Important Elections to Watch this November

It is seventeen days away from Election Day, and yes, you read that right. Several states and localities will be holding elections on November 4, 2025, and these elections will serve as an important look into the mood of the country one year before the midterm elections.

Here are just some of the elections to watch in November:

New Jersey

New Jersey is one of two states holding gubernatorial elections this year. Democratic incumbent Phil Murphy, in office since 2018, is term-limited and is unable to run for re-election. 

New Jersey has long been a solidly blue state at both the federal and state levels, but recent statewide elections have been competitive. In 2021, Governor Murphy was re-elected by 3.2 points, down from his 14.1-point victory in 2017. In 2024, Kamala Harris won the state by only 5.9%, which was ten points down from how Joe Biden performed in 2020. This election is poised to be an indicator of President Trump’s popularity in the state. Excluding 2021, New Jersey has elected a governor of the opposite party of the sitting president in every election since 1989.

Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill won a crowded primary election to win the Democratic nomination for governor. A former naval officer and federal prosecutor, she was elected to represent the state’s 11th congressional district in 2018, winning the seat for the Democrats after more than three decades of Republican control. She has been re-elected to three more terms since then. Sherrill will seek to extend Democratic control of the governor’s mansion for a third consecutive term; neither party has been elected to more than two consecutive terms in the governorship since 1965. 

Sherrill speaks to supporters after winning the June primary. Source: The New York Times

On the Republican side, former state assemblyman Jack Ciattarelli is on his third attempt to flip the governor’s mansion, after failed bids in 2017 and 2021. After holding local offices in Somerset County, he represented the 16th state legislative district in the New Jersey General Assembly from 2011 to 2018. As the Republican nominee, Ciattarelli won a higher percentage of the vote than expected in 2021 and is perhaps Republicans’ best shot at winning the governorship for the first time since 2013. 

Ciattarelli arrives at his victory party following his win in June’s Republican primary. Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

While Sherrill has led in much of the polling in this race, polls have narrowed since mid-September. The election has become quite nasty in recent weeks, with both Sherrill and Ciattarelli having launched personal attacks on each other. One of the key issues in this race is affordability, as New Jersey has one of the highest property taxes in the country, and both candidates have accused each other of wanting to raise taxes in the state. Sherrill has also sought to tie Ciattarelli to President Trump, whose popularity has dipped in the state. For his part, Ciattarelli has tied Sherrill to current Governor Murphy, whose approval rating is also underwater in the state, but not as much as Trump’s. We are currently rating this election as Lean Democratic hold, due to Sherrill’s generally consistent lead in polling, and the state’s partisan lean.

Also worth watching in the state are a handful of competitive races in the state’s General Assembly, which currently has a Democratic majority. Republicans are looking to make inroads in the chamber, which has been controlled by Democrats since 2002. Additionally, there is a very interesting race happening in Jersey City, where ex-Governor Jim McGreevey, who resigned from office in 2004 following a sex scandal, is seeking to make a return to electoral politics by becoming mayor of the state’s second-largest city.

Virginia

Virginia, like New Jersey, is also holding its gubernatorial election this year. Republican incumbent Glenn Youngkin, in office since 2021, is term-limited and cannot run for a second term.

Virginia is a moderately blue state at the state and federal levels. Kamala Harris carried Virginia by 6 percentage points in 2024, and no Republican presidential candidate has won Virginia since 2004. Statewide offices tend to be competitive, however. In 2021, Republicans flipped control of all three statewide elected offices, all of which are once again up for election this year. This election is also poised to be an indicator of President Trump’s popularity in the state.

Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears is running to replace Governor Youngkin and hold the governor’s mansion for the Republicans. Due to her rhetoric and social conservatism, many people, including those from her own party, have voiced dissatisfaction with her. Since the beginning of the campaign, Sears has trailed her Democratic opponent in both fundraising and polling.

The woman most likely to be Governor of Virginia is former Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger. A former CIA case worker, she was first elected to Congress in 2018 when she defeated an incumbent Republican congressman to represent the state’s 7th congressional district, which had been in Republican hands for more than three decades. She was re-elected twice in competitive races and retired in 2024 to focus on her gubernatorial campaign. In Congress, Spanberger had a reputation for being one of the more moderate members of the Democratic caucus. 

Spanberger shakes Sears’s hand at October’s gubernatorial debate. Source: WAVY-TV

The Trump administration’s actions have defined the state of the race, with Spanberger tying the unpopular presidency to the Republican ticket. Virginia has the second-largest number of federal government employees in the country, and as a result of the mass firings of federal government employees and the current government shutdown, Trump’s approval rating in the state is underwater. Sears, for her part, has relentlessly attacked Spanberger on transgender issues and has sought to tie her to Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, who has been embroiled in a scandal after text messages from 2022 surfaced in which he advocated violence against a Republican politician. However, it seems that these latest attacks have done little to change the state of the race. With Spanberger consistently holding a lead, this race is currently rated as a Likely Democratic flip.

