The Republican Party is in a good spot after the 2024 elections, with President Donald Trump enjoying an all-time high in popularity and Republicans holding both chambers of Congress. More notable for the GOP is how the culture has seemingly shifted to the right and away from the liberal excesses of the Democratic Party.
The 2025 elections may not represent what the national environment will look like next year, but each race will test the GOP’s momentum and whether the cultural and political shifts of the last election are sustainable.
Virginia elections
The question in Virginia since Republicans swept the governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general races in 2021 has been whether the Virginia GOP could expand on those victories. Virginia Republicans left the 2021 elections with a 52-48 majority in the House of Delegates, but Democrats flipped the chamber back in 2023 and now hold a 51-49 majority. Republicans are also down two seats in the state Senate. There is also a big question mark hanging over the reaction of voters in northern Virginia, where many federal workers live, to President Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s massive effort to scale back the federal government, with many job losses.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) remains popular, with his approval hitting its highest point last August. Since Virginia does not allow governors to run for reelection, the GOP nominee will probably be Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. Her opponent is likely to be former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger.
The Virginia elections will be a test of whether Republicans can sustain their momentum from 2024 to turn Virginia into a true swing state. The election of Youngkin, Earle-Sears, and Attorney General Jason Miyares made waves in 2021 because Virginia was viewed as an increasingly reliable blue state. It had just backed Joe Biden over Trump in 2020 by 10 points. Trump cut that to under 6 points in 2024, a more competitive but still somewhat comfortable win for Democrats.
In three of the last four polls of the race in the Real Clear Politics polling average, Earle-Sears trails Spanberger by an average of 3 points. (The fourth poll, from Virginia Commonwealth University, had Spanberger with a 10-point lead and the highest margin of error of the set). An Earle-Sears victory would show that 2021 wasn’t a one-off for the Virginia GOP and that Republicans could continue to be on offense in national elections by tipping blue swing states in the opposite direction.
New Jersey elections
If Virginia is a test of Republicans’ ability to replicate the magic of 2021, New Jersey is a test to see if the GOP can turn it into Virginia. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by 16 points, the fourth straight election Democrats won the state by double digits. Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) won his first election in 2017 by just over 14 points. Virginia was a swing state that was slipping away from the GOP, but New Jersey was undeniably a blue state on no one’s radar to be competitive.
But Murphy escaped 2021 by the skin of his teeth, winning reelection by just a 3-point margin. The state followed that in 2024 by backing Vice President Kamala Harris by under 6 points, with the biggest rightward shift of any state other than New York. It was the closest Republicans had come to winning New Jersey in a presidential election since 1992.
Voter registration numbers have shifted toward the GOP in the past four years, with the GOP adding registered Republicans every month of Biden’s presidency faster than Democrats could add to their own tally. Democrats also won’t have an incumbent advantage to lean on, as Murphy can’t run for reelection because of term limits. The Democratic field includes the mayors of the state’s two largest cities and Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill.
That will make it perhaps the best test of whether New Jersey is still a true blue state. The six top Democratic candidates in the field debated in early February, and their disputes highlighted the problem of immigration. That issue has been overwhelmingly popular for Trump, with CNN’s Harry Enten highlighting that over 55% of people in several polls support deporting all illegal immigrants. Congress capitalized on this by passing the Laken Riley Act, which ordered the Department of Homeland Security to detain illegal immigrants arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.
Most of New Jersey’s Democratic candidates are still treating the state as a blue stronghold. Gottheimer was attacked at the debate by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop for supporting the bill. They have evidently staked their candidacy on opposing deporting illegal immigrants who commit additional crimes while they are in the country. Sherrill also opposed the bill, and Gottheimer tried to win back his liberal illegal immigration credibility by agreeing that the next New Jersey governor should protect illegal immigrants from deportation.
If New Jersey Democrats insist on running in the state like it’s 2017, it will be a true test of how potent the GOP’s immigration messaging is under Trump in what is supposed to be reliable Democratic territory.
Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections
The Supreme Court elections in swing states Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will again test whether Trump’s victory will signal further GOP wins in those states. Wisconsin will be the first test, with an April election to replace a retiring liberal Supreme Court justice. The liberals on the court hold a 4-3 majority, which was maintained when the conservative candidate, Daniel Kelly, lost in both 2020 and 2023.
Republicans are already off to a better start, with former Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel serving as the conservative candidate (the candidates are technically nonpartisan). That means that, unlike the aforementioned Kelly, the conservative candidate is someone who has won statewide in Wisconsin in the past. Conservative justices face reelection in 2026 and 2027, so a liberal win would empower Democrats for at least three more years.
In Pennsylvania, three Democratic justices, part of the party’s 5-2 majority, are facing a “yes” or “no” vote for another 10-year term. If Republicans were to win all three seats, they would guarantee themselves a majority until at least 2031. As with Wisconsin, the GOP is hoping to capitalize on the momentum of Trump’s victory in the state. Republicans hold a majority in both chambers in the Wisconsin state legislature and in the Pennsylvania state Senate, with a tie in the state assembly.
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Despite those majorities, the state Supreme Court in both states continues to intrude in the legislative process to the benefit of Democrats. The Wisconsin Supreme Court and its liberal majority threw out the state’s legislative map to gift Democrats a more favorable one. The court took up the case through a lawsuit filed right after the liberal candidate who called the maps “rigged” during her campaign won in 2023. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court adopted a map proposed by Democratic voters who sued the state in order to send the case to the court.
If Republicans can pull off the wins in both states, they wouldn’t just show that Trump’s victory offers a sustainable path forward for Republicans in swing states. Victories in these Supreme Court races could prevent further interference in redistricting fights from liberal justices and allow the GOP to legislate free from the burden of an overbearing liberal court.
