'Bleak picture' for Republicans as Democrats make gains in deep-red districts: report
Democrats in New York delivered a stark warning to Republicans in the 2025 elections, revealing a seismic shift in voter sentiment that could spell disaster for the GOP in the upcoming 2026 midterms.
A Politico analysis of 268 county, town, and village races painted a grim picture for Republicans. Democrats achieved an average 10-point increase in their electoral margin, flipping an astounding 50 seats across the state. In Oswego County, a region where Trump won by 27 points in 2024, Democrats gained five seats. Similar victories occurred in Ulster and Onondaga counties, with Democrats securing their largest majorities in decades.
"For Republicans, the outcome painted a bleak picture: GOP candidates flipped one county legislative seat in the entire state," Politico reported.
The party's electoral gains stretched far beyond traditional strongholds, penetrating deep red towns and rural areas with unprecedented success, and local candidates consistently highlighted economic anxiety as the primary driver of voter discontent.
"Republicans who said Trump ran on 'I'm going to lower the price of eggs,' and that isn't happening," said Debbie Shannon, who defeated a Republican legislator in Steuben County.
The electoral landscape showed dramatic Democratic gains in historically Republican territories. The Rochester suburbs witnessed unprecedented shifts, with Democratic supervisors winning in Penfield for the first time in more than a generation, in Greece for the first time in over a century and Perinton for the first time since the Civil War.
Democratic votes in 118 municipal executive races outside New York City grew from 1.3 million to 1.6 million — a 22 percent increase — while Republican votes barely increased by 1 percent, and the typical upstate or Long Island Democrat, who would have previously lost by 10 points, now secured 50 percent of the vote.
Even in areas where Republicans traditionally performed well, the underlying trends favored Democrats. Nassau County saw Republicans win a high-profile race, but Democrats improved their performance in 17 of 21 executive offices on Long Island.
The implications for the 2026 midterms are profound. Republicans face an increasingly challenging path to statewide victory, with their traditional strategies of mobilizing rural voters and minimizing Democratic margins in urban areas seemingly falling apart.
"People were just so sick and tired of the divisiveness at the federal level... that they were happy to not demonize Democrats, as Democrats have been demonized in our town in the past," said Lisa Moore, who won the supervisor’s race in South Bristol.