The 2025 elections may not have featured Donald Trump on any ballot, but the exit polls make one thing unmistakably clear: he was the invisible candidate shaping voter behavior across every race that mattered. From New York to Virginia to California, more voters said they cast their ballot to oppose him than to support him, a signal that even in off-year elections his presidency is functioning less as a source of political coattails and more as a national referendum that follows him wherever voters are asked to choose a direction.
What the results reveal is not just a snapshot of how Trump is viewed in traditionally Democratic states, but a warning flare for both parties heading into 2026. In all four exit-polled regions, Trump’s immigration crackdown was seen as going too far. His job approval was underwater. And in an era where the economy is supposedly his strongest issue, the candidates who won did so by speaking directly to economic pain but not through Trump’s lens — housing affordability in New York, cost-of-living anxiety in California, and economic security in New Jersey and Virginia.
The deeper story, however, is not just who won, but who showed up — and why. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani didn’t just defeat Andrew Cuomo, he built a coalition defined by voters under 45, renters, first-time municipal voters and residents who moved to the city within the last decade. That is not just a win, it is demographic realignment. And the people who backed him are not casual voters — they are voters shaped by rent inflation, student debt, and a political system they believe ignored them until they forced their way into it.
In Virginia and New Jersey, the decisive swing came from independents and women — especially women worried about the economy, a voting bloc that abandoned Trump in 2024 and shows no sign of returning. That is electoral math a future Republican House or Senate majority cannot ignore.
Even California’s Proposition 50, a vote about redistricting rules, turned into a quiet rebellion against what voters see as Republican power-gaming in other states. Voters admitted the policy wasn’t ideal, but passed it anyway — not out of enthusiasm, but retaliation. That says less about California and more about a country where voters increasingly legislate through payback because they trust neither Congress nor the courts to act fairly.
Taken together, the exit polls show something bigger than a partisan win-loss column. They reveal an electorate still moving, not settled. An electorate that is punishing Trump even when he is not running, elevating candidates who campaign on tangible economic relief rather than culture-war grievance, and growing more willing to use ballot initiatives as weapons of political self-defense.
The broader implication for the country is this: if Trump remains the gravitational force of American politics, then every election — federal, state, or municipal — will continue functioning as a proxy battle over his presidency. And when politics becomes perpetual referendum, it becomes nearly impossible for either party to govern beyond reaction.
The 2025 results were not red or blue — they were a reminder that the electorate is still in motion, and that the Trump era is not ending. It is mutating.
Go beyond the headlines…
Here’s what CBS News exit polls told us about the 2025 elections
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