Election Day in Texas, California, New Jersey and New York City : NPR

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

We are entering the second month of the federal shutdown, and no significant steps have yet been taken to end it. However, they could come after Tuesday. Domenico Montanaro, NPR’s senior political editor and correspondent, joins us now to explain. Hello, Domenico.

DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, Ayesha.

RASCOE: So Tuesday is Election Day and there are off-year races in a number of states. What should these results look like to change the dynamic regarding closure?

MONTANARO: Well, I mean, these elections are really the first big opportunity for people to side with one party or another at the ballot box this year. And if we see significant or definitive results one way or the other, that might make leaders in Washington want to act or feel some pressure to negotiate, because so far all we’ve seen is stalemate. That’s largely because, I mean, the polls haven’t pointed the finger of blame in either direction in a really definitive way. This is different from five years ago, when we experienced the longest shutdown in history. This one seems to go way beyond that. At the time, Trump received a larger majority of blame. Although I will say that the number of people blaming Republicans has increased slightly since this shutdown began, so Democrats feel good about talking about a solid problem in health care, and these subsidies expiring at the end of the year that could mean tens of millions of people seeing their health care prices rise significantly.

RASCOE: President Trump isn’t on the ballot, but he kind of is. Is it a boost for Republican candidates or a hindrance?

MONTANARO: Well, I mean, off-year and midterm elections are generally not kind to the president’s party, and it’s even worse when the president has an approval rating below 50%, and that’s certainly the case for Trump and the Republicans. His popularity rating is between 39 and 41%, a considerable drop since the start of his second term. People are unhappy with the cost of living and prices and, you know, they think this administration has gone too far with things like mass deportations. Republicans don’t think so, but a large majority of independents and Democrats certainly do. And independents, we know, play a key role in these important swing districts and states. Trump is certainly unpopular in Virginia and New Jersey, where we have two big gubernatorial elections on Tuesday, and where those states lean left. So we’ve seen Democrats talk a lot about Trump and put him in their ads. The Republicans, on the other hand, are trying to avoid it and make these elections more local, if that means anything to you.

RASCOE: The only House seat on Tuesday’s ballot – Tuesday’s ballots are the Texas one that’s filled in a special election, so we won’t see any real changes in the balance of power in that chamber, but there is Proposition 50 in California.

MONTANARO: Yeah. And this could be Tuesday’s most important election. We don’t often say that about a ballot initiative, but it could be true this time because it could have real consequences for control of the House. You know, the problem here is that California is mandating its redistricting by an independent commission, but California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is a Democrat, is trying to counterbalance President Trump’s demand for Republicans in places like Texas and other red states to squeeze out more Republican districts in a rare mid-decade redistricting. This ballot initiative, Proposition 50, would temporarily waive that requirement and give state Democrats the opportunity to try to create more Democratic districts. So this is the arms race we’re seeing in redistricting for 2026 in next year’s midterm elections and the question of who controls the House. And every seat is important right now, because there’s only a three-seat majority with Republicans in control, and we’re in such an unstable time with narrower and narrower margins than we’ve ever seen in our history.

RASCOE: You’re monitoring New Jersey for signs of the GOP’s relationship with Latino voters. Has this changed since the elections? Is this what you are going to try to see?

MONTANARO: I mean, it’s really interesting here, because Trump lost New Jersey in the 2024 presidential election, but it was a lot closer than four years earlier. And one of the main reasons for that was how much Latinos were turning to Trump. This is especially evident in many North Jersey counties that have large Latino populations. Take a place like Passaic County, where Paterson is, where I used to teach, by the way. The county is almost half Latino, according to the census, and Trump was the first Republican to win this county since 1992. And by the way, he blew out there in 2016 when he first ran and lost it in 2020 as well.

So this could be a good first test of Trump’s support among Latinos and whether they continue to support him and the Republican Party, because polls have shown that Trump and the party are in free fall against Hispanics, not only because of mass deportations, where the administration is going after more than just hardened criminals, as they said they would, but also because of prices. This is the main reason why so many people crossed the border and voted for Trump in the first place because he promised to bring them down, and we’ve seen anything but real attention from Trump on this.

RASCOE: And what about the Democrats? What are you seeing and hearing as Tuesday approaches?

MONTANARO: Yeah. I mean, we have a real difference in style for the types of Democrats who are running in some of these races. Take a place like New York, where there’s a major mayoral race, and you have someone like Zohran Mamdani who has really captured the imagination of progressives with his focus on affordability and housing. His message really resonated with young voters, but Republicans also turned him into a lightning rod, calling him an extremist and radical because of his views on Israel and his past comments about defunding the police, which he has disavowed, saying security is a top priority. But compare that to the way someone like Abigail Spanberger runs for governor of Virginia and, you know, in a much more reserved style. And I think that not only Mamdani’s victory, but also how he governs if he wins, will really determine how far Democrats go with his message next year, or whether they move more toward someone like Spanberger.

RASCOE: This is Domenico Montanaro from NPR. Dominique, thank you very much.

MONTANARO: Hey, you got it.

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