by Zaid Jilani Nov 04, 2025
In my state of Georgia, the local Democratic Party has been taking losses for 20 years. That’s the last time the party was able to win a statewide, non-federal race (our Senators and former President Biden were the exception, running in nationalized and federal races).
For many Democrats, living in Georgia felt kind of like being a Mariners fan, you were set for perpetual disappointment.
But tonight, that changed. Democrats won both races they competed in for the Public Service Commission, the body that regulates public utilities in Georgia. They even picked up a county or two that went for Trump by double digits during the 2024 election. It was a real race even in my county, which is so deeply red it looks like the Soviet Union’s flag on every electoral map (it is weird that red means communist everywhere in the world except here, right?).
The reason why Democrats were able to break through is because voters in Georgia were outraged about a series of price hikes that it seemed like the Republican incumbents were simply rubber stamping; this was happening as long-delayed projects like Vogle (a local nuclear plant) cost the state more and more money.
And Georgia voters weren’t alone. In pretty much all of tonight’s elections, voters spoke with one voice: they don’t feel like they can afford the good life. And the reason Democrats were able to capitalize on that message is because they ran campaigns about it — emphasizing things like power bill hikes in Georgia and health care and housing costs in places like New York City and Virginia.
The Republicans, on the other hand, were stuck with the unenviable task of defending the Trump administration, which has presided over a decidedly mediocre economy. But some Republicans tried to deflect from the issue altogether.
Virginia Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, a Lt. Gov. who was seeking a promotion to the Governor’s mansion, blanketed the airwaves with ads about transgender sports issues. By one estimate, she spent $30 million attacking the Democrats over transgender issues.
Yet in the end it was a massive flop. Earle-Sears lost the election by double digits.
We’ve heard for years that we are entering an era of post-economic voting. The culture war is all that matters now. People are voting expressively to affirm their identities or put down someone else’s.
While you can’t deny that this is a real factor in politics, it’s simply not true that people don’t care about whether they can put food on the table or afford a roof over their head. In the end, it’s still the economy, stupid.