those areas down in southern New Jersey, up, swings up. | ||
| And then, of course, once you get closer to New York City, it's Hudson County, Jersey City, Union City. | ||
| Those are all pretty Democratic areas. | ||
| Republicans tend to do better in some of the suburbs that are wealthier, wider, out and a little further, more rural. | ||
| They also do very well in rural South Jersey. | ||
| That's sort of a newer development. | ||
| They didn't used to do nearly as well as they do now, part of that rural trend that we've seen. | ||
| And then Republicans have a very strong base of support in Ocean County, which is a large county, coastal county. | ||
| And if Jack Chitterelli is going to win this tonight, he's going to put up a big number in Ocean County. | ||
| He has to. | ||
| What about Somerset County? | ||
| You know, reporting from previous election cycles, an affluent area, historically GOP, but Democrats have won it in every presidential contest, I believe, since George W. Bush in 2004. | ||
| How has it changed? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it epitomizes sort of what powered Cheryl to her victory in 2018 in the U.S. House of Representatives, which is it's a lot of these suburban voters who maybe aren't as fond of Donald Trump, who generally kind of like a moderate Democrat, somebody who they feel like they can, you know, vote for and not have to worry about their pocketbooks necessarily changing as a result of it. | ||
| And so I think that's, you know, a great example of that kind of voter. | ||
| What have polls shown on this race heading into tonight? | ||
| Well, they've been kind of all over the place. | ||
| So we have some over the weekend that showed it as close as one point. | ||
| We've had some that have shown it as large as 10. | ||
| And I think the general consensus is that it's probably going to end up somewhere in the middle. | ||
| Depending on how this race shakes out, it could potentially be a win in the high single digits for Cheryl, or she could squeak it out very narrowly. | ||
| I think one thing that's going to be interesting, we're going to want to make sure the Harris margin there was about six points. | ||
| That's kind of the benchmark. | ||
| Is Mikey Sherrill doing better than Kamala Harris or worse than Kamala Harris in the state? | ||
| Phil Murphy, the Democratic governor, won by three points in 2021. | ||
| So it's been some tight victories for Democrats in recent cycles. | ||
| If it's smaller than six points, probably not the night that a lot of Democrats were hoping for, although certainly even if you win by one vote, they call you governor no matter what. | ||
| So, you know, obviously Democrats are going to be very optimistic about any kind of win that they can get tonight. | ||
| But I think Republicans will be much more nervous about 2026 if Mikey Sherrill is winning by a margin that was wider than Kamala Harris's last cycle. | ||
| How does the ballot work in New Jersey? | ||
| Are you voting for a ticket for governor and lieutenant governor versus Virginia where you are voting separately? | ||
| That's right, yes. | ||
| It changes from state to state. | ||
| And New Jersey is a state where the lieutenant governor and the governor run together. | ||
| Mikey Sherrill chose a university president who's African-American to be her running mate. | ||
| Jack Chitterelli chose the sheriff of Morris County, which happens to be Mikey Sherrill's home county, a potential play for some of those suburban voters who are interested and potentially motivated by the issue of crime. | ||
| So yes, but there aren't as many races on the ballot in New Jersey just because of the fact that this is a shared ticket. | ||
| And the Attorney General in New Jersey is actually appointed by the governor, not elected. | ||
| And historically, remind us how New Jersey has trended over previous election cycles. | ||
| New Jersey was, you know, from 1992 to 2020, a fairly rigid state. | ||
| It was voting Democratic most of the time by double digits, mid-double digits, about 14 points. | ||
| You saw Chris Christie come in occasionally. | ||
| It was willing to elect a Republican as long as they were like a Jersey guy. | ||
| But in recent years, since 2020, there's been a really sharp snap toward the Republican Party in the state. | ||
| Phil Murphy winning by just three points. | ||
| That was a huge shock to Democrats. | ||
| They were surprised. | ||
| Obviously, he won, but it portended some of the problems that Democrats were going to face in 2024 and potentially may continue to face. | ||
| I mean, we're still getting used to, I think, the idea of New Jersey as being a state that could be in competitive territory. | ||
| Obviously, it would be a huge state. | ||
| It would be an extremely expensive state if it makes its way onto the map, the Electoral College map, because it's almost entirely within the Philadelphia and New York City media markets, which are some of the most expensive in the entire country. | ||
| Sabrina mentioned tonight history is going to be made in Virginia because no matter who wins, you're looking at the first female governor in Virginia in the state of New Jersey. | ||
| If Mikey Sherrill pulls this off tonight, she becomes the second female governor in the state of New Jersey following Christine Todd Whitman. | ||
| Yep, that's right. | ||
| It's been since the 1990s since New Jersey's had a female governor, and I think, you know, that was part of what powered Mikey Sherrill in the primary. | ||
| She was the only woman in a six-way field in a Democratic primary where a majority of women are voters. | ||
| And there have been a lot of critiques about Mikey Sherrill, about the way that she's run this campaign, about whether or not she has the charisma to go out and win it. | ||
| But in that case, it really helped her. | ||
| It helped her to be a woman, a mom. | ||
| She's really leaned into that idea. | ||
| So has Abigail Spanberger, for that matter, in Virginia, talking about that, trying to relate to swing voters by leaning into some of the less partisan, less political aspects of their biographies. | ||
| Let's go to New Jersey. | ||
| Joey Fox is joining us. | ||
| He's with the New Jersey Globe to give us the latest on the ground there. | ||
| Joey Fox, what happened today as New Jersey voters went to the polls? | ||
| Give us the latest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think that one thing I tend to try to not overanalyze the voting data we get from vote by mail and early voting and throughout election day, just because it oftentimes gives sort of an inaccurate picture when you don't have the full context of what's happening until you know all the votes that have been cast. | |
| But I think one thing that we're seeing, I've been following the Virginia results that have been coming in for the last hour, and I think that we've been seeing in a lot of the data in New Jersey is people are just really energized to vote. | ||
| I remember this was a phenomenon during the first Trump era where elections that oftentimes had sort of measly voter turnout in prior eras just saw this spike in enthusiasm, oftentimes among Democrats, but also among all voters. | ||
| I mean, you know, the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections were crazy high turnout. | ||
| And I think that that is one dynamic that I'm not going to make a prediction about who wins tonight in New Jersey, but I do think that that is one thing that whatever else happens is going to be a takeaway from this election is just how many voters ended up getting engaged. | ||
| And that was true in the primary as well. | ||
| The primary had very high turnout as well. | ||
| How is voting going in New Jersey today? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, so I will say I'm in D.C., I'm not personally in New Jersey. | |
| So I have not been able to go to any polling locations or anything like that myself. | ||
| I do know that there was a non-credible bomb threat this morning that obviously wigged some people out, but then ended up not being any kind of real issue that needed to disenfranchise anybody. | ||
| And some of the problems that we've seen in individual counties with voting machines breaking or things like that, I don't think we've really seen this year. | ||
| So I think as it all comes together, it seems like it should hopefully be a pretty seamless election day. | ||
| We'll see what happens as the votes are actually counted. | ||
| Yeah, we're about six minutes away here from the polls closing in New Jersey. | ||
| What are you watching for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think obviously we will all be watching really with bated breath to see what the early returns are in Cheryl versus Chitterelli. | |
| New Jersey has a reputation, especially made by the 2021 gubernatorial election, of counting its votes slowly. | ||
| But that is actually no longer a really earned reputation. | ||
| It's gotten a lot better about that. | ||
| A lot of new laws have been passed that allow counties to count advanced votes, so early votes, early in-person votes and vote-by-mail votes, a lot faster. | ||
| So we should be able to see pretty big dumps of votes pretty fast. | ||
| And we should have the vast majority of votes in by late tonight, early tomorrow. | ||
| And I think that the races for the state assembly, this is something the Virginia House of Delegates, I think people have been talking a lot about. | ||
| People have been talking a little bit less about the New Jersey legislature, but all 80 seats in the state assembly are on the ballot. | ||
| The Democratic majority is probably not at risk. | ||
| But in 2021, Republicans made a lot of gains. | ||
| They're looking to hopefully do the same thing this year. | ||
| Democrats are looking to defend the seats they've got, and they've got a couple of offensive opportunities too. | ||
| So you could see, depending on what the results are in the gubernatorial election, you could definitely see a lot of seats swinging one way or the other. | ||
| So when do we, what did you, what have you learned from officials because of the changes in laws about how votes will be counted? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, the biggest change is basically that in past years, you had to wait for these sort of late-night dumps. | |
| Well, first of all, I should say early voting is early in-person voting is a new phenomenon in New Jersey. | ||
| The first year that that happened was 2021. | ||
| Voters didn't really catch on for a few years. | ||
| It finally really took off in a big way in last year's presidential election, and it was big this year too, where there's actually a significant number of votes that are cast during like the nine-day early in-person voting period. | ||
| When it comes to vote-by-mail ballots, for a while, the status quo was that those wouldn't be able to be counted until starting on election night. | ||
| And so then you'd end up just having these enormous dumps of ballots, usually Democratic leaning, because that is what vote-by-mail ballots tend to be, kind of dribbled out over the course of hours or days after polls close. | ||
| And now they have a much better ability to sort of pre-count those votes and get their affairs in order before the polls close so that you're not waiting. | ||
| You might still be waiting for a few late arriving ballots because ballots can take a couple of days to arrive, but you're not waiting for these enormous dumps deep into the hours of election night or the next day that it used to be. | ||
| Joey Fox, for C-SPAN viewers, there is a name that they may recognize in a mayoral race in Jersey City, and that's the former governor Jim McGreevy. | ||
| Tell us about his candidacy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so that's a really interesting sort of comeback campaign. | |
| Jim McGreevy was originally from Jersey City. | ||
| He then got his political career kicked off in a completely different part of the state in central Jersey, became a state senator. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He became mayor in, again, a different city, and then became governor before he sort of famously had his fall from grace two decades ago. | |
| And now he's sort of asking, he spent a long time kind of on the sidelines doing hard work with prison recidivism and activism in Jersey City. | ||
| And now he's sort of ready to come back into the fray. | ||
| He's got some really high-powered endorsements and a lot of money in this race, but there's also a lot of other candidates running. | ||
| There were a lot of Jersey City Council people and other local politicians who had been laying the groundwork to run for this office for years. | ||
| Steve Phillip has held the job for 12 years, so they've had a lot of pent-up energy there and don't really like the idea of Jim McGreevy coming in and just sort of swiping it out from under them. | ||
| So that's definitely of all the, there's like New Jersey has hundreds of local races on the ballot every single year, but that is definitely the one that will draw my attention the most and draw the most headlines. | ||
| All right, Joey Fox with New Jersey Globe, thank you very much for your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you so much for having me. | |
| All right, we are just a few minutes away here from the polls closing in New Jersey. | ||
| 8 p.m. Eastern Time is when that will happen. | ||
| NBC and CNN, by the way, calling the Virginia gubernatorial race for Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| Look at the reaction at her headquarters in Richmond, Virginia tonight. | ||
| You can see the crowd. | ||
| They are getting pumped up. | ||
| They want to hear from their candidate and from the next governor of Virginia. | ||
| The Associated Press not called this race yet, but NBC and CNN have both called the gubernatorial race for Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| Matthew Klein, Sabrina Siddiqui, we are looking to see what this margin is for Abigail Spanberger tonight when all the votes are finally in. | ||
| But right now at 33% of the votes in, take a look at the numbers. | ||
| 54.7% for the former Congresswoman, Abigail Spanberger, and she is leading by over 108,000 votes over the lieutenant governor and Republican candidate Winsom Earl Sears at 45% of the vote. | ||
| Again, 33% of the vote in. | ||
| Matthew Klein, what do you make of CNN NBC calling this race? | ||
| Yeah, the writing seems like it's on the wall here for Winsom Earl Sears, just looking at Loudoun County in particular, is one county where we have all the data that's come in. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger's winning that by 29 points. | ||
| That was a Harris plus 16 county last cycle. | ||
| So this is a big swing. | ||
| That is one place where we're seeing that. | ||
| We're seeing that in other counties across the board. | ||
| It looks like Kamala Harris, like Abigail Spanberger, excuse me, will flip Surrey County, which is a county closer to Norfolk from Kamala Harris last cycle. | ||
| That's a huge deal. | ||
| You know, this is on pace to be a pretty big win for Spanberger. | ||
| I see very little path for Winsom Earl Sears at this point. | ||
| I think what's going to be really fascinating about this, and clearly, you know, Abigail Spanberger, as we said, it was expected, and we're really just waiting to see what the margin is going to be, is it kind of crystallizes the two paths that we've been talking about for the Democratic Party moving forward. | ||
| How do they define themselves? | ||
| And I think her victory will certainly be touted by the centrist wing of the party. | ||
