‘The Jitterbug Seems Justified!’: 3 Writers on Democratic Elation and G.O.P. Alarm

Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation on Thursday with Kristen Soltis Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer and Republican pollster, and Nate Silver, the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything” and the newsletter Silver Bulletin, to assess this week’s elections — who won, who lost and what it means for American politics.

Frank Bruni: Kristen, Nate, welcome to one of the very, very rare weeks since Donald Trump’s election last November in which Democrats are, at least metaphorically, dancing in the streets. And the jitterbug seems justified! No? What does the nitty-gritty of Tuesday’s returns definitively say — or not say — about Democrats’ resuscitated hopes and changed fortunes, and are there a few results that you find most compelling?

Kristen Soltis Anderson: Tuesday’s results are a reminder that nothing is forever in politics. Pronouncements that coalitions have changed and one party has captured the hearts of a demographic group are always susceptible to events. Groups like young voters, or Latino voters, did not become forever Republicans after the 2024 elections. In short: Parties have to deliver or voters will look to the alternative.

Bruni: Kristen, you’re killing my buzz. Queering my jitterbug. But I hear you and agree: Some perspective — and a great deal of caution — are in order.

Nate Silver: What stands out is that this really was a clean sweep. To steal the headline I used at my own newsletter, it was a 10 out of 10 night for Democrats. They won basically everywhere they wanted to win, and they won big.

Democrats not only won everywhere — they also beat their polls, especially in New Jersey. So it’s at least possible that polls of a broad cross sections of voters — right now, most of the polling you see of 2026 or Trump’s approval is conducted among registered voters or all adults, not likely voters — actually underestimate how much of a drag Trump is on Republicans.

Bruni: Let me come at this from a different angle, following up on Nate’s mention of Trump. Precisely where, how and how much does he factor into all of this? I feel strongly, in my gut, that this is a repudiation of him; the enormous margins of Abigail Spanberger’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race and Mikie Sherrill’s in the New Jersey governor’s race must reflect many voters’ disgust with the president. Also, he was tellingly quick on Wednesday morning to proclaim that he wasn’t on the ballot. This had nothing to do with him! But in fact he was on the ballot, wasn’t he?

Anderson: Trump is great at turning out voters. The problem is that he’s great at turning out Democrats even when he’s not on the ballot, while his coalition includes a lot of “low propensity” voters who couldn’t be bothered to turn out for an off-off-year election.

Silver: Let’s keep in mind that elections where the president isn’t on the ballot are usually rough for the party occupying the White House. That’s been no less true in the Trump era; Democrats had a pretty good midterm in 2018. Furthermore, Trump is now approaching first-term levels of unpopularity. He’s at a minus-13 in our tracking, and there’s been a recent downturn.

Bruni: So if I’m hearing both of you correctly, it’s absolutely legitimate to extrapolate from what happened Tuesday to the midterms next year, at least if conditions remain largely the same and Trump, not known for soul-searching and responsibility-taking, stays his toxic course?

Anderson: Republicans have time to turn this around. If Trump is able to deliver on his economic promises of lower cost of living and a booming economy come November 2026, things won’t necessarily look as grim. You’ve got senior-level White House officials like James Blair publicly acknowledging that ceding “affordability” to Democrats is creating political problems for Republicans. The reality, though, is you can’t message your way out of an affordability crisis, as the Biden and then Harris campaigns found out spectacularly.

This is also really giving me a lot of flashbacks to 2009. Republicans were in the wilderness post-George W. Bush and were a leaderless crew. Suddenly, they pull off big wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races (“Bob’s for Jobs” and Chris Christie!) and there’s new life. They wind up absolutely crushing the 2010 midterms.

Silver: When you get out of the daily news cycle and put your forecasting hat on, it already suggested that Democrats were due for a pretty good 2026. Yes, there are complications around redistricting, although Prop 50 passing easily in California will help mitigate G.O.P. gains in Texas and elsewhere. And yes, there are lots of stories about Democratic infighting. They’re intriguing to cover. But midterms are generally referendums on the party in power, on the president and the state of the country, and all of those indicators are favorable for Democrats.

Bruni: In terms of Democratic hope for the midterms — which means hope for retaking control of Congress — let me play devil’s advocate. Or, rather, let Matt Yglesias do it. In a morning-after analysis of Tuesday’s returns, he made this fascinating observation: “Harris got 52 percent in Virginia versus a projected 57 percent for Spanberger. Harris got 44 percent in Ohio and 43 percent in Iowa. If you add five to those numbers, Democrats maybe win Ohio and still almost certainly lose Iowa. And this is the Senate problem in a nutshell: A really strong national climate isn’t good enough.” Is he right?

