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Donald Trump sought to downplay his party’s defeats at the ballot box on Wednesday, one day after Democrats swept elections across the US in a sharp rebuke of the president and his Republican party.
“It was not expected to be a victory, it was very Democrat areas,” the president told senators he had summoned to a hastily arranged breakfast meeting at the White House on Wednesday morning. “But I don’t think it was good for Republicans . . . I’m not sure it was good for anybody.”
From coast to coast, Democrats dominated the closely watched off-year elections that were seen as the first big electoral test of Trump’s second term in the White House.
Voters in New York City turned out in record numbers to embrace the democratic socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani, while in New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic candidates for governor defied opinion polls to rack up double-digit victories.
Trump blamed the ongoing federal government shutdown — now the longest in US history — and his own absence from the ticket for the party’s failures.
In a post to his Truth Social platform, he wished himself a “happy anniversary” for his win in last year’s presidential election and insisted the US economy was “booming.”
But Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma’s Republican governor, said the scale of the Democrats’ wins was “shocking”. It was “kind of a butt-whipping” for the president’s party, Stitt told the Financial Times.
Analysts said Republicans’ across-the-board losses showed voters were largely dissatisfied with the president’s performance 10 months into his second term.
“There are just a lot of voters of all different shapes, sizes and colours, who are ticked off by Trump,” said veteran political analyst Charlie Cook.
With one year to go until midterm elections, when control of the US Congress will be up for grabs, Tuesday’s results were also a shot in the arm for Democrats who have for months struggled to mount effective opposition to Trump and his Maga agenda.
“Let last night ring like a siren in Republican ears,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. “The American people are tired of Donald Trump and his willy-nilly policies, raising their costs and just helping his very wealthy friends.”
Tuesday night’s most watched election was in New York City, where a record-high turnout for a mayoral vote propelled Mamdani, who tapped discontent with the cost of living in the city, to victory.
Mamdani, who will be New York City’s first Muslim mayor, told reporters on Wednesday he was ready to go toe-to-toe with the president, who has called him a “communist” and threatened to cut federal funds for the city.
“I will not mince my words when it comes to President Trump,” Mamdani said as he vowed to challenge the president’s crackdown on undocumented migrants in the city.
“If [Trump] is looking to persecute, or prosecute or punish the people of this city by virtue of who they are or where they live or where they came from, then I will fight him on that,” Mamdani said.
Trump wasted no time in repeatedly attacking Mamdani, telling a business forum in Miami on Wednesday afternoon that the Florida city would “soon be the refuge for those fleeing communism in New York City”.
“After last night’s results, the decision facing all Americans could not be more clear. We have a choice between communism and common sense,” Trump added.
“Let’s see how a communist does in New York. We’re going to see how that works out. We’ll help him. We want New York to be successful. We’ll help him a little bit, maybe.”
In New Jersey and Virginia on Tuesday night, two more centrist Democratic candidates, Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger, scored double-digit margins over Republican rivals to win governor races. Democrats also notched up legislative victories in Pennsylvania and California.
Trump used Wednesday morning’s White House breakfast to pressure senators to scrap the Senate’s filibuster, a long-running convention that requires most pieces of legislation to pass a 60-vote threshold to become law.
He also continued to blame Democrats for the shutdown.
Opinion polls show voters blame Trump and congressional Republicans more than Democrats for the impasse, which has furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers without pay, scaled back government services and led to a lapse in welfare benefits for tens of millions of needy Americans.
“We must get the government back open soon, and really immediately, we have to get it open,” Trump said.
Additional reporting by Brooke Masters and Guy Chazan in New York