| Yeah, I'm just going to interrupt you. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger called the winner by the Associated Press in Virginia. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| Well, you know, I think her victory is certainly going to be touted by the centrist wing of the party as where they need to direct their messaging, how they need to rebrand themselves at a time when they've taken a significant hit to their image nationwide. | ||
| And then at the other, you know, you also are also going to be waiting to see what happens in New York City, where you have Zorhan Mamdani, who's, again, openly been running as a socialist, not shying away from, you know, progressive issues, the kind of promises that he's made, very much standing in contrast to a much more carefully choreographed campaign by Spanberger. | ||
| And, you know, so I think that's really going to be a really important question coming out of tonight: which path do Democrats take on a night that I think many of them feel good about, but still does not resolve the broader issues about or the broader question of what the Democratic Party's identity looks like moving forward. | ||
| All right, it's 8 p.m. Eastern time here on the East Coast. | ||
| It's election night 2025, and the check mark is next to Abigail Spanberger's name, the Democrat running for governor of Virginia with the win tonight. | ||
| 34% of the vote in, so her margin will change over the evening as more of those votes come in. | ||
| And we'll continue to check in on that as our election night coverage continues. | ||
| And we'll also bring you to her headquarters. | ||
| She's in Richmond, the capital of Virginia. | ||
| And you can see the crowd has filled in there in front of the podium, waiting to hear from the former congresswoman. | ||
| Mark in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an independent. | ||
| All of you are part of the conversation tonight here on election night. | ||
| What are your thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, can you hear me? | |
| We can. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, okay. | |
| Sorry, I didn't hear the bell. | ||
| Yeah, I wanted to say a few things. | ||
| It's good to talk to you again, Greta. | ||
| It's always nice. | ||
| But I want to talk about three things. | ||
| I'll do it real quick. | ||
| Okay, the Mamdani race or Mam Donnie race and Cuomo. | ||
| I mean, people need to understand that this is all theatrics. | ||
| I mean, these politicians don't mean anything. | ||
| Cuomo is old school. | ||
| You think Mamdani is going to go in there and start making these real estate moguls lower their rent price? | ||
| Ain't happening. | ||
| They're too greedy. | ||
| Do you think he's going to be able to bring government grocery stores in there? | ||
| You know, it ain't going to happen. | ||
| It ain't happening because Cargill runs it all and they're the head baffy of the whole, they feed the planet, the Cargills. | ||
| So anyway, that's nonsense. | ||
| All these politicians are nonsense. | ||
| Now I'm going to go to the next topic is how they divide. | ||
| It's like the government's been shut down for 35 days or whatever. | ||
| And then you have the thing with the Texas redoing their map so they can have all Republicans and the Californians doing the same thing. | ||
| This is all theatrics. | ||
| It's like Plato's cave. | ||
| That allegory. | ||
| All right. | ||
| And Mark, your third point. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And my third point is, my third point is, so don't believe in that. | |
| Voting doesn't mean anything the way it's set up right now. | ||
| The rich people control it. | ||
| They hire the people. | ||
| They support the people and they control the people. | ||
| Okay, so the third point. | ||
| Let's talk about our world leaders. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| The thing I love about the thing, I'm an independent. | ||
| I didn't even vote and I didn't vote for president last election. | ||
| So and I probably will never vote in this type of system again because it's so fake. | ||
| But we have Trump, we have Xi, we have Putin. | ||
| These people are figureheads. | ||
| They don't run anything. | ||
| If these people wanted to nuke something, it ain't happening. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Mark there in Tulsa, Oklahoma. | ||
| I'll take his first point about Zilran Mamdani and his progressive agenda. | ||
| It has, when you look at the mayoral race, it's a three-way race between progressive establishment and conservative forces. | ||
| What is Zorhan Mamdani saying about the establishment? | ||
| Well, I think that when he's been pressed on his platform and that he's not necessarily going to be able to enact or follow through on a lot of the promises that he's made, the response from Mamdani is wouldn't, is that he feels voters would rather have someone who's at least going to try and that the establishment is out of touch with what the Democratic base wants and frankly what everyday voters want, which is, you know, again, | ||
| not just talking out of both sides of their mouth, but actually having some kind of meaningful, actionable policy agenda. | ||
| You know, what's interesting about, because we're talking about Mamdani at the same time that we're talking about Spanberger's victory, is when she was pressed on Mamdani, she actually made the case that his promises could, in fact, hurt Democrats if he's with voters, if he's unable to follow through, and that she doesn't, you know, promise government-run grocery stores because it's not something that she could ever pass. | ||
| So kind of to the caller's point, she doesn't make promises that she can't keep. | ||
| So I do think that there is this tension between what Mamdani is promising between his vision for the party and for the city of New York and what Democrats feel is perhaps a more pragmatic approach, you know, incremental change. | ||
| But, you know, again, Mamdani has moderated some of his positions. | ||
| So I do think that he's showing that there is room for moderation. | ||
| But it is a really interesting point of tension, I think, within the party right now. | ||
| We are about five minutes after the top of the hour. | ||
| The New Jersey polls closed at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| Let's check in on that race. | ||
| With about 6% of the vote in, Mikey Sherrill in the lead with 54 to 45%. | ||
| Again, this is only 6% of the vote in. | ||
| We'll continue to watch to see what happens in this New Jersey gubernatorial race. | ||
| If you go to the map on c-span.org, you can see that the counties are getting some shaded colors of red and blue here, but it's very early. | ||
| And Matthew Klein, when you look at Ocean County, it's red here on the map and two areas filled in as blue. | ||
| Does this track? | ||
| This tracks. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Hudson County is the blue dot in northern New Jersey that we see up there. | ||
| Right now, 40% of the vote in, it looks like Mikey Sherrill leading 78 to 21. | ||
| That's a huge overperformance relative to where Kamala Harris was. | ||
| She won that by about 28 points last year. | ||
| That's a really Latino area. | ||
| That's been sort of a ground zero for the Republican shifts, the Republican pickups that they've made in New Jersey. | ||
| If Democrats are winning by a margin like this, they're probably feeling pretty good, not just about the New Jersey governor's race tonight, but also about their standing with Latino voters more broadly. | ||
| And then what about what's happening here in Gloucester County? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This typically, does this go blue? | |
| Yes, no. | ||
| Gloucester is more of a county. | ||
| And last cycle, it actually opted for Donald Trump. | ||
| So it's one of those more working class kind of suburban communities near Philadelphia. | ||
| Obviously, early right now, Cheryl with the lead, but worth keeping an eye on. | ||
| Yeah, very early in New Jersey. | ||
| Again, 6% of the vote in. | ||
| And you can see on your screen where the vote stands. | ||
| We'll continue to watch that as we talk to our viewers across the country tonight as well. | ||
| Want to know what all of you think about these key races happening in New York City, Virginia, New Jersey, as well as the California Redistricting Ballot Initiative? | ||
| Here's how you can join the conversation with us. | ||
| Democrats, dial in at 202-748-8920. | ||
| Republicans, 202-748-8921. | ||
| All others, 202-748-8922. | ||
| You can text if you don't want to call, include your first name, city, and state at 202-748-8903. | ||
| We'll go to Brad, who's in International Falls Republican. | ||
| Brad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, thank you, Greta, for taking my call. | |
| I waited it out for almost two hours, but I steadfast. | ||
| But I enjoyed this. | ||
| I think it affects everybody, right? | ||
| But what I'm looking at and, you know, seeing what's happening right now, it's somewhat basically a referendum on Trump, okay? | ||
| More importantly, it's the CR deal that they're pulling right now, the Schumer shutdown, that they're pushing this to push the vote. | ||
| That's all it was, was to get the vote out, to get their base energized to get out and vote. | ||
| Because truly, the Democratic Party is broke. | ||
| Not kind of broke. | ||
| They're dead broke. | ||
| And they are so mad right now that they lost all that money. | ||
| That it's these NGOs that aren't getting all this money that they have people like AC Blue going and extorting them to come back and bring back this money for their candidates. | ||
| Okay, Brad, in International Falls, I'm going to jump in at that point. | ||
| Sabrina Siddegi, he started out talking about the government shutdown, calling it the Schumer shutdown, a talking point by the Republicans. | ||
| Is that having an impact on tonight's election night? | ||
| I think that there is probably a level of dissatisfaction that we've been talking about with President Trump, that the shutdown just kind of fits into that broader image of dysfunction and maybe disapproval. | ||
| I don't think it is the motivating factor, though. | ||
| I mean, I think it's still about affordability. | ||
| It's still about cost of living and inflation. | ||
| You know, the polling does show, at least some of the polls that we've seen, there was one from NBC, that voters are more likely to blame President Trump and Republicans in Congress than they are Democrats. | ||
| At the same time, that same poll showed that the share of voters who blame Democrats was the highest for the party when compared to any other previous shutdown. | ||
| So it's not that Democrats are, you know, overwhelmingly winning the shutdown politics. | ||
| I think there's a lot of people who are just frustrated with both sides. | ||
| But I think, you know, I don't think that's the reason why Democrats went ahead with holding up government funding over the Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| But I think maybe the argument you can make is it just fits into this broader image of dissatisfaction with Trump. | ||
| And we are in day 36 of a government shutdown. | ||
| Matthew Klein, have you seen anything in your analysis that shows that this has had an impact on any of the races? | ||
| I think for a lot of people, particularly in Virginia, where we were watching this possibility from the beginning that it could affect the outcome here, people were already, you know, pretty, they have their opinions on this. | ||
| The national polling seems to indicate that people are viewing this in a very partisan lens. | ||
| Neither side really has given much of an inch or given any reason for their supporters to believe that the other side should, you know, that they're to blame. | ||
| And so I think ultimately people in a lot of these races just viewed it from their traditional partisan perspectives. | ||
| And in that sense, I don't think it made much of a difference. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll go to Edward, who's in Keyport, New Jersey, Independent. | ||
| Edward, before we hear from you, let me just check in on New Jersey. | ||
| If you look from the Associated Press with 11% of the vote in, Mikey Sherrill is winning right now, 59.2% to 40.3%. | ||
| Again, only 11% of the vote in. | ||
| So those numbers will change. | ||
| Edward, your thoughts? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, well, I'm calling from the Republican stronghold of the Jersey Shore, and I voted for Mickey Sherrill as a protection against the Trump administration and their Gestapo ICE tactics, et cetera, et cetera. | |
| But I would like to also comment on the socialist thing in Mamdani and the idea that capitalism has failed. | ||
| It's failed housing. | ||
| It's failed health care. | ||
| It's failed wages. | ||
| It's failed the environment. | ||
| And this is why people are yearning for something different. | ||
| And I believe that Mamdani is going to win this one. | ||
| And there may be room in the future for a Republican candidate in New Jersey once the MAGA movement gets placed in the populist dustbin of history, but it's not going to happen this time. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Edward in Keyport, New Jersey, with his prediction. | ||
| What do you make of it, Matthew Klein? | ||
| I think that that's the sentiment we hear from a lot of Democrats in New Jersey, that they were much more fired up this time around than they were in 2021. | ||
| There was a much greater recognition this cycle than last time that Republicans could actually flip this office. | ||
| And when Governor Murphy came just three points from being ousted from his job in 2021, when Donald Trump came unexpectedly close to carrying the state last cycle in 24, it really woke a lot of Democrats up. | ||
| And you have to give credit to Democrats this time around in New Jersey. | ||
| They got their act together. | ||
| The Hudson County Democratic machine, led by Brian Stack, a popular state senator, mayor of Union City, has been out in full force in this race, getting the vote out for Mikey Sherrill. | ||
| Most of Sheryl's rivals in the Democratic primary rallied behind her very quickly. | ||
| Josh Gottheimer, a colleague of hers who currently serves in the U.S. House. | ||
| Ross Baraka, who is black, the mayor of Newark. | ||
| There were initial questions about whether Mikey Sherrill would be able to get the support she needed from the black community in New Jersey. | ||
| Baraka came out early. | ||
| They brought Barack Obama in as well. | ||
| Both of those, I think, will have helped her in the end. | ||
| And ultimately, I think he's probably right that in the future, in a different cycle, a Republican probably would have a decent chance at winning New Jersey. | ||
| But Trump was just such a drag on Chitterelli this time. | ||
| And Jack Chittarelli, the Republican nominee, largely accepted Trump's support. | ||
| He embraced his support in the primary and helped him get through that primary. | ||
| But he really didn't distance himself much in the general election campaign. | ||
| That could come back to bite him. | ||
| How did Jack Chitterelli run this time versus how he ran four years ago? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, four years ago, Jack Chitterelli had the benefit of Donald Trump not being in the political spectrum center of the universe, right, like he is right now. | ||
| That was actually a period shortly after January 6th when Donald Trump was probably at his lowest point in terms of just presence in the media. | ||
| And so I think Jack Chitterelli was able to really put Democrats on defense in 2021 in a way that he has tried to do this time, potentially with some success, particularly on energy costs and arguing that there's need for change in Trenton. | ||