Silver: On paper, the “easy” wins for Democrats in the Senate next year are supposed to be North Carolina and Maine. North Carolina voted for Trump by just over three points last year in what was a fairly poor electoral climate for Democrats. So if the electorate is as blue as you’d expect in a typical midterm with such an unpopular president — or as blue as it was this week — you’d expect Democrats to be favored there, especially with a strong candidate in Roy Cooper. Maine is a whole different can of worms, and the resignation of so many of Graham Platner’s staff members is a little ominous should Maine voters go that route.

Anderson: Maine is an example of where my 2009-10 flashbacks hit strong. You’ve got a populist outsider with baggage versus an older, more establishment figure who has won statewide before.

Bruni: But Democrats need more than Maine and North Carolina. Two wins don’t get Chuck Schumer — or anybody else in the party — the job of Senate majority leader. Yglesias is talking about all the other states, and how fantastically Democrats would need to perform in those places, some a very pronounced shade of red.

Silver: I’d say “fantastically” is going a little too far. After Maine and North Carolina, the next bluest set of states with Senate races next year are Ohio, Florida, Texas, Alaska and Kansas, which are variously between 10 and 15 points redder than the national average based on the presidential vote. In today’s political environment, where there’s not a lot of ticket-splitting and there’s a pretty linear translation between the presidency and everything else, that’s the best base line.

So Democrats probably need the national environment to be something like a D+7 or D+8 or D+9, as it was in 2018. That gets Democrats most of the way there. Then they’ll need to pick off a few extra points by nominating strong candidates. It’s not likely, but it’s certainly within the realm of feasibility if you have Sherrod Browns (Ohio) or Mary Peltolas (Alaska) or even Sharice Davidses (Kansas) running.

Bruni: That’s the Senate. What about the currents Democrats are swimming against to retake the House? Are those prohibitively strong? I’m referring to the aggressive gerrymanders that have happened or will happen before November 2026. Yes, California is poised to add Democratic seats, but it looks like Republicans will fare much better than Democrats in all this redistricting. Could those structural dynamics — those cheats, if you ask me — render much of the public mood and any real verdict on Republican governance irrelevant?

Anderson: The new districts being drawn everywhere may give Republicans a net boost, in part because there’s not much more you can squeeze out of already horribly gerrymandered Democratic states like Illinois or Maryland. But remember that some of these new districts in places like Texas are being drawn around the idea that Republicans have newfound life and strength with Latino voters in places where they used to run more poorly. Some of the results from Tuesday raise the question of whether that’s durable in a midterm without Trump running against a weak Democrat during a period of high inflation. Again — nothing is forever.

Silver: With Prop 50 passing in California, the redistricting isn’t tilted that much against Democrats, and they may also feel emboldened to knock a couple of Republicans out in Virginia after this week. Now, if the Supreme Court invalidates the Voting Rights Act in time for the midterms, the Democrats have a considerably greater set of problems.

But failing that, I do wonder if Republicans will have at least a few second thoughts about overly aggressive districting.

Bruni: Kristen, since you mentioned them, let’s discuss Latino voters. Some numbers I saw from Union City, N.J., showed that the Latino vote for Trump there had risen to about 41 percent last year, from about 19 percent in 2016. But on Tuesday, the Republican candidate for governor, Jack Ciattarelli, got only about 15 percent of Union City’s Latino vote. Does that have implications beyond him and New Jersey? How big an alarm bell for Republicans is that and how does that factor into your expectations for the midterms?

Anderson: This should set off alarms. Trump has reoriented the G.O.P. around a diverse, working-class coalition. They want safety, security, affordability. They like the party of the guy who isn’t afraid to wave out the McDonald's drive-through window.

Silver: Yeah, in New Jersey last year, there was almost a 1-to-1 correspondence between where Trump gained ground in a surprisingly strong finish and the share of Hispanic voters in the town or county. And those counties bounced back strongly to Sherrill. That might be the single best sign for Democrats from Tuesday.

The thing a lot of people don’t get is that Hispanic voters are actually one of the swingier groups. Democrats have learned the hard way that they can’t take those votes for granted. But Republicans can’t either. And there’s a bifurcation between college-educated Hispanic voters and those who didn’t finish college, who are more Trump-friendly. Like “non-college” voters of other races, the second group doesn’t always show up for midterms.

Anderson: Latino voters may not love Democrats or think Democrats have a good plan for anything, but they may be less inclined to get off the couch and vote for Republicans if they think they haven’t delivered. Normal nonpresidential year dynamics already mean those voters are harder to turn out, and if in voters’ minds you’ve swapped McDonald’s Drive-Thru Guy for Golden Ballroom Guy, that can’t help.