Other races worth watching in the state are the elections for lieutenant governor and attorney general. In the lieutenant governor election, Democratic state senator Ghazala Hashmi is taking on Republican nominee John Reid, and has led him in most polls since the beginning of the campaign. In the attorney general election, we will see if Jones’s text scandal has any effect on his race against Republican incumbent Jason Miyares. There are also a handful of competitive races in the state’s House of Delegates, in which the Democrats are defending the majority they won in 2023.

New York City

America’s largest city is holding its mayoral election later this year. Democratic incumbent Eric Adams, who has been in office since 2022, initially ran for a second term but dropped out in late September due to a federal indictment, low approval ratings, and a lack of campaign funding.

This leaves three major candidates. State assemblyman and self-proclaimed democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary in June in a major upset over ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo, is the frontrunner in the race. Mamdani’s ideas, including city-run grocery stores, implementing rent freezes, and raising corporate taxes on the top 1%, have gained traction among much of the electorate. Mamdani has faced criticism from his opponents for his “socialist” and “communist” ideas, and also for his previous anti-Israel rhetoric. 

Mamdani addresses supporters in Queens following his victory in June’s Democratic primary. Source: Getty Images via AFP

The anti-Mamdani opposition in New York City has tried to coalesce around a candidate who can defeat Mamdani, but seems unable to do so. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, for his part, is continuing to run in the general election under the “Fight and Deliver” ballot line. Cuomo, who served as New York’s governor from 2011 to 2021, resigned from that post following numerous reports of sexual harassment. Cuomo has emphasized that he is the most experienced candidate to take on President Trump, who has threatened to send the National Guard into New York City, and has hammered away at Mamdani’s “inexperience”. Despite this, according to the New York Times, Cuomo has also been in contact with Trump (both men deny having contact), and pro-Trump donors have flocked to Cuomo. Meanwhile, Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa, a pro-animal rights activist and leader of the vigilante group the Guardian Angels, has been calling on Cuomo to drop out of the race and let him take on Mamdani by himself. Sliwa was the party’s nominee in 2021, and unlike the majority of his party members, is firmly anti-Trump. Sliwa has alleged that he was offered money to drop out of the race. The feud between Cuomo and Sliwa has rendered the anti-Mamdani opposition incapable of uniting behind one candidate.

Cuomo addresses the New York District Council of Carpenters in March 2025. Source: Getty Images

Sliwa marches in the 2025 NYC West Indian Day parade in Brooklyn. Source: Getty Images

With Mamdani poised to win in November, he has become a prominent national figure. He has been subject to relentless criticism by President Trump, Republican politicians, and centrists in the Democratic Party. It would be interesting to see whether Mamdani’s socialist platform appeals in New York City, as the city’s recent mayors have often become unpopular over the course of their tenure. This race is rated as a Safe Democratic hold.

Other Elections

In California, a statewide referendum will be held on Proposition 50, a constitutional amendment that seeks to allow the state to use a legislature-drawn congressional district map instead of the current one drawn by the state’s independent redistricting commission for the next three election cycles. This is to counter the Republican gerrymandered congressional map passed in Texas. The legislature-drawn map is a Democratic gerrymander intended to offset the gains made by Republicans in the Texas redistricting. So far, the effort has led in recent polling, and we expect it to pass in November.

In Texas, a special election will be held in the Houston-based 18th congressional district, which has been left vacant since March due to the death of Congressman Sylvester Turner (D). A solid Democratic seat, Democrats are expected to win this seat in November and add to their seat totals in the House of Representatives, further narrowing the Republican majority.

In Pennsylvania, elections will be held to determine whether or not to retain three Democratic justices on the state’s supreme court. Democrats currently hold a 5-2 majority on the court. The state’s supreme court has been increasingly prominent on the national stage, as it played a role in striking down a Republican gerrymandered congressional district map in 2018, and upholding voting laws about mail-in voting in 2020 and 2022. 

There are also other state and local elections being held this November that are significant in their own right. In conclusion, the elections held this November will give a sense of the national mood heading into the 2026 midterm elections. If the Democrats perform well in the elections on November 4th, it will give a sense of how truly unpopular President Trump is. If they underperform, it would be further bad news for the party, which is still reeling from their spectacular loss to Trump in 2024 and has suffered from low approval ratings throughout much of the year.