| Democrats have controlled Trenton now for eight years, the state legislature there. | ||
| But he's had his own problems, right? | ||
| He just hasn't been able to escape this sort of accusation that he's a MAGA acolyte, that he supports Trump. | ||
| He gave him an A grade at a debate, said he supports everything the president's been doing. | ||
| The Gateway Tunnel Project was mentioned earlier. | ||
| That's another huge problem for Jack Chittarelli. | ||
| He hasn't been able to navigate that as seamlessly, I think, as a lot of Republicans would like. | ||
| That speaks to how Donald Trump is sort of weighing him down in this race. | ||
| Well, Sabrita Sadike, has the president been in New Jersey? | ||
| Has he campaigned for Chittarelli? | ||
| What role has he played? | ||
| Well, I think that obviously, you know, he has been supportive of Chittarelli, but the key issue is that he's been more of a liability than he has been an asset. | ||
| And I think that one of the struggles for Chitterelli is that he wanted to appease the president and he wanted to appease the president's supporters, at the same time trying to carve out this identity for himself that he would, you know, somehow still govern independently at a time when Trump is in office. | ||
| And the thing that we've seen over the years, you know, in the era of President Trump, is that you are either for Trump or you're against him. | ||
| You cannot straddle both sides of that coin. | ||
| And I think that that was one of the biggest problems for Chitterelli, giving that A-grade when one of the biggest sources of criticism from Mikey Sherrill and her campaign was, or the biggest strategies, I should say, was tying Chittarelli directly to Trump. | ||
| And I do think it's hard to overstate the impact that that project, the Gateway Project, did pose and the impact that it had in the final weeks of the campaign. | ||
| You know, when I've talked to Mikey Sheryl's campaign, they said that they felt like that was actually a turning point for them. | ||
| That, you know, as this race had tightened, that was really, they really saw an opening to really seize on that issue as part of her closing message to the voters of New Jersey that Chitterelli simply would not sufficiently stand up to Trump when they needed someone who'd be more independent, perhaps. | ||
| All right, here are the latest numbers from the Garden State courtesy of the Associated Press. | ||
| We are relying on them for calling winners tonight. | ||
| With 17% of the vote in in New Jersey, it's still very early. | ||
| Polls just closed at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| You can see that the Democrat Mikey Sherrill in the lead, former Navy pilot and member of Congress there, challenging Jack Tittarelli, the Republican candidate. | ||
| Back to calls. | ||
| We'll go to New York. | ||
| Is it Dubbed a Republican in Muncie, New York? | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| Hello. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| It's your turn. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I have mixed feelings about today's night, tonight. | |
| From one side, I expect to see a good night for the Democrats. | ||
| The question is how good it's going to be for them. | ||
| That's going to show what's going to be up in the midterms. | ||
| On the other end, as a Republican, I see that if Mamdani is going to win, that might be a good, good ticket for the Republicans to use in the midterm and even in 2028. | ||
| Using him, showing how it's going to look when a lot of people might associate him with the Democratic Party when we see like Hakeem Jefferson and others try to distance from him. | ||
| This is my view. | ||
| Yeah, let's work. | ||
| Yeah, Colin, let's take those points this evening because it's something that we've been talking about as well: what does the party do if Zorhan Mamdani wins the New York City mayoral race? | ||
| We'll get to that in just a minute. | ||
| We're also tracking what's happening in Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C. As we told you earlier, Abigail Spamberger was called the victor in the governor's race there by the Associated Press. | ||
| And there are her headquarters on your screen in the capital of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia. | ||
| If we see the candidate come out, we're going to bring you her remarks this evening. | ||
| I'll be bringing you the candidates' remarks from all of these key contests tonight live. | ||
| If we miss any of them, you can find them on our website at cspan.org. | ||
| That's all part of our coverage. | ||
| And you can see on the stage, folks are lining up behind the podium. | ||
| So we expect then to see this candidate fairly shortly. | ||
| While we wait, though, let's go to Mike in Bessemer City, North Carolina, Republican. | ||
| Mike, we'll hear your thoughts. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, well, I'll just, I'm near Virginia, and it's this Democrat socialist is like a cancer. | |
| You see how it started in Washington, D.C., and it spreaded to Virginia. | ||
| I just pray to God it's not going to go much farther south like it is up in Raleigh, Durham in our area. | ||
| But, you know, the New York, the Mandani thing, you know, they talk about, oh, he shifted his ideas from defund the police. | ||
| His first thing is what he's going to be if he is mayor. | ||
| He's going to do exactly defund the police, do away with misdemeanor crimes, close prisons. | ||
| He's going to do that. | ||
| And there's no such thing no more as a moderate Democrat. | ||
| Everybody trying to say Mikey Sherrill and Spamberger are moderate? | ||
| No. | ||
| The closest thing to a moderate the Democrats has got, believe it or not, I can't believe I'm saying this, is John Fetterman. | ||
| But they are all following in the AOC, Mandani, the squad thing. | ||
| That's all it is. | ||
| All right, Mike, well, Sabrina Siddiqui, what do you think Abigail Spamberger would say to that caller saying that she's not really a moderate? | ||
| I think she went back to different. | ||
| But it goes back to the point I was making earlier where Spanberger herself was asked about Zaran Mamdani and she said something like, people want Democrats to be bold and ambitious, but they don't want us to, voters don't want us to lie to them, which was effectively her way of saying that Mamdani is making a lot of promises that he's not going to be able to keep. | ||
| So that's one side of the equation for Democrats. | ||
| I do think that Republicans have made it very clear, and certainly President Trump has, that they see Mamdani as almost the perfect foil as they think about what their messaging is going to look like in midterms. | ||
| But it's a playbook we've seen before. | ||
| I mean, they did it with AOC and some of the other squad members. | ||
| I think for Democrats, it's really going to be about standing up the right candidates and the right candidates in the right places. | ||
| And so if you have a good night for both Abigail Spanberger and Mikey Sheryl the same night that you have a good night for Zorhan Mamdani, I think it demonstrates that it's not so black and white. | ||
| It's not going to be as simple as Republicans might like to simply make Zaran Mamdani the face of the Democratic Party and use him as a cudgel, ignoring the other candidates, the more centrist candidates that Democrats are going to continue to run across the country. | ||
| And at the Spamberger headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, you can see the people just keep piling up on the stage behind the podium. | ||
| Folks continue to line up there waiting for Abigail Spamberger to come out and address her supporters. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, have you been at headquarters election headquarters before and what's it like in the room? | ||
| Who are the folks that get to stand behind the candidate? | ||
| Well, you know, a lot of the supporters, the day one supporters from the campaign, you know, donors, family members, people who've been out there canvassing and community members, often, you know, there's a lot of energy from those groups inside the room. | ||
| I mean, I haven't been to Spanberger's Congress, of course, but I've been to many election night rallies. | ||
| And, you know, it's just, I think, you know, when the energy is on your side, it feels much bigger than about any one race. | ||
| And I'm sure that's the sentiment over there in Virginia today, that this is about something bigger than Virginia. | ||
| You know, elections, even if the candidates are trying to run them locally, politics has just become inescapably national in today's day and age. | ||
| And so, I'm sure that there is a lot of, you know, feeling within that room about the state of the country, the direction of the country, and this being a key moment in Democrats trying to stand up to and fight back against the Trump administration. | ||
| Again, really going to be interested in that margin to see just how good of a night is for Democrats, but I'm sure the energy in that room is indicative of everything that they've been trying to achieve. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, we'll continue. | ||
| We'll continue to watch the Spamberger headquarters here in Virginia. | ||
| And when the candidate comes out, we'll bring you live coverage of that. | ||
| Let's go to New York, though, because joining us from New York One Spectrum headquarters is Courtney Gross, who's a political reporter for New York Spectrum One. | ||
| Give us the latest on the mayoral race there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this has been a nationally, in fact, internationally watched contest where you have three men facing off. | |
| Obviously, there's Zoran Mohdani, the Democratic candidate here, who's a Democratic socialist. | ||
| He's 34 years old. | ||
| He doesn't have that much government experience. | ||
| In fact, he won his assembly seat just a couple of years ago. | ||
| But polling has shown him with a double-digit lead. | ||
| Now he faces off against the former governor who resigned in disgrace a number of years ago, Andrew Cuomo. | ||
| And he has been behind Zoran Mohdani in the polls. | ||
| In fact, he lost the primary election to him, but has decided to continue on in this race on the independent line. | ||
| And then, of course, you have Curtis Liwa, who is on the Republican line in this contest. | ||
| He has been polling pretty low, and most people do not think that he could pull this contest out. | ||
| But that's generally the lay of the land: Momdani getting all of this international national attention, really just taken off as somewhat of a political star in which people on a national level are wondering whether or not he is the future of the Democratic Party. | ||
| We are about 35 minutes away from the polls closing in New York City. | ||
| Courtney Gross, what will you be watching for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we're a local news station here. | |
| We're certainly going to be watching where the vote is coming in. | ||
| Already, we are seeing historic turnout here in New York City in the five boroughs, so much so that we are most likely going to be hitting 2 million voters heading out to the polls, which is something we haven't really seen since David Dinkins faced off against Rudy Giuliani in the early 1990s. | ||
| So we're going to be taking a look at where that vote is coming in. | ||
| Is Zoran Momdani energizing a new group of voters, obviously people who are very young, who may not have participated in a mayoral contest before? | ||
| That's going to be specifically what we're keeping a very close eye on here at Narikwan. | ||
| Courtney Gross, where does his support come from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So most of his support has come from young people, but Zoran Momdani, if he is indeed elected mayor of New York City, he will be the youngest mayor. | |
| So he is really tapping into a lot of the young energy we're seeing in New York City. | ||
| In fact, we were doing an analysis of the number of people who voted early. | ||
| We have nine days of early voting here in the five boroughs. | ||
| And of those people who cast ballots, about 735,000 people who cast ballots early, 150,000 of them were people who had never voted in a mayoral contest before, people who had registered to vote after our last mayoral contest. | ||
| So he's really tapping into something here. | ||
| New energy, people who want to participate perhaps that they haven't before. | ||
| And some of that has to do, I think, with what's happening in Washington, obviously, and in the White House. | ||
| There has been, we are a Democratically enrolled city here. | ||
| Democrats outnumber Republicans here six to one. | ||
| And there's a lot of sentiment that is against the White House, against the Trump administration. | ||
| And Mondani is seeing an opening there, seeing a vacuum. | ||
| And he's tapping into that anger, tapping into that energy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Courtney Gross is a political reporter with Spectrum News New York One. | ||
| Thank you for that insight tonight. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| We'll be bringing New York One, Spectrum New York One coverage to you later on this evening. | ||
| They'll be digging into the results of that New York City mayoral race. | ||
| The polls closing at 9 p.m. Eastern Time in the nation's largest city. | ||
| We're also watching tonight in Virginia at the Richmond headquarters for Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| The sign on the podium just went up. | ||
| Governor-elect Spanberger, the Associated Press, giving her the check mark tonight. | ||
| She has been declared the winner. | ||
| With 53% of the vote in right now, her margin is 54.8% to 45%. | ||
| We expect that to change as the votes continue to come in in the state of Virginia. | ||
| You can see her supporters all lined up there behind her on the podium, the crowd in front of her, and we expect to see Abigail Spanberger any moment. | ||
| Joe in Rockville Center, New York, Democratic Caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Joe, we'll hear from you. | |
| Hello? | ||
| Hey, Joe, your thoughts tonight on Election Night 2025. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So many. | |
| Thank you for this forum. | ||
| This forum is great for people like us that feel like we don't have a voice anymore. | ||
| First of all, I'd like to say that there is no Republican Party anymore. | ||
| This is the MAGA party. | ||
| Everyone who's elected on that forum seems to echo what Trump says and what he wants them to say. | ||
| Even in local elections, I'm in Rockville Center on Long Island, and we have a local election going on right here. | ||
| And it's MAGA against other people with freedom for ideas. | ||
| And I just don't understand how these calls keep coming in and keep backing him after what they see is happening in our country. | ||
| How democracy is being eroded. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Joe there, his thoughts in New York. | ||
| I'm going to jump in because we have a winner declared by the Associated Press in the lieutenant governor's race in Virginia. | ||
| Gazala Hashmi is with 55% of the vote in. | ||
| Victor tonight over the Republican John Reed. | ||
| Matthew Klein, your reaction to what you're seeing here. | ||
| Not a huge surprise, just because we knew that the lieutenant governor's race was probably going to end up going the same way as the governor's race. | ||
| That seems to have happened tonight. | ||
| Hashmi's running a little bit behind Spanberger, but she's obviously still the winner tonight. | ||
| The lieutenant governor job is, you know, not the most exciting position. | ||