Bruni: So, Kristen, should we expect, over coming months, to see Trump pop up at … Hardee’s? Wendy’s? And then Mike Johnson can take Burger King and John Cornyn can staff Taco Bell? Nate? Want to cast the right Republican for the right fast-food drive-through window?

Silver: There’s no real proof of concept of “Trumpism without Trump” working for Republicans at basically any point since he rode down the escalator at Trump Tower. Republicans had a bad 2018, and a relatively bad 2022 given how unpopular Biden was at the time, with Trump not-so-helpfully intervening in a bunch of primaries where they picked some dubious candidates. (Remember Mehmet Oz?) Trump has a lot of political liabilities, but he also seems to inspire some voters who will walk over glass to turn out for him. They’re not necessarily going to do that for Mike Johnson or JD Vance types.

Bruni: Ah, yes, forgot Vance! I see him at Chick-fil-A.

Anderson: When people try to pretend to be Trump, it doesn’t seem to go well. Only Trump is Trump. Will any Republican be as culturally relevant and dominant as Trump? Absolutely not. Would Mike Johnson flipping burgers go viral? No. But the connection with working-class voters, and the promise that you’ll make it possible for them to live a safe and affordable life with real opportunity, is what matters most. You don’t need to stand in a drive-through window to do that, but you do need to deliver.

Bruni: ​​We haven’t talked about Zohran Mamdani, and maybe that’s right: As I’ve written or said about a million times, New York City is not much of a national political microcosm. But let’s bring him into our chat. Tuesday’s results offer Democrats two successful models to choose from: the democratic socialist model of Mamdani, who was elected the city’s first Muslim mayor and its youngest mayor in over a century, or the moderate-pragmatist model of Spanberger and Sherrill. Do you think one model is more applicable than the other? Or, as Josh Marshall suggested in Talking Points Memo, is the lesson simply that Democrats must “find candidates suited to their constituencies and focus on cost of living issues and opposition to Donald Trump’s autocracy”?

Anderson: Republican commentators seem to be salivating over the prospect of Democrats going all in on the Mamdani model. But Mamdani, for all that I think he has a lot of policy ideas that will be very, very bad for New York City, is a skilled communicator and Republicans are foolish to dismiss him. Telegenic populism is a potent one-two punch in this environment, and Mamdani’s got it. I have also found in my polling that voters these days, especially the sort of voters Trump has tried to win over, are more willing to excuse more extreme viewpoints in service of voting for someone who will get things done.

Silver: I’m impressed by Mamdani as a political athlete. New York is so diverse that it has more conservatives than you might think, and it actually swung pretty hard toward Trump in 2024, especially in the other boroughs. Mamdani overcame a lot of prejudices — in the abstract, for instance, polls find that many voters are reluctant to vote for Muslim candidates. At the same time, Andrew Cuomo ran about as bad a campaign as you can run.

As to the broader question of whether moderates or progressives do better, I’m on the side that says the empirical evidence pretty clearly points toward the moderates. (Other things being equal, which they sometimes aren’t.) If a party is going to have a progressive wing, you’d at least like it to be populated by bright, ambitious, fresher faces like Mamdani, who has shown some instinct for understanding public opinion and disowning some of his previous unpopular stances in a way that was more forthright than Kamala Harris did, for instance.

Bruni: I feel confident that Democrats will not go all in on the Mamdani model, other than to look harder for candidates with his energy and charisma and to accept how different political communication is these days: how much social media matters, how valuable an aura of authenticity can be. That said, I’m less confident — and worried — about something else. I’ve watched Democrats make some disastrous decisions over recent years, and I fear they’ll rightly wring confidence from these election results but then come to some wrong conclusions, albeit not about socialism as electoral gold. What, based on your read of the returns, would be the most foolish, most unwarranted lessons to take from Tuesday’s successes?

Silver: If you’re looking for reasons to worry, you can perhaps draw an analogy to 2022, when Democrats had a midterm that was pretty good relative to expectations — but not great by any means. They did lose control of the House. But that might have made them complacent and ended the talk of Biden sticking to one term.

I’m in favor of competitive primaries; I think Democratic primary voters in particular are more strategic than you might think and consider “electability” along with other factors. In some races, though, they might actually want fresh-faced moderate candidates to compete with more progressive ones. Old-school Democrats who are associated with the political establishment are popular with basically nobody right now.

Anderson: Nate is right that Democratic primary voters may be less susceptible to some of the bad decision making that squandered good Republican pickup opportunities during the Tea Party era. While the Democrats’ base is definitely to the left of the median voter, I’ve not yet seen them subject candidates to ideological purity tests that take down electable candidates in primaries. Republicans’ most high-turnout voters are ideologically quite conservative. Democrats’ most high-turnout voters in primaries are the people who brought you Joe Biden in 2020.

