Analysis | What do the past few weeks mean for the state of U.S. politics?
Graphic by Easton Clark, Photo Editor
Election night in 2025 delivered big for the Democrats. Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City. The trifecta in Virginia. New Jersey’s governor race. California passing Prop 50. Everything fell into place, giving the party momentum that had been missing in the 2024 presidential cycle.
National polls show that people are not happy with President Donald Trump, and with that comes some disfavor for Republicans at large.
Tariffs have hit the economy hard. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is carrying out large-scale raids, and some of the scenes are shocking, even to those who voted for a crackdown on immigration. And, until recently, the government seemed to be in an endless shutdown — which many blamed Trump for.
John Compton, chair of the political science department at Chapman, said that all these factors contributed to the Democrats’ large-scale success at the ballot box. It follows a pattern that Compton said is consistent in democracies.
“You elect somebody who’s super ideological… and they go out and do exactly what they said they were going to do, and they immediately get hammered in the polls,” Compton said. “People are like, ‘We didn’t want you to go that far.’”
He also said that the biggest issue for voters is the state of the economy. A core focus of Trump’s 2024 campaign was making the country more affordable. But now, there is a shrinking job market and the president’s tariffs are making consumer goods cost more.
Democratic candidates in 2025 ran on a platform of fixing the economy. There were differing opinions on how to do so — Mamdani’s democratic socialist policies vary from those of the more moderate Mikie Sherill in New Jersey — but it all came back to the main issue: affordability.
“Trump, in a lot of ways, teed the Democrats up for an attack on his economic policies,” Compton said. “I think those are winning issues for the Democrats. I think you’re going to see virtually all Democrats running on those issues in 2026.”
This cohesion on the biggest issue, and providing some solution for it, is a large reason why the Democratic Party will likely move towards a “big tent” style, according to Compton. They will have to embrace both the centrist wing, and the more progressive Bernie Sanders/Mamdani wing if they want to win elections.
Compton doesn’t believe Mamdani’s mayoral win will have a large ideological impact on the party or the sentiment of U.S. citizens in general. It may have been historic, but he doesn’t think the Democrats can win by fully shifting towards more far-left ideas.
Other political analysts, however, disagree with that point. The Hill published an article after Mamdani won, arguing that his victory “provided a road map for a new generation of politicians.” His grassroots rise — without the backing of corporate or billionaire funding — mirrors the contempt that Americans hold for the current election funding system.
Seventy-nine percent of Americans — and 74% of Republicans — want the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which gave corporations the ability to spend unlimited money on campaign finance, overturned. Compton, however, said that while most Americans agree on this issue, it also ranks low on the scale of importance for most voters.
“Economic issues swamp everything else in terms of what’s important,” Compton said.
Economic concerns have come even further into the forefront as the government’s shutdown became the longest in the nation’s history. The shutdown started because Democratic senators had the leverage on a spending bill, and they wanted to extend expiring tax credits for citizens that make their health insurance cheaper.
However, seven Democratic senators and one independent flipped their vote, allowing for the bill to pass to the House of Representatives. The deal that they cut with Republicans did not include the subsidies that the shutdown started over — instead, the extension of those credits will be voted on in December.
Multiple left-leaning political commentators and experts have chastised the Democrats in the Senate who flipped their votes.
Democrat strategist Mike Nellis said the decision reinforced the belief that Democrats are “too weak to deliver,” while “The Daily Show” host Jon Stewart said they “squandered their leverage, sapped their voters’ enthusiasm and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.”
Terry Moran, who was fired earlier this year from ABC News after calling Trump and Stephen Miller “haters,” wrote in his Substack newsletter that “it never pays to surrender to Donald Trump.”
However, Compton didn’t see it as a moment of genuine weakness from the Democrats, but as more of an inevitability. While he knows many within the party will be upset with the decision, it ultimately won’t change the underlying political sentiment.
“It was probably a little overly optimistic to think Trump would concede on that (issue),” Compton said.
In terms of how the government shutdown is affecting the public perception of both parties, Compton said it hurt Republicans and Trump more than it did Democrats.
“Democrats did a pretty good job of framing this as being about Trump wanting to drive up health insurance costs,” he said.
As for California’s special election on Prop 50 — which will allow Congressional maps to be redrawn to give Democrats more seats in response to Texas’ gerrymandering efforts for their maps — Compton doesn’t believe it will change much in terms of the day-to-day lives of Californians. It does, however, play into Governor Gavin Newsom’s potential bid to be the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential nominee.
By battling Trump and the Republican Party on a national stage, Newsom can be the political figure that people on the left look to in the perceived battle for democracy. But, as of now, Compton said he believes the Democrats will move to a more moderate candidate that won’t shake things up as much.
As for California, large-scale ICE raids are still playing out in Los Angeles and Orange County on a daily basis. This is another hit that the Trump administration is taking at the moment from polls and voters. Scenes of people being tackled and put in unmarked vans aren’t playing well.
“People thought they were voting for the first Trump administration, where you build a border wall and restrict (some) asylum claims,” Compton said. “But I think that they are really surprised that Trump has gone as far as he has with the ICE raids.”
The positive sentiment around Trump being a savior for many issues in the U.S. has faded in the past year. The disillusionment around the Epstein Files, coupled with economic and social issues, has raised his disapproval rating. After endorsing Andrew Cuomo in New York and Jack Ciattarelli in New Jersey, Trump’s power over the people may be dwindling. It is up to the Democrats to capitalize on that further in 2026.