| It never is in these states, but it is off in the bench for political candidates. | ||
| Lieutenant Governor Winsom Earl Sears, the sitting lieutenant governor, was, of course, the Republican nominee. | ||
| So it's reasonable to expect that Gazala Hashmi could end up becoming the Democratic nominee in a couple of years, or certainly at least vie for the position. | ||
| All eyes now on the Attorney General's race, which has not been called yet, although I must say, looking at some of the data that we've gotten so far, it looks pretty good for Jay Jones. | ||
| He's actually outpacing Kamala Harris in Loudoun County. | ||
| He has flipped a couple of counties from Donald Trump that Donald Trump won last year. | ||
| So 57% of the vote in on that. | ||
| Still plenty of time, but I would think that Jay Jones is probably the favorite there. | ||
| What do you think happened here with this dynamic? | ||
| Were Republicans hoping that the controversy over his text messages would split, you'd have a split ticket outcome here in Virginia? | ||
| Totally. | ||
| And Jason Mear is the Republican incumbent, the sitting attorney general, ran abs at one point that actually directly contradicted what Winsom Earl Sears was running in her abs. | ||
| Basically, Earl Sears was arguing that Abigail Spanberger hadn't come out forcefully enough to Jay Jones. | ||
| Millares was basically making the case, hey, if Abigail Spanberger can come out against this guy, you know, you can too. | ||
| They were not at all on the same page. | ||
| I think there was a disjointed message coming from Republicans, but I also think this scandal broke early, relatively speaking. | ||
| We used to talk about an October surprise. | ||
| I wonder now if it almost has to be a November surprise, because by the time Election Day actually comes around, people's partisanship becomes so much more calcified. | ||
| As soon as Trump weighed in for Jason Millares, it was reasonable to expect a lot of the goodwill toward Jones was going to evaporate, or there were going to be a lot of Democrats who went in and held their noses and decided that they would vote for Jones in spite of the text that he had sent, just because they wanted to send a message to Donald Trump. | ||
| 57% of the vote in in the Attorney General race in Virginia. | ||
| And as we've been saying, Jay Jones in the lead, 50.5% to 49%. | ||
| It's tightened, though, since we've been watching this. | ||
| But, Matthew Klein, you believe that this is looking good for Jay Jones? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think Jay Jones is probably a pretty clear favorite to pull this off right now. | ||
| And if so, that would be, you know, you're going to hear a lot of Republicans talk about this being a they're going to be very disappointed about this. | ||
| This was something that they thought, particularly as there's been a recent rise in political violence, the assassination of a state lawmaker in Minnesota, Charlie Kirk, obviously was assassinated earlier this year. | ||
| There was a lot of hope and expectation that this would be what motivates people to come back to earth maybe and split their tickets or maybe approach politics in a more rational way. | ||
| Certainly some people have split their tickets tonight. | ||
| Jason Millares is vastly outperforming the top of his ticket, Winsom Earl Sears, but it just doesn't seem like it's going to be enough, especially because Abigail Spanberger appears to be just clobbering Winsom Earl Sears at the top of the ticket. | ||
| This is going to be a decisive double-digit victory for Abigail Spanberger. | ||
| 57%, there's still plenty of vote left in Fairfax County, plenty of vote left in Richmond. | ||
| Only 22% of the vote is in there. | ||
| This is going to be a huge win for Spanberger tonight. | ||
| Well, Sabrina Siddiqui, going back to that Attorney General race, if Jay Jones can hang on and gets across the finish line with Abigail Spanberger, what does that mean for the lawsuits that many state attorney generals are pursuing against this Trump administration? | ||
| Well, I think for Democrats, obviously that has been one of the key tools that they've seen at their disposal to try and fight back against what they say is overreach by the Trump administration. | ||
| And so they would obviously much, despite the controversy, I think they would much rather have a Democrat in that position. | ||
| I do want to make a point, though, about why the Jay Jones controversy, I think. | ||
| You know, I'm going to interrupt you. | ||
| We'll push pause. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger has just come out on the stage. | ||
| She's waving to her supporters. | ||
| Listen in and see what she has to say. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. Thank you all so much. | |
| My fellow Virginians tonight, we sent a message. | ||
| We sent a message to every corner of the Commonwealth. | ||
| A message to our neighbors and our fellow Americans across the country. | ||
| We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. | ||
| We chose our commonwealth over chaos. | ||
| You all chose leadership that will focus relentlessly on what matters most, lowering costs, keeping our communities safe, and strengthening our economy for every Virginian. | ||
| Leadership, leadership that will focus on problem solving, not stoking division. | ||
| You chose, we chose leadership that will always put Virginia first. | ||
| And Virginia, I cannot wait to get to work for you. | ||
| Tonight we turned a page. | ||
| We turned that page by listening to our neighbors, focusing on practical results, laying out a clear agenda, and leading with decency and determination. | ||
| To everyone who helped us achieve this win, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. | ||
| I thank you for the trust that you have placed in me, and it is the honor of my lifetime to be elected the 75th governor of the COVID-19. | ||
| I would like to thank my opponent for a hard-fought race. | ||
| The Lieutenant Governor's story, her military service, and her years of service here in Virginia deserve our respect and our gratitude, and I ask that you join me in wishing her and her family well. | ||
| I also know that those who were supporting my opponent are disappointed today. | ||
| And to those Virginians who did not vote for me, I want you to know that my goal and my intent is to serve all Virginians. | ||
| And that means that I will listen to you, I will work for you and with you. | ||
| That is the approach that I've taken throughout my entire career. | ||
| I have worked with anyone and everyone, regardless of political party, to deliver results for the people that I serve. | ||
| And that's because I believe in this idea that there is so much more that unites us as Virginians and as Americans than divides us. | ||
| And I know, I know in my heart that we can unite for Virginia's future and we can set an example for the rest of the nation. | ||
| Our founders understood this from the very beginning. | ||
| They didn't choose to call Virginia a Commonwealth by accident. | ||
| They chose it to signify that our government would be based on the power of the people united for a common good. | ||
| Not for a political party, not for a president, not for a monarch, but for a common good together. | ||
| And tonight, Virginia proved that that tradition is alive and well. | ||
| We are still a commonwealth in every sense of the word. | ||
| We are built on the things we share, not the things that pull us apart. | ||
| And I am proud that our campaign earned votes from Democrats, Republicans, independents, and everyone in between. | ||
| That's the Virginia I know. | ||
| That's the Virginia I love. | ||
| And that's the Virginia I will have the honor of serving as your next governor. | ||
| I want to thank so many people for the support that they have given to our campaign. | ||
| Thank you for your work. | ||
| Thank you for your support to our tireless volunteers, to those who believed in me. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for devoting your time, your energy, and your conviction to this campaign. | ||
| Thank you for braving the weather, the heat, and then the cold, and then the rain, and then the sun. | ||
| It's Virginia after all. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for talking to your neighbors about the importance of this race. | ||
| Thank you for recognizing that when we went person to person engaging, that we could bring people not just into supporting our campaign, but into engaging in our democracy. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We won this race because of you. | ||
| To our campaign team, you're the best in the country. | ||
| Every single member of our team, every single one of you, you work tirelessly for the change, the progress, the policies, the connection, and the respect that you want to see in our communities. | ||
| Thank you for working so hard. | ||
| Thank you for giving people hope. | ||
| Thank you for knocking on doors in the sweltering heat. | ||
| Thank you for showing kindness. | ||
| Thank you for showing up in every corner of Virginia. | ||
| Thank you for diving deep on policy. | ||
| Thank you for capturing moments and the essence of our campaign. | ||
| Thank you for reaching voters everywhere. | ||
| And thank you for believing that Virginia could and would send a hopeful and joyful message tonight. | ||
| Thank you for giving everything, everything to this campaign and then some. | ||
| And thank you to my family, to my husband, Adam. | ||
| My partner in everything, I love you with my whole heart. | ||
| I am grateful for you. | ||
| And it is very strange to declare my love for you in front of millions of people. | ||
| But every adventure we have ever been on has been worth it because you have been by my side. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| I'm grateful for you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I cannot wait to see what the next couple of years bring. | |
| To my daughter, Claire, Charlotte, and Catherine, you inspire me and motivate me every single day. | ||
| Everything I do, I do to build a better future for you and for all of Virginia's children. | ||
| And I am so proud of you every single day. | ||
| I am lucky to be your mother. | ||
| And Catherine, you did not clean your room today as you promised me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm working on it. | |
| She's working on it. | ||
| If I was working on it, we wouldn't have won this election, okay? | ||
| To my sisters, my dearest and earliest friends. | ||
| I love you. | ||
| I love you, I love you, I love you. | ||
| To my friends who have traveled from around the world to be here with me today. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you for making me who I am, and thank you for always believing in me. | ||
| And to my parents, I love you. | ||
| Thank you for leading by example every day. | ||
| And I know that today is a day that you all could have never imagined. | ||
| But you taught me the importance of service to others and relentless hard work. | ||
| And Mama, when I think about your life, from the time spent in foster care to putting yourself through nursing school and the challenges along the way, you made clear to us that to whom much is given, | ||
| is expected and you you have given me so much born of your own struggles and your own challenges and I know much is expected And Dad, thank you for your example of service and tireless devotion to family and country. | ||
| Nothing has made me prouder than to follow in your footsteps so many steps along the way. | ||
| I've talked a lot throughout this campaign about the importance of service and how it's shaped my life and my approach to public office, and that all came from my parents. | ||
| But this commitment to service, it is not unique to my family. | ||
| It's ingrained in so many of Virginia's families. | ||
| It is part of Virginia's story. | ||
| Here in Virginia, this is where American democracy was born and where we are still working to perfect it today, where James Madison built the framework for our Constitution to protect us from tyranny, where Washington and Jefferson fought to establish a government of, by, and for the people. | ||
| It is also the place where Barbara Johns, a 16-year-old student from Farmville, led a walkout of students that became part of the Brown versus the Board of Education case to integrate public schools. | ||
| Barbara Johns never gave up, and she showed us that no matter your age, you can be part of the change and the progress that you want to see here in Virginia and across the nation. | ||
| We are a nation founded on ideas, but we are a country where it is up to us, the citizens, who must put those ideas into action. | ||
| It is us, the citizens, who work to make the change and progress and build upon the foundations laid out over so many years. | ||
| And Virginia, now it is our time to lead. | ||
| Tonight, it's hard not to reflect on the nearly two-year journey that we've taken together on this campaign. | ||
| And just a few minutes ago, Adam said to our daughters, your mom's going to be the governor of Virginia. | ||
| And I can guarantee those words have never been spoken in Virginia ever before. | ||
| It's a... | ||
| It's a big deal that the girls and the young women I have met along the campaign trail now know with certainty that they can achieve anything. | ||
| It's a big deal to the women older than I am who forged the path in dreams, hard work, and in a belief that change and progress would be possible so that so many of us could follow in their footsteps in any career, in any role, in any challenge. | ||
| The history Virginia is making tonight, it is yours. | ||
| And I thank those who have come before me, and Mary Sue Terry in particular. | ||
| She was the first woman elected statewide in Virginia. | ||
| And because of her and the continued work of so many, there will be many more women to come for generations to come. | ||
| So now that the campaign is over, the real work begins. | ||
| Because this was never about just winning an election. | ||
| It was about what comes next. | ||
| It's about the governing. | ||
| Virginia voters made our choice tonight, and that choice was loud and clear. | ||
| We are going to work to lower costs of renting, buying, or staying in your home. | ||
| We are going to cut red tape and build homes families can actually afford. | ||
| We're going to lower health care costs. | ||
| We're going to crack down on predatory pharmaceutical practices and surprise billing. | ||
| And we're going to produce more energy. | ||
| And we are going to lower costs. | ||
| And we're going to do it by producing more energy here in Virginia. | ||
| And we're going to make sure that large utility users make sure that they pay their fair share. | ||
| We're going to grow Virginia's economy by investing in apprenticeships and job training of the future. | ||
| We're going to leverage AI and cutting-edge manufacturing to bring more capital investment into our Commonwealth. | ||
| We are going to take politics out of our schools. | ||
| We're going to make sure that teachers are well-paid and well-respected. | ||
| We are going to make sure that our teachers are well-paid and well-respected. | ||
| Students can focus on actually learning and so that parents know that their children will succeed. | ||
| And we are going to make our communities safer by providing the training, pay, and support that our law enforcement community needs and deserves. | ||
| These aren't slogans on a bumper sticker. | ||
| They are actionable policies that I am ready to implement starting on day one. | ||
| And starting now, that work begins. | ||
| So as we begin this transition to a new administration, I want to be absolutely clear about a couple things. | ||
