Exit polls in the four major elections held in the United States on Tuesday, November 4, show that dissatisfaction with mounting economic hardship and hostility to Trump’s efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship were the most common motivation for the sweeping victories won by Democratic Party candidates and a statewide referendum in California pushed by the Democrats.

Four out of ten voters in New Jersey and Virginia, the two states electing governors, said they cast their ballots to show opposition to Trump, according to the AP Voter Poll, which comprises a huge sample of nearly 20,000 voters interviewed after voting by mail or at polling stations.

In New Jersey, Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill defeated former state legislator and Trump acolyte Jack Ciattarelli by a much larger than expected margin, 56.2 percent to 43.2 percent, with record turnout for the off-year election. Of those casting ballots, 40 percent said they voted “to oppose Trump,” while only 13 percent said they voted “to support” him. Trump effusively endorsed Ciattarelli—and vice versa—but Trump did not personally campaign in the state or anywhere else in the country.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger (left) speaks on stage in Richmond, Virginia after she was declared the winner of the Virginia governor’s race and New Jersey Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill (right) during a news conference in Trenton, New Jersey, Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025. [AP Photo/Seth Wenig/Stephanie Scarbrough]

In Virginia, Democratic former Representative Abigail Spanberger defeated Republican Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears by an even wider margin, 57.5 percent to 42.5 percent. Some 38 percent of voters said they cast their ballots to oppose Trump, while only 16 percent voted mainly to show support for him.

In California, where more than 10 million cast ballots in a referendum, approving a Democratic-drafted redistricting plan by an overwhelming margin, more than half of those voting, some 51 percent, said they voted “yes” to oppose Trump, while only 8 percent said they voted “no” to support him. Trump lost California by nearly 3.2 million votes in 2024.

Beyond anti-Trump sentiment, exit polls found that nearly two-thirds of those voting were unhappy with the direction of the country, with that discontent focused particularly on economic questions, whether worded as “affordability,” the cost of living being too high, or paychecks not covering essential expenses. 

Working class living standards, which declined throughout the Biden administration, have continued their downward slide, spurred on by Trump’s tariffs, which have begun to drive up unemployment as well as consumer prices. 

Social conditions have been steadily worsened by savage budget cuts imposed by Trump, first through the mechanism of his “Department of Government Efficiency,” run by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, then through the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, and now through the federal shutdown, which has cut off paychecks for 1.5 million federal workers and slashed vital social services like food stamps.

The Democratic Party was the undeserving beneficiary of the mounting social discontent, as Democratic candidates campaigned as advocates of “affordability,” even though they support the capitalist system and its profit-driven attacks on working people just as much as Trump does.

One remarkable fact revealed in recent polls, but little commented on in the corporate media, is that the Democratic Party made gains despite having an even more unfavorable public standing than the Republicans. For most of this year, the Democratic Party was viewed favorably by less than 30 percent of those polled, compared to roughly 40 percent for the Republicans. Yet these same respondents said they would vote for a Democrat over a Republican in the next congressional election.

These figures mean that a sizeable portion of the American population has an unfavorable opinion of the Democratic Party because it refuses to fight Trump. Faced with a binary choice, under the corporate-controlled two-party system, they hold their noses and vote for the Democrats as the only available alternative to the fascist Republicans.

It was this dynamic that played out in the election Tuesday. According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, 75 percent of Americans described themselves as “frustrated” with the Democratic Party, including a remarkable two-thirds of those who described themselves as Democrats. Only 29 percent of Democrats said they were “proud” of the party they voted for.

The election results only deepen the political crisis of American capitalism, torn by social contradictions that cannot find resolution through a political system tightly controlled by the financial aristocracy, with both parties moving to the right, supporting policies that attack the jobs, living standards and democratic rights of the population.

Politico, in an admiring summary of the 2025 election results, described the Democratic Party as a “spooks-to-socialists” coalition that was broad-based. The self-described socialist is New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. The spooks are the two new governors-elect, who are among the “CIA Democrats” first elected to Congress in 2018.

Spanberger is a former CIA undercover operative in Europe, while Sherrill was a Navy helicopter pilot assigned to sensitive NATO missions before becoming a federal prosecutor. The increasing influence of the military-intelligence apparatus within the Democratic Party is shown by the fact that CIA Democrats elected to House seats have moved up to higher offices, now holding two US Senate seats and two state governorships, with several more preparing such campaigns in 2026.

Spanberger is notorious for having told a telephone conference of the entire House Democratic caucus, after setbacks in the 2020 election, that the party should never again allow the word “socialist” to be spoken by any of its candidates—except, presumably, to denounce the notion that there could be any alternative to capitalism.

As for the supposed socialists, Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America faction of the Democratic Party, has already begun to make his peace with Wall Street and the NYPD and has offered to hold discussions with Trump. 

One of his leading supporters, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told MSNBC Tuesday night that she would have no problem with combining “socialists” and CIA agents in the same party. “Our assignment everywhere is to send the strongest fighters for the working class wherever possible,” she said. “In some places—like Virginia, for the gubernatorial seat—that’s going to look like Abigail Spanberger. In New York City, unequivocally, it’s Zohran Mamdani.” Ocasio-Cortez sent Spanberger a sizeable campaign donation.

The day after the election debacle, Senate Republicans met with Trump in the White House. Trump had already posted on social media his own explanation for the defeat: “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT.” He repeated that claim to the senators, telling them, while reporters were still in the room, that his absence from the ballot was “the main reason” Republicans lost. 

Given that opposition to the fascist president was the top motivation for voters on November 4, this is rubbish. Moreover, Trump refused to make a single public appearance for any Republican candidate this election season, a tacit admission of his own deep unpopularity.

The other explanation, voiced by congressional Republicans as well as Trump, was that the elections were held in “blue” states—those traditionally voting for the Democrats—and therefore did not constitute a genuine verdict on the performance of the Trump administration. But the anti-Trump vote stood out, not just in heavily Democratic areas, but Georgia, where two Democrats were elected to the state Public Service Commission, for the first time in three decades, and in Pennsylvania, where all three Democratic-supported members of the state Supreme Court were confirmed for new 10-year terms.

Trump also sought to discredit the election process itself, claiming, as usual without the slightest evidence, that the vote results on November 4 were the result of “rigged elections,” particularly focusing on California, where nearly all votes are cast by mail. The purpose of such claims is not only to discredit future elections where the Republicans lose but to prepare the political conditions for putting an end to elections entirely.

The president has hinted as much in recent comments, calling on Senate Republicans to put an end to the filibuster. When some senators warned that without the filibuster, the Republicans would not be able to block legislation they opposed in a future Democratic-controlled Congress, Trump replied that they should take action to ensure the Democrats never return to power.

“We will pass legislation at levels you’ve never seen before, and it will be impossible to beat us,” he said. “Now, if we do what I’m saying, you’ll—they’ll never—they’ll most likely never attain power because we will have passed every single thing that you can imagine…”

This vision of endless one-party dominance means a Trump-imposed dictatorship.

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