Bruni: Before we move to a quick lightning round, what one aspect of Tuesday’s results, what detail or dynamic, have we overlooked in this conversation? What are the political parties’ and the commentariat not adequately recognizing? Is there a little flickering harbinger in there that could be bigger than anyone realizes, in whatever direction?

Anderson: In these off-year races, younger voters are a smaller part of the conversation, but it is worth noting that the generation gap appears to have returned in a big way in all the major contests from this week. Spanberger won 70 percent of voters under age 30 who turned out in Virginia. Sherrill won 69 percent. Mamdani blew the doors off with 78 percent among this age group. In California, 80 percent of those under age 30 voted for Prop 50. Republicans have rightly been quite excited about their improved performance with young voters in the 2024 election, but the durability of those gains is definitely in question.

Silver: If you want to get very granular, I thought it was interesting that at least judging by ecological inference — his strong results in the Bronx, for instance — Mamdani overperformed his primary numbers with Black and Hispanic voters. But he didn’t do particularly well in precincts with a lot of East Asian voters, like Flushing. Asian American voters aren’t a huge factor in that many races, but their share of the population is perpetually growing.

Bruni: OK, some quick questions with very quick, short answers. On a scale of 1 (not much) to 10 (a lot), how much did the federal shutdown help Democrats on Tuesday?

Anderson: 3.

Silver: I’d go more like a 5, just because they did have the good fortune to have these elections at a time when Trump’s popularity was at a low point.

Bruni: In how many days or weeks will the shutdown end?

Anderson: Last time we talked, we set the line at two weeks. I take no pleasure in saying I was right that it would be longer than two weeks. I do think that the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, the airline shutdowns and the legal wrangling over SNAP have upped the pain level for voters and their politicians alike. I now think this ends before Thanksgiving.

Silver: I already blew my prediction on this last time! From the start, I haven’t particularly understood what Democrats have been trying to accomplish with the shutdown. Initially, Trump’s numbers were holding steady, but the SNAP benefits may have been a big political mistake for him, especially since Trump’s own voters are basically just as dependent on them as Democratic ones. So Democrats have backed into a better position.

Bruni: ​​Would you wager that Mamdani’s approval ratings are above or below 50 percent in six months?

Anderson: Below, but this is a low-confidence prediction. He started with just 50.4 percent of the vote. At six months in, I’m not sure how much voters will hold him responsible if things haven’t gotten better (or have gotten worse).

Silver: I’d say below, also with low confidence. As a base line, his favorability ratings heading into Tuesday night were roughly 48 percent favorable, 45 percent unfavorable. He probably has a relatively high floor and a relatively low ceiling.

Bruni: In 10 years, what is Mamdani doing?

Anderson: If voters conclude he’s been a good mayor, he’ll be preparing to run for higher office. If voters conclude he hasn’t, he will be a very charismatic political commentator.

Silver: Tossup between challenging Kirsten Gillibrand and being a very popular Twitch streamer. But seriously, he’s an ambitious guy. A lot of Mamdani’s instinct to triangulate away from some of the unpopular positions he’s taken in the past is because he wants to have influence in politics for a long time rather than run a one-term kamikaze mission.

Bruni: The vote in California for redistricting certainly shines a favorable light on Gavin Newsom, who spearheaded that effort. Name three Democrats — including or excluding him — whose 2028 presidential ambitions were buoyed by Tuesday’s results.

Anderson: Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Choose your own adventure!

Silver: Newsom and A.O.C. seem like obvious picks. And I’ll suggest Abigail Spanberger. Virginia limits governors to one consecutive term, so they have to think about their next moves right away.

Bruni: Lastly, Nancy Pelosi just announced her retirement. Where will history place her among Democratic speakers of the House, and what three adjectives would you use to describe here? Only three. No cheating!

Anderson: Historic, consequential, shrewd. She was the first woman to hold the job and pushed through many Democratic victories, much to Republicans’ chagrin.

Silver: Canny, indefatigable, polarizing. Her political instincts were pretty good even late into her career.

Bruni: Steely, sassy and sagacious, because I’m a fool for alliteration and for SAT words.

Kristen Soltis Anderson, a contributing Opinion writer and Republican pollster, is the author of “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America (and How Republicans Can Keep Up).”

Nate Silver, the founder and former editor of FiveThirtyEight and the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything,” writes the newsletter Silver Bulletin.

Source photographs by Win McNamee, Eduardo Munoz Alvarez and Spencer Platt, via Getty Images.

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