| First, Virginia is the only state in the South that hasn't restricted women's reproductive rights since the Dobbs decision, and under my watch, it will stay that way. | ||
| In Virginia, health care decisions about contraception, fertility treatments, and reproductive care will continue to be made between women and their doctors, not politicians. | ||
| That's a promise I've made and a promise I intend to keep. | ||
| Second, I will always stand up for Virginia workers always. | ||
| And right now, our federal workforce is under attack. | ||
| And the chaos coming out of Washington is killing Virginia jobs and creating economic uncertainty for tens of thousands of families. | ||
| Government employees, government contractors, small business owners who are impacted by the chaos coming out of Washington. | ||
| Virginia's economy doesn't work when Washington treats our Virginia workers as expendable. | ||
| To those who have been impacted by the mass layoffs, by furloughs, by the hardships that you are experiencing, please know that I will direct the full power of the governor's office to support you. | ||
| And to those across the Potomac who are attacking our jobs and our economy, I will not stand by silently while you attack Virginia's workers. | ||
| I will fight every single day for every single Virginia jobs, the ones we have now and the ones we will bring to our Commonwealth into the future. | ||
| I will stand up to anyone who tries to harm our economy or the livelihoods of our Virginians. | ||
| As governor, my job will be to put Virginia first, full stop. | ||
| And tonight, as the governor-elect, I call on Congress, Republicans, and Democrats, and our president to make real progress on bringing this shutdown to an end. | ||
| The Virginians the Americans who work tirelessly for their fellow citizens deserve nothing less I know we're living in a time filled with chaos. | ||
| We live in a time marked by uncertainty. | ||
| And along the way, we do our best to try and explain it to our kids. | ||
| I know the list of challenges that we are facing is long, but I also know that the only way we're going to solve these problems is by tackling them together. | ||
| Democrats, Republicans, Independents, all of us, because that embodies the message that we sent tonight. | ||
| That is what being a Commonwealth is all about: standing united for our future. | ||
| That is what Virginia is about. | ||
| So let's show the world what we're made of. | ||
| Let's get to work. | ||
| Thank you all so very much. | ||
| I'm so excited we got this party started a little earlier than expected. | ||
| Governor-elect Abigail Spamberger addressing the crowd, the first female governor elected in the state of Virginia. | ||
| It's election night 2025 and you're watching live coverage here on C-SPAN as we continue to bring you results from the key races in Virginia, New Jersey, the New York City mayoral race, and California redistricting battle. | ||
| All of that to come here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Let's check in on the Virginia results with 72% of the vote in. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger, as we said, declared the winner earlier tonight by the Associated Press. | ||
| Her margin of victory will change as more of the votes come in. | ||
| Lieutenant Governor, the Democratic candidate, Gazala Hashmi, also being declared the winner tonight over Republican John Reid. | ||
| And the Attorney General race that we are watching closely tonight. | ||
| It is too close to call. | ||
| 73% of the vote in. | ||
| The controversial candidate Jay Jones, Democrat there against the Republican incumbent Jason Mierez. | ||
| Matthew Klein, let's begin with these Virginia results. | ||
| When you look at the map tonight of Virginia, how did Abigail Spanberger perform? | ||
| And what's it looking like for Jay Jones? | ||
| Yeah, Abigail Spanberger performed very decisively, at least so far in the results that we can tell from Northern Virginia. | ||
| It looks like she has outperformed Kamala Harris by around 12 points in Loudoun County, by around 16 points in Prince William County. | ||
| Those are notable to me because Loudoun in particular, a very large Asian community there that Kamala Harris and Democrats in general did not do particularly well with last cycle. | ||
| Prince William County, nearly a quarter Latino. | ||
| And so that suggests that Abigail Spanberger made some pretty significant inroads with the Latino community. | ||
| That's a good sign for Democrats for next year. | ||
| They are optimistic about potentially sort of regaining some of the support that they had lost among Latino voters. | ||
| It's going to be very important to them if they want to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives. | ||
| And also, I think, you know, with regard to the Attorney General's race, it looks like Spanberger's margin is so large at this point. | ||
| It seems to have helped Jay Jones quite a bit and potentially be what carries him over the end. | ||
| All right, Sabrina Siddiqui, let's go to New York City. | ||
| I want to show our view, whereas we are getting early results in. | ||
| 36% of the vote in the polls have just closed about four minutes ago. | ||
| Zohran Mamdani in the lead, 51.5%. | ||
| Andrew Cuomo trailing there about 40% of the vote. | ||
| And Curtis Liwa with about 8%. | ||
| 36% of the vote in. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, what do you make of the numbers so far? | ||
| Not really surprising given everything that we've seen about Zorhan Mamdani's campaign and the way that he's really energized a new generation of voters. | ||
| And I think that's going to be key when we take a look at the results in New York City and we can come back to this question about the future of the Democratic Party. | ||
| I mean, it's not just young voters in New York City. | ||
| Mamdani's campaign has energized young progressive voters across the country. | ||
| I do want to say that, you know, we've talked about this before. | ||
| Off-year elections tend to favor the party that's not currently in power. | ||
| And so there's going to be a lot of people who are going to look at Virginia and they're going to look at New Jersey and Democrats who are going to say, look, this is exactly why we need to run more Eccentrists. | ||
| And then there's going to be another wing that takes a look at New York City and says, this is exactly why we need to run more progressives. | ||
| But, you know, in an off-year election where the odds were always going to favor Democrats, I don't know how much we could actually extrapolate about the broader ideological question about the future of the Democratic Party. | ||
| But no doubt, a really good night for Democrats tonight. | ||
| Yeah, Matthew Klein, what does the party do with these results if Zorhan Mamdani holds on to this lead as we've heard from folks like you and others tonight that we expect him to do so? | ||
| Well, the Democratic Party, and particularly in some of the suburbs of New York, a lot of those politicians are going to have a very challenging situation on their hands. | ||
| People like Tom Swazi and Delora Gillen, who represent the third and fourth districts in New York on Long Island. | ||
| Mamdani's approval rating, their favorability there is terrible. | ||
| We have seen some private polling that indicates it's dismal. | ||
| And that could end up becoming a line of attack that's used against them in some of these, you know, next year as they seek re-election, particularly because, you know, Mamdani is going to be an all-consuming presence. | ||
| He's going to be on TV a lot in New York. | ||
| He's going to be the entire media ecosystem in the United States is based in New York City. | ||
| He's going to be at the center of so much of our conversation over the next couple of years. | ||
| There's going to be such high expectations as well. | ||
| He really set a very high set of expectations for what he wants to come in and do. | ||
| Now he has to come in and he's actually going to have to govern. | ||
| The city council is not one to be bowled over easily. | ||
| He's going to have to work on negotiating. | ||
| We've already seen him maybe moderate a little bit throughout this campaign. | ||
| That's probably going to have to be something that he's going to need to do going forward, and it could end up alienating some of his supporters. | ||
| But right now, it certainly looks like he's on pace to win. | ||
| When you look at the congressional districts that touch the boroughs of New York City, how many are there? | ||
| And where are they on the Momdani candidacy? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, you've got the third and fourth districts in Long Island, and also the first and second districts, also in Long Island. | ||
| Those are currently held by Republicans. | ||
| You've got some seats, you know, in the Hudson Valley, particularly the seat held by Mike Lawler, a Republican who has already been very outspoken about Zoran Momdani, who has made anti-Semitism, combating anti-Semitism a key part of his platform. | ||
| The 17th district represented by Mike Lawler is heavily Jewish, so it's no surprise there. | ||
| Potentially even some of these seats in northern New Jersey, the 7th district, which is currently held by Tom Kaine Jr., we could probably expect that he's going to make an issue out of this. | ||
| And maybe even in the 9th district, which is currently represented by Nellie Poe, a Democrat, she's going to try and hold on. | ||
| But odds are, I think, the messaging on Mamdani, Republicans tried it this cycle. | ||
| They tried it in the New Jersey governor's race, doesn't seem to have moved the needle very much. | ||
| So it'll be, you know, remain to be seen. | ||
| It's probably going to depend on how Mamdani governs and what his favorability and approval rating looks like down the road as for whether or not this could end up becoming a serious challenge for Democrats in 2026. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, the polls just closed in New York City at 9 p.m. Eastern Time. | ||
| We have early results in for the New York City mayoral race. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, how have Republicans tried to frame Zoran Momdani? | ||
| What do you think they do going forward if he's able to hold on to this lead? | ||
| 36% of the vote in, and he's got, you know, about 11% margin ahead right now of Andrew Cuomo, the Independent. | ||
| Well, Republicans have made no secret that they plan to tie Democratic candidates more broadly to Zorhan Mamdani identifying as a socialist and to a lot of his more left-leaning policies. | ||
| I do think we have seen some of the limitations of that message already when you look at Virginia, when you look at New Jersey, which of course is a better example just because of its proximity to New York City. | ||
| And also, the other big factor here is that President Trump is actually going to very much be on the ballot next year as the incumbent president. | ||
| And for Democrats, a lot of their messaging is going to be laser focused on the Trump administration and its record and what we've seen tonight, which is voter dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy. | ||
| So will it be enough for Republicans for their entire messaging to be framed around the mayor of New York City? | ||
| I think there are a lot of people who might be skeptical of that. | ||
| And then there's also, you know, been another element of this campaign that I did want to address really quickly, which is that Republicans have trafficked in a lot of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories with respect to Zaran Mamdani, made a lot of Islamophobic attacks against him and his background. | ||
| We even saw former governor Andrew Cuomo engage in that. | ||
| And some Democrats also attack Mamdani in ways that, I think, risk turning off the exact kinds of Democrats with whom they need to restore trust and rebuild a relationship, the kind of Democrats who drifted away from the party in 2024. | ||
| So I think Democrats actually have to also be very careful in how they navigate Mamdani, because even if they try to distance, as they try to distance themselves, maybe from some of the policies that they think will maybe make them a little bit more vulnerable with centrist voters, there's also the historic nature of his candidacy and expected victory tonight. | ||
| And so if you distance yourself from the first Muslim mayor potentially of New York City and what his candidacy has meant to so many key constituencies across the country, I think there's a lot of risk in doing that as well. | ||
| On the issues from the Associated Press, take a look at these numbers from exit polls. | ||
| New York City voters see living costs as the city's top issue. | ||
| 56% said it was the cost of living. | ||
| 22% said crime. | ||
| 10% immigration, health care coming in about 5%. | ||
| Cost of living, Matthew Klein. | ||
| Do you see this resonating from here on out all the way to the 2026 midterm elections? | ||
| As we said at the top, we're 364 days away. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| This is going to be the dominant issue. | ||
| I think, especially after seeing how Democrats have done tonight, this seems to be a very big, successful night for them. | ||
| They're going to make affordability the cornerstone of their campaign messaging heading into 2026. | ||
| It's broadly palatable. | ||
| It's something that you can message in every district in the country. | ||
| It's very easy for voters to understand. | ||
| Donald Trump came in with a lot of big promises, said he was going to bring inflation down, said he was going to bring costs down. | ||
| Voters don't feel like that's happened. | ||
| And so who are they going to take it out on? | ||
| They're going to take it out on Donald Trump. | ||
| And the more Donald Trump tries to argue that that's not a problem or that it's not something that is immediately concerning to voters, I think you're going to see more and more resentment from voters. | ||
| I think that's going to bother them. | ||
| And I think it's a serious headwind for Republicans. | ||
| Sabrina Siddiqui, your final thoughts on that? | ||
| I mean, I think that's just been the through line that we've seen in all three races tonight. | ||
| And frankly, when we talk to voters across the country, you know, anytime, and we do our own polling at the Wall Street Journal, when we ask voters to rank their top issues, the economy and inflation are always at the top of each one of those polls. | ||
| It ultimately is what voters are facing on a day-to-day basis. | ||
| You know, there's so much chaos in Washington, and it's really hard sometimes for Democrats to craft a message against President Trump because on any given day you could go after a dozen targets. | ||
| But if you stick to the one that the American voters feel in real time, which is the inability to pay bills, you know, struggling with the cost of groceries, struggling to pay rent or buy a house because they can't get a mortgage, that is what many Democrats I've spoken to believe will be the defining message in next year's midterms. | ||
| Certainly there's a big message tonight. | ||
| We'll see if it carries them forward next year. | ||
| All right, Sabrini Siddiqui, National Political Reporter with the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Klein, Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, covers the House and gubernatorial races. | ||
| Thank you both for spending Election Night 2025 with us. | ||
| We appreciate it. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| We'll continue here on C-SPAN throughout the evening, bringing you results from the key races. | ||
