A Guide To 2025's Statewide Elections

We have a live show coming up on November 3rd at the Comedy Cellar in New York City with Nate Silver and Clare Malone. Come join us for a rowdy election eve!

We are one week away from Election Day 2025, so this week we’re zooming in on the biggest contests of the year. Today it’s Virginia, New Jersey, and California. Later in the week we’ll take a detailed political tour of New York City’s vastly different neighborhoods.

In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger currently leads Republican Winsome Earle-Sears in the race for Governor by an average of 8 points. Underneath that top line number there’s plenty of variation, with recent polls ranging from a 5 point lead to a 13 point lead for Spanberger. The Attorney General’s race, in which Democrat Jay Jones has had to apologize for text messages that promoted political violence, is significantly closer.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherill leads Republican Jack Ciattarelli by 6 points on average. Most polls there have shown a mid-single digit race. In the legislatures in both states, Democrats appear assured to maintain their majorities or grow them.

We also take a look at areas of Virginia and New Jersey that could give us and indication of how different parts of the electorate are reacting to Trump 2.0. There are the wealthy Northern Virginia and Northern Jersey suburbs, large Latino communities also in northern Jersey, and large Black communities in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

If you stick around until the end, we also get to the latest Graham Platner polling in Maine.

With me to do it all is Chaz Nuttycombe, executive director of State Navigate, which covers state-level politics around the country from a data perspective, and Mary Radcliffe, who also works at State Navigate and runs the new polling aggregation site FiftyPlusOne.