Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Jonathan Allen previews the spin we can expect to hear from various factions on Election Day. Plus, Bridget Bowman and Adam Edelman report from New Jersey and Virginia on how Democrats are looking for a momentum boost from their gubernatorial campaigns.
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— Adam Wollner
What we can — and can’t — learn from next week’s elections
Analysis by Jonathan Allen
If Zohran Mamdani wins the New York City mayor’s race Tuesday as expected, it will be a moment of “I told you so” triumph for the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party — and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party.
Both are sure to claim that a Mamdani victory is proof that moderate, business-friendly Democrats are dinosaurs. The Sanders Democrats will say that progressivism is ascendant. President Donald Trump will call the same phenomenon the rise of socialism.
But Mamdani is the Democratic nominee for mayor in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. It would be surprising if he lost to fringe Republican Curtis Sliwa or former Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Mamdani in the primary and is now running as an independent. Moreover, there’s a good chance that Democrats who ran more centrist campaigns for governor in Virginia and New Jersey will also be elected Tuesday.
The only real shock would be if one or more of these candidates lost one year into a second Trump administration that has energized his critics.
The data nerds in the two parties will get useful information about how segments of the electorate shift — or don’t — in the statewide races in Virginia and New Jersey, where Trump lost by nearly identical margins of less than 6 points in 2024. But the rest of the country should avoid the trap of predicting next year’s midterms based on who wins races in three jurisdictions that have favored Democrats in recent years.
Unless. There are two caveats here. The first is that Republican wins in New Jersey, Virginia or both would appropriately send another shock through the Democratic Party’s central nervous system. Likewise, Republicans should be very concerned if one year of the Trump administration translates into significantly wider victories for Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey than Kamala Harris’ last year.
But the likeliest scenario is that Democrats win all three marquee contests — and by margins that show variance from the 2024 results within a few points.
If that happens, expect both progressive and centrist Democrats to claim that their approach is best — and for Republicans to keep their focus on Mamdani, who figures to appear in nearly every GOP ad against Democrats between now and next November.
Democrats hope for a ‘shot in the arm’ in New Jersey and Virginia after 2024 losses
By Bridget Bowman and Adam Edelman
Democrats are hoping this year’s gubernatorial contests in New Jersey and Virginia fire up their supporters not just in those states but across the country, as they look to move on from a brutal 2024 campaign cycle in which they lost the White House and the Senate, and as polls show the party remains broadly unpopular.
“Winning cures a lot of the ills, right? It shows people we’re back on track,” Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin told NBC News as he knocked on doors earlier this month in Medford, New Jersey.
“But we’ve been winning,” Martin added, pointing to the party’s overperformance in special legislative elections this year, noting that each victory is “another shot in the arm for Democrats to give them a sense that we have a plan, we know what we’re doing, we’re back, and that we’re going to win in ‘26 and then again in ‘28.”
National Democ