| The New York City mayoral race with 38% of the vote in right now. | ||
| You can see the results, about 51.2% of the vote for Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| Andrew Cuomo, who's running as an independent, the former governor, after losing the Democratic primary, he's got about 40% of that vote so far. | ||
| 38% of the vote in. | ||
| So we'll see those numbers change throughout the evening. | ||
| Curtis Liwa, the Republican candidate with about 8% of the vote. | ||
| We'll bring you results from the New York City mayoral race, Virginia, New Jersey, and we're tracking California redistricting battle as well. | ||
| We want to bring you now to Spectrum New York One's coverage of the mayoral race and the Big Apple. | ||
| Live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm Donnie for an affordability campaign, for a New York that people can't afford to live in. | |
| Keep in mind, Hassan Piker, he's a social media, online influencer. | ||
| He has a channel with a large following. | ||
| And this kind of has to do with the way that the Mondani campaign has been reaching out to those on social media and trying to expand their base, not just in New York City, but then also the attraction to outside of the five boroughs. | ||
| It's interesting to see how people in Los Angeles or even across in Europe are engaging with Momdani's messaging as well as the campaign. | ||
| Errol? | ||
| Yeah, you know, Bernadette, that's been a phenomenon. | ||
| I know some of you have mentioned from out in the field that there's a lot of international press that are showing up to a local election, which is a little unusual even for New York. | ||
| What are you seeing there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, I mean, over the past couple of weeks, Momdani's been taking questions from those from Germany, from London, from France. | ||
| And of course, as a local reporter, I'm always thinking to myself, he's running for New York City mayor. | ||
| He should be answering New York City questions. | ||
| But take that with a grain of salt. | ||
| What these reporters are trying to find out is if what's happening in the U.S. will have any influence over other big cities across the world, and especially other big cities like London, for example, or Paris, where, you know, Democratic socialism is more of a norm as opposed to here in New York, where it's the center of capitalism. | ||
| So, you know, the questions often have to do with affordability, how he would achieve that, and if they think, if he thinks that that message is something that's transferable on a broader scale, Errol. | ||
| Okay, thanks very much, Bernadette. | ||
| We'll be checking in with you later. | ||
| Let's check in now with our Dan Rivilli. | ||
| He's standing by at the campaign party for Curtis Liwa on the Upper West Side. | ||
| Good evening, Dan. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good evening, Errol. | |
| So the poll's closed. | ||
| The votes are coming in. | ||
| Sliwa, so far, in a distant third. | ||
| That has not dampened the mood too much here. | ||
| I think a lot of the Sliwa supporters are genuinely proud of the campaign he ran, hitting the streets, the subways, the buses, and talking to voters and running a vigorous campaign and defying the odds from billionaires, conservative influence, even President Trump trying to get him out of the race. | ||
| And even that last-minute endorsement to Cuomo and saying that a vote for Curtis Lee was a vote for Zoran Momdani. | ||
| He persevered through it all, and I think there's a lot of pride from Sleewa supporters on that. | ||
| Of course, one of the big stories of the Sliwa campaign was whether he was able to retain Republican support. | ||
| There are a few Republican officials who ended up backing Cuomo. | ||
| A few stuck with Sliwa. | ||
| And even tonight, the campaign told me they were expecting a GOP City Council member to show up. | ||
| I texted her. | ||
| She's staying in Queens in her district. | ||
| But there was one big Republican name who came in here to applause and people taking selfies. | ||
| And that is former Governor George Pataki, the last Republican governor in New York. | ||
| And he stuck by Sliwa to the end. | ||
| I was able to catch up with him and get a few brief comments on what he thought about the Sleewa campaign and whether Donald Trump made the right call just before Election Day. | ||
| How do you feel about the fact Curtis Lewa never bowed out and stayed in till yesterday? | ||
| I think Curtis Lewis made a great race. | ||
| He loves the city. | ||
| No one is more committed to the future of New York than Curtis Slewa. | ||
| I'm happy to be here. | ||
| Do you think Trump made the right call? | ||
| And there you hear it from former Governor Pataki. | ||
| Did Donald Trump make the right call? | ||
| A flat no. | ||
| So you have a prominent Republican there praising the Sliwa campaign for sticking it out until the end, Errol. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, and Dan, this is for Republicans in New York who are vastly outnumbered in the registration. | ||
| They're used to the idea that they're standing on principle and maybe fighting a losing battle that's worth fighting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And especially for Sliwa, he thought he had the moderate, common sense, middle-of-the-road kind of policy on issues of law and order. | |
| And he was not a doctrinaire conservative. | ||
| He was pro-choice, pro-gay marriage. | ||
| He was a critic of Donald Trump's immigration and deportation policies, particularly in New York. | ||
| Perhaps that is why he is faring so poorly and not getting what a typical Republican would get, or why Donald Trump did not see him as a credible candidate. | ||
| He was not a pro-Trump Republican, and Trump treated him as such. | ||
| And Trump is so influential. | ||
| What we are seeing perhaps could be the influence of Trump in that last hour coming out on his social media pages saying don't vote for Sleewa. | ||
| And that is why perhaps you see Sleewa in such a distant third. | ||
| But we'll have to see what the election day vote totals come in and see if that pushes Sleewa up from far behind in third place. | ||
| Yes, indeed. | ||
| The night is still early. | ||
| Thank you, Dan. | ||
| Let's check in now with our Kelly Mena. | ||
| She's in Midtown monitoring Andrew Cuomo's election night party. | ||
| What is the latest there, Kelly? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Errol. | |
| Well, the latest here is the room has completely filled up as of now. | ||
| No big reaction from those who are here. | ||
| We're still waiting to see when the former governor will show up. | ||
| He still is in second place as those return, unofficial results start coming in. | ||
| In the crowd, no big means as of yet, but I have seen some close allies of Mayor Eric Adams and some of his, at least one of his advisors here in the crowd tonight. | ||
| We were talking to some of the other attendees, that includes some volunteers that were out earlier campaigning into the final hours of this race, trying to get the governor's message out there, trying to make sure that voters know that he's more of this moderate Democrat and continuing that message that this is about the future of the Democratic Party, this moderate versus progressives, moderate versus Democratic socialists, and what that future could look like. | ||
| Nobody in the room necessarily worried about the returns that are coming in so far. | ||
| They're saying it is still early in the race. | ||
| There's still many more votes to go. | ||
| The night is young, and so we'll have to see as those returns come back in. | ||
| But this is a second bid for the former governor. | ||
| This is not looking good as of now, but the same place that he was in earlier this year when it came to the Democratic primary. | ||
| He was looking to get a boost from Republican voters in this last final stretch, his last days going into tonight. | ||
| So we'll have to see if that's going to be enough as the night continues, Errol. | ||
| Yeah, it's important to keep in mind, I guess, you know, there are about 970, Yeah, 970,000 votes have been counted so far, which means we're not really even at the halfway mark. | ||
| So they have good reason there to hope for an outcome that will favor their candidate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's definitely right. | |
| And these are people who are aware of that energy coming out of Zora Mamdani's camp. | ||
| They're aware of this could be a very long night. | ||
| That's something that many people have been telling me as I've been walking around the crowd. | ||
| So they did not expect this to be an early night or something that would be clear right away. | ||
| So they are waiting, just like everybody else, to see how this all shakes out as the night goes on, Errol. | ||
| Okay, a nail biter, at least at this point. | ||
| Thanks very much. | ||
| We're going to go now to, well, let's see. | ||
| If Zorhan Mamdani wins, he's going to make history as the first Muslim mayor of New York City. | ||
| New York One's Nora Lane Kawaja is at an election night watch party. | ||
| This is an Astoria Queens, and it is hosted by the Muslim Democratic Club. | ||
| Nora Lane, what are you hearing from the voters there? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good evening, Errol. | |
| Yeah, as soon as, and by the way, they have New York One on their TVs here, and as soon as we announce the early results, all of the community members that have gathered here at this Yemeni coffee shop in Astoria, which of course is a part of Mom Dhani's Assembly District, they were cheering, they were excited, there's a lot of enthusiasm, although of course it's still early as we've been mentioning on air. | ||
| And this event is being hosted by a community organizer here in Astoria, born and raised in Astoria, Rana Abdul Hamid. | ||
| And she joins us now. | ||
| Rana, I want to ask you, you've been canvassing, you've been at, you know, on the front lines, if you will, campaigning for Mamdani. | ||
| So how are you feeling right now in this moment? | ||
| I feel really proud of the coalition that we've pulled together. | ||
| This is a historic moment. | ||
| This is a hopeful moment. | ||
| I think especially throughout this campaign, there's been so much Islamophobia and hate and vitriol towards Mamdani. | ||
| And so much of that resonated with our community. | ||
| And now we get to celebrate so much of the labor that went into this race. | ||
| And you are a supporter of Mamdani. | ||
| You know him. | ||
| Of course, this is part of his assembly district. | ||
| So, you know, how hopeful are you when it comes to coming out on the other side of this? | ||
| And what are some of those issues of why you are supporting him and backing him in this moment? | ||
| I'm looking forward to rent stabilization. | ||
| I'm looking forward to fast and free buses. | ||
| I think so much of his affordability agenda. | ||
| And look, everybody is so excited. | ||
| So much of his affordability agenda resonates with our community here in Astoria and Queens as working class communities. | ||
| And why do you think that so many young voters, first-time voters, a lot of Muslim voters, you know, immigrants, this is a working-class neighborhood. | ||
| Why do you think they turned out for Mamdani? | ||
| Of course, this watch party is full of supporters of Mamdani. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| As you mentioned, this is a working-class community, a community where the message of affordability really resonates, but also a community that has not been engaged politically, a community that has been ignored. | ||
| And finally, we're engaged in that electoral fold and we're being seen and represented. | ||
| And a message here that is resonating with so many New Yorkers, Errol, is the fact that they see real team. | ||
| They believe that if indeed it is Mamdani to become the next mayor of New York City, that these are New Yorkers who finally feel like that they're having their moment, that this is historic for them, to have possibly the first Muslim mayor. | ||
| You can hear all of the chanting behind me at this point. | ||
| I can't hear you in the control room, but certainly you can feel the enthusiasm that's in this room with so many of Mamdani's supporters in his district. | ||
| So a lot of excitement, but again, with caution, it's still early. | ||
| The votes are still coming in. | ||
| But these people behind me, these folks, Errol, they're feeling confident. | ||
| Okay, thank you, Nuralane. | ||
| A lot of energy there, and it's not just the caffeine. | ||
| We've got a handful of citywide races to call at this point. | ||
| Spectrum News New York One coverage of the New York Mayor race. | ||
| We're bringing you live coverage of that this evening here on C-SPAN, part of our Election Night 2025 coverage. | ||
| We're going to break away right now to bring you an update from the New Jersey gubernatorial race. | ||
| Mikey Sherrill, the former Navy pilot and congresswoman, declared the winner by the Associated Press tonight. | ||
| 61% of the vote in, and you can see right there, the margin 57%, nearly 57%, is what she has right now with 61% of the votes in. | ||
| For Election Night 2025, we are joined here in Washington by Evan McMorris-Santoro, Notice reporter, and you can follow his reporting at notice.com. | ||
| Evan McMorris-Santoro, what do you make of Mikey Sherrill being declared the winner in New Jersey, 9:30 p.m. East Coast? | ||
| This has been the kind of night that it has been all night, right? | ||
| It was supposed to be kind of this was the one to be the nail-biter one. | ||
| We're going to wait and see what happens in New Jersey, might take a long time. | ||
| The polls are kind of close in that race, and the Democrats just sort of seem to have walked away with it, which we've seen with so many of these races, right? | ||
| In Virginia, huge blowout for Democrats. | ||
| This race in New Jersey is very interesting because in Virginia, there's a conversation about candidate quality, right? | ||
| Republicans are saying, now we had a bad candidate for governor against Abigail Spamberger. | ||
| You can't blame this on us. | ||
| They had a good candidate who almost won in 2021 against Mickey Cheryl, Mikey Sheryl this time, and she beat him. | ||
| So it's been a wild night. | ||
| And for it to be so early, really, for this race, I think is one that if you're a Democrat and you're a Democratic strategist, you're thinking this is really the best case scenario for us. | ||
| Yeah, Jack Tedarelli, the Republican, ran in 2021, came close to beating Phil Murphy there, lost by three percentage points. | ||
| Very close. | ||
| A nail-biter night, actually. | ||
| I worked, I remember I ran down that part of New Jersey where his headquarters was because of how close that race was. | ||
| And this is a guy who knows how to run in New Jersey, knows New Jersey, but couldn't get away from whatever momentum we're seeing from voters tonight about the president, about politics generally. | ||
| He couldn't break away from that. | ||
| And now he's been soundly defeated by a Democrat. | ||
| And President Trump made some inroads in New Jersey. | ||
| I mean, in 2020, lost by 16 points. | ||
| In 2024, lost by six. | ||
| What happened tonight? | ||
| Well, this is one of the stories we're going to be looking at as we go forward from tonight, right? | ||
| Because the reality is we're seeing some narratives, some conversations that we were having before this election day have come to an end, right? | ||
| And one of them was: look, this new Republican Party under Trump can change the map, change everything dramatically, and hang on to it. | ||
| And the idea that you have, starting with Citarelli sort of getting close in 2021, Trump coming in, you know, winning that, almost winning in 2024, and then you have that going back the other way, that changes that conversation about what is happening with Republicans in places like New Jersey in some of those urban places that they were doing well in. | ||
| We'll talk more about this race and others with Evan McMorris Santoro, part of C-SPAN's Election Night 2025 coverage. | ||
| But let's bring you back to Spectrum News New York One. | ||
| It looks like Curtis Lewa, the Republican candidate, is speaking to supporters. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Enemies. | |
| People. | ||
| It will always be united. | ||
| We, the people, must always be united. | ||
| And it's been our quest from day one. | ||
| Some of the most powerful people in the world mobilize to silence us and to tell people, don't vote for Curtis Liwa. | ||
| Don't vote for you, the people. | ||
| They tried to bribe me out of this race. | ||
| The best thing I have in this entire world is my lovely wife, Nancy. | ||
| And so many other New Yorkers who dedicated her life to rescuing animals in distress. | ||
| And yet, some of the most powerful people in the world made fun of Nancy and me. | ||
| We do. | ||
| To care for animals, to care for people, that's a humanitarian thing to do. | ||
| That's not political. | ||
| That's what people should be doing for other people. | ||
| The most powerful people in the world turned others against us in this time where we could have saved the city. | ||
| We will continue our mission. | ||
| fight for what we know is right. | ||
| In the subway, in the streets, fight, fight, right, vote, fight, vote, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, right, get out, get out, get out, right, right, right, right. | ||
| And tonight, those people who think they're powerful and think we're powerless will understand that the people have spoken. | ||
| One person, one vote. | ||
| And now we will hold the mayor elect to make sure that he serves all the people and that socialism does not replace capitalism. | ||
| Law and order must be imposed to keep our city safe and secure. | ||
| We want everybody to know if you're young or old, you can stay in New York. | ||
| You can prosper. | ||
| You can live the American dream. | ||
| I swear to all of you, on behalf of my wife Nancy, myself, and everybody who made this effort possible, we will continue on. | ||
| Yeah, and prevent prosper. | ||
| And it will be we, the people, who will be successful. | ||
| And it's been magnificent. | ||
| Curtis Liwa, basically conceding defeat. | ||
| He seems to be polling far behind where he was even just four years ago. | ||
| So far, with about half of the vote in, he seems to have about 100,000 votes or so. | ||
| By comparison, four years ago, he ended up with over 300,000. | ||
| So a very tough night for Curtis Sliwa. | ||
| Let's go over to our Bobby Cousa at the big board for some analysis of where things stand in the race for mayor. | ||
| Bobby. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Errol, did I hear Curtis Sliwa make reference to the mayor-elect? | |
| I think he might have been calling the race before the rest of us were ready to, because Zoran Momdani is in the lead. | ||
| We have seen that lead shrink a little bit since the last time we showed these results. | ||
| It's now an eight-point lead over Andrew Cuomo, and he has dipped a little bit below that 50% mark. | ||
| So Momdani in the lead. | ||
| I don't know what do we call this, a comfortable lead. | ||
| Certainly has to be feeling good about his position right now, considering the fact that he is hovering so close to the 50% mark. | ||
| But like you guys talked about earlier, I think the surprise to me anyways so far is Curtis Sliwa. | ||
| I mean, I was looking back through some of the recent polling and Curtis Lewa was always polling in third place, but he was always at least getting into the double digits. | ||
| So for the fact for him to be down at 8%, I think, is maybe an indication that Andrew Cuomo was able to eat into his base of support with his appeal these last couple weeks to the Republican Party. | ||
| He's been on Fox News. | ||
| He got the endorsement from Donald Trump, if we want to call it that, yesterday. | ||
| So it seems like Cuomo may have taken away some of those Sliwa votes by making this case that a vote for Sliwa was a vote for Momdani. | ||
| And then, you know, as to this idea that Sliwa is a spoiler in this race, you take a look at, just look at the percentage numbers. | ||
| If you add together Cuomo's percentage total and Sliwa's percentage total, you get 49.5. | ||
| Momdani's at 49.6. | ||
| So that would put them almost even. | ||
| Not to suggest that every Sli-Wa voter would have necessarily gone to Andrew Cuomo, but that just goes to show the dynamics at play here with a three-person race. | ||
| So Momdani is ahead. | ||
| We can give you a breakdown by borough. | ||
| Brooklyn is where Momdani is really routing Andrew Cuomo. | ||
| He's running away with it here in the city's largest borough. | ||
| He's got a 23-point lead over Andrew Cuomo with 58.4% of the vote. | ||
| Momdani also leads in Queens, although it's a little bit closer. | ||
| Also ahead in Manhattan by about nine points. | ||
| And then this was a surprise to me in the Bronx. | ||
| The Bronx is actually where Andrew Cuomo did the best in the primary. | ||
| Spectrum News New York won with their coverage of the election night. | ||
| We have a winner declared in the New York City mayoral race. | ||
| The Associated Press is projecting tonight that Zoron Momdani, Democratic socialist, becomes the first Muslim mayor of the largest city in the United States, New York City. | ||
| Joining us as part of our election night coverage is Evan McMorris-Santoro of Notice News. | ||
| And Evan McMorris-Santoro called already for Zoran Momdani. | ||
| He was leading in the polls heading into tonight. | ||
| We were listening to Spectrum New York One analysis there showing that his lead had tightened a little bit over Andrew Cuomo. | ||
| And if you break down the vote right now on your screen, Zoran Momdani has the check mark from the Associated Press with 69% of the vote in. | ||
| It's such a, you know, it's a smaller number than you would have expected looking at these early results as they come in. | ||
| Of course, I think things are going to change as we get to the final vote. | ||
| But this is a huge deal, the fact that this guy won the way he won. | ||
| You're going to hear a lot of people say, it's New York. | ||
| It doesn't count. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| The rest of the country isn't like this. | ||
| The reality is this is a guy who nobody knew had ever heard of. | ||
| He had no experience. | ||
| He started with 0% of the vote. | ||
| And he built a political machine sort of slowly over the course of months and months and defeated the Democratic establishment's pick in Andrew Cuomo, who obviously was a very damaged candidate and of himself, and then comes in and defeats Those guys, again, despite the president saying, I'm going to come into the city and make life really hard for you if you vote for this guy. | ||
| There's a lot that he has to do as a politician now moving forward. | ||
| He has a big, it's a big job mayor. | ||
| It's a very different job than a lot of other political jobs. | ||
| But from the politics end of this, what we have seen the left be able to do in New York in terms of building a machine, new voters that we haven't seen before, different coalitions that we've seen before, this is going to have a lasting effect on what's going to happen in 2026. | ||
| You are going to see people try to replicate this in other races and in other places. | ||
| And I really think that this is a huge, huge moment, this win that we see tonight. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We want to get our viewers' reaction to the winners called by the Associated Press tonight, beginning with the New York City mayoral race. | ||
| Zorah Mom Donnie gets the check mark from the Associated Press with 70%, about 70% of the vote in. | ||
| In Virginia, Abigail Spamberger, the former congresswoman, former CIA agent, becomes the first female governor of the Commonwealth. | ||
| The Associated Press declaring her the winner tonight. | ||
| Going to New Jersey, Mikey Sherrill, also Democrat, winning tonight in the Garden State. | ||
| Evan, what do you make of Democrats taking all three of these contests? | ||
| Well, like I said, elections end conversations and they start new conversations. | ||
| And let's talk about two conversations that are now over with. | ||
| After 2024, Democrats thought to themselves, geez, can we run a woman? | ||
| Can women win? | ||
| Can we have a woman at the top of our ticket and win something? | ||
| Yeah, they did in two big states and they did in big, big numbers. | ||
| The other question is, you know, now the question opens up is these two women are from the more moderate end of the party and they've done very, very well in tough political environments, right? | ||
| In states that Democrats, you know, Virginia more so than New Jersey, but reflective of what they need to do in a 2028 election, right? | ||
| And we have this Aram Donnie. | ||
| They're going to have an argument with themselves now about what they're supposed to do, what kind of candidate to pick next, right? | ||
| But that conversation is over. | ||
| Women can do fine and be Democrats and win. | ||
| The other conversation has been, can Republicans kind of stick close to Trump and not have to, you know, have any burden from that? | ||
| That conversation is also over, right? | ||
| The fact is this president, who has changed a lot about politics, talked about change, he changed numbers, changed electorate, changed turnout. | ||
| He is a president that is not very popular. | ||
| And Republicans who had a hard time figuring out whether to be close to him or far away from him, they were too close to him and they lost. | ||
| So those are two conversations that are over. | ||
| Now we have to have the conversation of what comes next for them. | ||
| And Republicans are talking about now. | ||
| I'm seeing on my internet feed already on Twitter, the two sides of the Republican Party are talking where you see MAGA leaders are saying, the problem is our candidates weren't MAGA enough. | ||
| They need to do more of that. | ||
| And you're seeing other folks say, well, they were too MAGA. | ||
| We had to be too MAGA. | ||
| We can't do that. | ||
| So this is a party that seemed very unified yesterday. | ||
| Tomorrow morning wakes up. | ||
| What are we doing? | ||
| What's our next plan? | ||
| That's what happens when you have elections. | ||
| And that's where we are right now. | ||
| We have two new conversations that are starting and several that are over. | ||
| Well, we're going to have a conversation tonight with our viewers. | ||
| The phone lines are on your screen. | ||
| Democrats 202-748-8920. | ||
| Republicans 202-748-8921. | ||
| All others, you can dial in at 202-748-8922. | ||
| You can text if you don't want to call at 202-748-8903. | ||
| Just include your first name, city, and state. | ||
| Let's go to Steve, who's in Manassas, Virginia. | ||
| First reaction, Steve, to some winners called for Democrats in three key races. | ||
| Go ahead, Steve. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I'm not really surprised. | |
| I am a former Republican, and I voted for, you know, actually four Democrats. | ||
| I haven't seen whether I think there was four of them on there. | ||
| Anyways, you know, I'm just not happy with the way things are at all. | ||
| I think Spamberger worked with the Republicans, and I think that's what she said in her acceptance speech. | ||
| And I think we need to get back to working together. | ||
| It's such an interesting point because this is a thing that I think a lot of folks have forgotten that the electorate really does want, which is politics to actually work and things to actually happen. | ||
| We've seen so many of these ideological races lately where the idea has been it's my way or the highway, right? | ||
| That's been a very huge part of the political conversation. | ||
| And if more voters are like Steve, that's a good sign for a lot of these moderate Democrats who want to run because this is one of the things they're running on today, that we can get back to this idea that we can all work together and do stuff. | ||
| That has not been the motivating factor we have seen from a lot of voters out and about. | ||
| We've seen a lot of them talking a lot about wanting to fix a broken system, change something fundamentally. | ||
| But this idea of getting back to politicians who just kind of work together and compromise and do stuff, that is a huge rebuke, I think, of a certain type of MAGA politics that we've seen. | ||
| And, you know, for these left-wingers who are very excited tonight, could be for the Zoro Mandanians of the world as well. | ||
| Democrats take three key races tonight. | ||
| Zoan Mamdani, the winner declared by the Associated Press in the New York City mayoral race. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger, Democrat, declared the winner in Virginia and in New Jersey. | ||
| Mikey Sherrill, the congresswoman, comes out top, out on top in the Garden State, becoming only the second female governor in the Garden State after Christine Todd Whitman in the early 90s. | ||
| We're also watching out of New York City, the headquarters for Zoe Ron Mamdani, his supporters gathering in New York City. | ||
| We expect to hear from the mayor-elect any moment. | ||
| And when we do, we'll bring you live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Let's continue with callers. | ||
| Sebastian in Phoenix, Arizona. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Democratic caller, you're next. | |
| Hello there. | ||
| I'm Sebastian from Phoenix. | ||
| We were, me and my buddies, we were extremely excited about this. | ||
| We were not really sure if this is a broader message for the rest of the Democratic Party because we believe that Momdani is uniquely, is a unique candidate. | ||
| He's a very charismatic guy, but we're not really sure if his policies can be replicated easily across the country. | ||
| If you look all over the news and just people in general, they were all extremely scared of his really left-wing policy. | ||
| So we're not really sure if it can be replicated nationwide, but we're very excited for this victory today. | ||
| Sebastian is right that people were very, very afraid of Zoro Mondani and remain very, very afraid of Zoro Mondani from all across the political spectrum. | ||
| Very recently, I was on a television show on another network, not as good as this show, obviously, with a Democratic strategist who very loudly and proudly said, he's not a Democrat. | ||
| He's a socialist. | ||
| He's not one of us, former Biden official. | ||
| This is a conversation that Democrats have to have with themselves to figure this out. | ||
| But there is a thing that this is a guy who has activated an electorate in a way that I don't usually see. | ||
| Like, I've covered a lot of elections, and a lot of times you see these moments. | ||
| I mean, look, it was pretty much a perfect lineup for Mondani. | ||
| I mean, Cuomo was an incredibly flawed candidate. | ||
| Silwa, incredibly flawed candidate. | ||
| Eric Adams, obviously, dropped out, but before then, very flawed candidate. | ||
| It was a, you know, it was an easier path. | ||
| But that's not the win that we have seen, at least in the primaries from some of these early results. | ||
| We have seen actually a new coalition developing. | ||
| And that's something that whether or not the governing comes, if that's going to be difficult or hard to replicate, as Sebastian mentioned, that's true. | ||
| But these political answers about can you run a candidate like that and appeal to certain kinds of voters that you thought would not listen to that kind of candidate, Momdani has changed that conversation. | ||
| And he, I mean, that caller sounded young, appealing to young voters on issues that they care about. | ||
| When we showed the Associated Press exit polling of New York City residents, they were saying cost of living was the biggest issue by a large number. | ||
| And that is something that actually you've seen Democrats all over the ideological spectrum pick up on. | ||
| Like that's actually something that Cheryl talked a lot about in New Jersey. | ||
| Spanberger, you saw her mention it in her acceptance speech. | ||
| This type of topic, this affordability topic that Momdani has run on is incredibly powerful to young voters and incredibly powerful to a lot of voters who are concerned about the economy right now. | ||
| I mean, this is the thing. | ||
| If you think back to 2024, you know, inflation, prices, that's sort of what made it a bad night for Democrats. | ||
| Well, those are still real things. | ||
| And the Democrats are not the president anymore. | ||
| The Republicans are the president, and they're the ones who are sort of seeing that carrying that. | ||
| It's a very difficult thing to do into an election. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's here go to John, who's in College Station, Texas, Republican. | ||
| John, your thoughts on Election Night 2025. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| John, it's your turn. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| We're listening to you, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's my turn. | |
| Okay, well, I would say my biggest takeaway is that basically I think the center like candidates are losing American voters on Israel. | ||
| And I think Mom Dami's election is representative of that. | ||
| I think both on the Democratic and Republican side, you have politicians that are basically saying we need to support this country no matter what, which honestly, that's kind of a illogical thing to say that you have to trust a country no matter what. | ||
| I think we need, you know, on both sides of the aisle, politicians that are willing to say basically like, you know, basically to look at this issue more critically and not just be supporting a country 100% of the time. | ||
| That's that's like kind of crazy. | ||
| And so, I mean, I'm not saying I would support Mom Dami at all for a million reasons, but what it is showing is that like the cunt, like our politicians do need to pay attention to what the shifts in the young voters are. | ||
| Because I'm on Twitter all the time, and I can tell you young voters on the right and the left are wondering, why are we supporting a country 100% of the time? | ||
| Whenever I'm not saying, you know, I don't support Israel's right to exist because I do, but it's just like, yes. | ||
| Understood, John. | ||
| John, how old are you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm 19. | |
| I'm in Morris Antara. | ||
| This is why you come on Z-SPAN because the punditry from the callers themselves. | ||
| John absolutely nailed it. | ||
| I mean, this is another one of these conversations that has been ended with this election, which is that starting out when this race started out, the idea that you could be very publicly opposed to Israeli policy was anathema to the Democratic Party and to a lot of politics. | ||
| And as the callers mentioned, you've seen more and more Democrats from all across the spectrum now moving in the direction that they sound more and more like Mamdani when it comes to Israel. | ||
| Not as far as he goes, but they sound more like him. | ||
| And as John mentioned, you are also seeing the Republicans begin to have a fight amongst themselves about this topic as well. | ||
| And the fight is an age-based fight. | ||
| This is a completely an age gap thing. | ||
| People who are older feel one way, younger feel the other way. | ||
| In New York, that really tore people apart. | ||
| Families were really mad at each other. | ||
| People were really upset. | ||
| But now this has sort of, you know, changed the nature of those politics. | ||
| All right, let's hit pause. | ||
| Let's go to Spectrum New York One's coverage. | ||
| talking to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | ||
| And so, you know, I think this isn't a city that doesn't fight back. | ||
| What do you say, AOC? | ||
| Okay, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, basically promising a fight. | ||
| Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there live from New York One Spectrum News. | ||
| What does this mean for Mamdaniel Wynn? | ||
| What does it mean for AOC and her future in the Democratic Party? | ||
| It means a lot, quite frankly. | ||
| I mean, we were just talking about there is some conversation that she is deciding between whether to run for president in 2028 or to run against Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, her senator, in the coming election cycle. | ||
| Then she hasn't decided as sort of how the reporting has gone, but tonight sort of gives her a jumping off point for either of those races, right? | ||
| We've seen Schumer said he voted early in the mayor's race in New York, but wouldn't say who he voted for, right? | ||
| This is a guy, one of these Democrats who has never endorsed Mamdani. | ||
| Mamdani, a hugely powerful and now popular figure, adding more energy to AOC, right? | ||
| She could maybe run against him if you wanted to. | ||
| And for the presidential level, this is, again, there is a playbook now that has been shown that these young voters, when you activate them, when you speak to them correctly and you really ask for them for their support, they actually do show up and come out in big numbers. | ||
| And that's a big deal for candidates like AOC. | ||
| When you say speak to them correctly, is it speaking to them authentically? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly what it is. | ||
| I mean, I think that when you look at what AOC won the first time, it was sort of along those lines that she spoke to them, people believed what she was saying. | ||
| And the thing about Mamdani is that he doesn't have to double talk a lot. | ||
| He has done some moving to the center, as people might expect or might be disappointed by, but politicians do it. | ||
| So get ready to watch it happen. | ||
| But he has not lost this core message of affordability that he can speak to from his own sort of kind of experience. | ||
| He pays rent. | ||
| He's paid rent for a long time. | ||
| He knows his way around New York. | ||
| He knows how to, you know, he knows how things work. | ||
| And when you deal with a situation where the older candidates are so much older, right? | ||
| I mean, Mamdani is 34 years old. | ||
| You're talking about a generational gap that is very hard for anybody to close, right? | ||
| If you are 30 years older than that, trying to have a conversation with a 34-year-old, you're going to have a hard time doing it, regardless of how good you are as a politician. | ||
| Mamdani is just speaking to people who have not felt like they've been spoken to in a long time because the politicians have been too old. | ||
| In New York City, residents are largely a younger population. | ||
| Well, I mean, we have all different kinds in New York. | ||
| We have all different kinds of people, but the electorate has not been that young. | ||
| I mean, this is very, it's actually a very hard place to vote. | ||
| That's the reason why I, as like a nerd, I'm like geeking out about this guy. | ||
| I don't really know what the future of this ideology is or what the future of his governing coalition is going to be. | ||
| But it's a very hard place to vote in New York. | ||
| You register early, and if you don't register on time, you can't vote. | ||
| It's a closed primaries. | ||
| You can't just sort of like catch a whim to go vote for somebody in a primary. | ||
| Momdani's team had to get people interested in young people interested in voting way before they were ever going to do it, sign up, go through all that rigmarole they have to go through, show up, do it. | ||
| This is just sort of a relatively unheard of idea, and he did it. | ||
| So if you're someone like AOC, you're like, okay, well, maybe there's people here, maybe there's lessons I can learn from this, and maybe there's a lot of people who are so mad that they're willing to go through these rigmaroles and jump through these hoops to do it. | ||
| And that is what you need to build an insurgent campaign. | ||
| From the Democratic leadership, we saw Hakeem Jeffries break with Chuck Schumer and endorse Zoran Momdani about a week out. | ||
| Very close to the end. | ||
| Schumer did not. | ||
| Schumer, of course, is also the leader of the Senate, where there are a lot of Democrats who are running in places that do want to have nothing to do with Mamdani, right? | ||
| Jeffries has a bit of a harder time. | ||
| Mamdani is going to win his district probably by a lot. | ||
| But this is a difficult moment for Democrats in the middle of this great night. | ||
| I mean, everyone's going to talk about this, but kind of winning. | ||
| Great night for Democrats. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| But winning New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City the way they have, ironically, makes this conversation harder because everybody can say, we're right. | ||
| And they all have to go forward now and figure it out as they go into 2026, where there's a lot of tough primaries that they have to fight out. | ||
| And then into whatever 2028 is going to be, where this conversation will probably continue. | ||
| You'd rather be Democrats tonight than Republicans, for sure. | ||
| But some of these bigger questions about what is a Democrat and what is it going to look like, a Democratic candidate going to look like in two years or one year, are still very much in play. | ||
| And these results only sort of add as fuel to those conversations. | ||
| Democrats have swept the key races so far tonight. | ||
| The New York City mayoral race, the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia. | ||
| On your screen is the Zoron Momdani headquarters in New York City. | ||
| When he comes out and speaks to his supporters, we'll bring you live coverage of his remarks and the other candidate remarks throughout our coverage here on election night. | ||
| With 85% of the vote in, this is what it looks like for Zoron Momdani with the check mark by his name. | ||
| 50.5% of the vote for him, 41.4% for Independent Andrew Cuomo, and the Republican candidate Curtis Sleewa with 7.3% of the vote. | ||
| This is 85% in, so those numbers will change. | ||
| But Evan McMorris and Toro, Curtis Sleewa seemed to have lost support from his first bid for mayor in 2021. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| He had something like 20-something percent in 2021 against Eric Adams. | ||
| He had gained some momentum. | ||
| And actually, in the debates and things, he had done fairly well. | ||
| But his problem was Trump doesn't like him. | ||
| Trump wouldn't endorse him. | ||
| Trump endorsed Cuomo, kind of. | ||
| And he could not get a foothold in that race. | ||
| I think that if you didn't like Mamdani, you voted for Cuomo because you thought that he was going to possibly beat him. | ||
| And Sliwa couldn't really pull that off. | ||
| But I do think that he did a lot of damage to Cuomo in the debates. | ||
| And you're seeing there's a sort of a, I think, a tweet going around now that's going to become kind of the classic of the night. | ||
| A supporter at Cuomo's headquarters simply holding up a sign that says Sliwa was a spoiler. | ||
| The numbers may not bear that out, but that is truly, I think, what a lot of folks who are really hoping to stop Mamdani are going to feel that way. | ||
| And that's kind of ironic because the truth is Cuomo was a bad candidate from day one. | ||
| And he had a lot of support from the establishment in kind of a baffling way, considering he had so much baggage going into the election. | ||
| And, You know, Schliwa did not get enough votes to really make an impact, but the real people who should be feeling bad about themselves right now are the folks who thought that Cuomo should be their nominee. | ||
| It was not a great idea. | ||
| Well, the Spectrum New York One reporter was making the point that if you add Andrew Cuomo's percentage with Curtis Liwa's percentage, if you did it, you know, right now, that they would come, those two numbers would come close to Momdani, but they wouldn't overcome Mamdani right now. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's still early, but it would still not be enough. | ||
| And this is what we saw in the primary as well, which is that in the primary, Mamdaniel just blew the doors off everybody. | ||
| This is a different kind of result. | ||
| And if the numbers do stay this tight, that's a conversation that Mamdani supporters are going to have to have about the work that they tried to do to kind of build bridges with folks who were afraid of them and don't like this guy. | ||
| They may have a lot more work to do based on numbers like that. | ||
| We are watching tonight Mikey Sherrill's headquarters as well this evening. | ||
| She was declared the winner earlier by the Associated Press, and we're expecting her to come out to talk to supporters as well. | ||
| She's in East Brunswick, New Jersey, so we'll keep an eye on that. | ||
| You can see family supporters lining up there to hear from Mikey Sherrill, declared the winner, the second female governor to win the Garden State. | ||
| 78% of the vote in, and she leads with 56.5% of that vote, 43% for Jack Titarelli, who is the Republican candidate, ran in 2021 as well. | ||
| We'll go to Gregory in Belmont, Massachusetts. | ||
| Gregory, your thoughts on Election Night 2025. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think this just shows really an absolute success for progressives. | |
| And I think this is going to be just a key turning point because we saw Zoron's campaign really switch from an identity politics-based progressivism to an economic one instead of focused on who he was, really, as being the first Muslim. | ||
| That, of course, was relevant to the campaign and relevant to his detractors, but that was not his main focus, of course. | ||
| His main focus is, of course, bringing the rent, the city-run grocery stores, and the buses. | ||
| Yeah, Evan McMorrisantoro. | ||
| This is a very important night for progressives for this reason. | ||
| When we're talking about AOC and her future and these things, this is the kind of campaign that progressives want to run on economic issues. | ||
| You know, there are a lot, again, everybody sort of gets a ribbon tonight if you want to sort of go this way, which, you know, Cheryl ran against some strong progressives and beat them in a primary and then went out and beat the Republican in a race that Republicans really tried very hard to win. | ||
| They spent, you know, $20 million or something trying to win this election. | ||
| They thought they could do it. | ||
| And against a sort of far more moderate candidate who, again, beat a progressive, be progressive candidate, she won. | ||
| So it's, you know, it's a mixed message there. | ||
| All right, Mikey Sherrill, it looks like she's coming out to talk to her supporters on this election night 2025 live coverage here on C-SPAN. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Together we could break this up. |