How to watch Election Day’s six biggest races

Virginia: Democrats felt good about these races all year: They trusted former Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s ability to grind it out, they expected a backlash to the Trump administration, and they put Republicans on the defensive about DOGE layoffs in the DC suburbs.

Spanberger blew past GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears’s fundraising, introducing herself early as a pragmatic liberal who’d bring down costs. Her campaign used recordings of Earle-Sears at conservative events to portray her as an anti-abortion, anti-same-sex-marriage MAGA radical.

Republicans didn’t really catch a break until a big one: National Review’s scoop that Jay Jones, the Democratic nominee for attorney general, had texted a GOP colleague his homicidal thoughts about a former GOP legislator and his children. For two weeks, that was the focus of the coordinated Republican campaign.

Earle-Sears invoked a line Spanberger had been using — “let your rage fuel you,” urging Democrats to channel their Trump anger into election work — to accuse the Democratic ticket of fomenting violence.

Jones took severe hits to his polling and fundraising, but even after Earle-Sears used the sole televised debate to admonish Spanberger, the former congressman kept her lead. But Democrats didn’t fully abandon Jones, either, letting him onstage at Spanberger’s closing rally (though not at the same time as former President Barack Obama).

Both sides expect Spanberger to anchor her ticket. Democrats, who’ve filed candidates in every district, hope to expand their two-seat state House majority and win a governing trifecta — an essential victory if they want to re-draw congressional maps.

One place to watch: Chesterfield County, represented by Democratic lieutenant governor nominee Ghazala Hashmi. The county voted for Joe Biden in 2020, Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2021, and Kamala Harris by an even bigger margin last year.

Polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern.

Poll average: Abigail Spanberger (D): 52.5%, Winsome Earle-Sears (R): 43.2%

2021 result: Glenn Youngkin (R): 50.6%, Terry McAuliffe (D): 48.7%

New Jersey: Republicans are more optimistic about a win here. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is retiring, Democratic Montclair County Rep. Mikie Sherrill is running to replace him, and Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli never stopped running after narrowly losing to Murphy four years ago.

Registered Democrats built an early-vote lead almost exactly equal to Murphy’s in that race; Republicans have built more turnout operations since then, and since Trump lost the 2024 election here by single digits.

Those two elections, 2024 and 2021, have made Democrats more nervous about a race they’ve never trailed in.

Sherrill made a few early mistakes, like blanking on the top bill she’d want to pass for the state in a TV interview, which wound up in Ciattarelli and GOP PAC ads after Labor Day.

Democrats hit back by labeling Ciattarelli “high-tax Jack,” using a recording of his thoughts about a 10% sales tax to insist that he would pass one.

But Sherrill didn’t make any errors after the primary, and she capitalized on two federal news cycles: The shutdown and the president’s threat to kill funding for the Gateway Tunnel project connecting New Jersey and Manhattan.

Sherrill has always run ahead of her ticket in her stretch of the New York City suburbs, which has been moving towards Democrats. But the party lost significant ground last year in more diverse parts of North Jersey, like Paterson and Union City; Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Passaic County in 32 years, and the first since it became majority-minority.

Republicans cut into Democrats’ majority in the state Assembly four years ago before giving up those gains in 2023, when Ciattarelli wasn’t on the ballot.

Democrats want to hold their Assembly supermajority and claim one in the state Senate; Ciattarelli, meanwhile, is campaigning with downballot Republicans and hoping to flip the chamber.

Polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Poll average: Mikie Sherrill (D): 50.1%, Jack Ciattarelli (R): 45.5%

2021 result: Phil Murphy (D): 51.2%, Jack Ciattarelli (R): 48.0%

Texas’s 18th Congressional District: Houston voters will fill the safe Democratic House seat once held by Sylvester Turner, eight months after his death. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott rationalized the long vacancy, a boon to House Republicans, by questioning whether blue Harris County could hold a quick, fair election.

There were no problems with the early vote, when 8% of Houstonians showed up.

Sixteen candidates from multiple parties are on the ballot, but Republicans aren’t seriously contesting the seat, and three Democrats have led in polls: Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee, former city councilwoman Amanda Edwards, and state Rep. Jolanda Jones.

Liberal influencer Isaiah Martin, who got arrested during the primary for protesting the state GOP’s new gerrymander, has run well behind them. There were few policy disagreements throughout the long race, which will go to a December runoff if no candidate gets a majority.

Polls close at 7 p.m. Central.

California’s Proposition 50: Democrats are completely confident of victory for Gov. Gavin Newsom’s “anti-rigging” ballot measure, which would replace the state’s commission-drawn electoral map with one designed to eliminate five Republican congressional seats.

Republicans who threatened to match Newsom’s spending couldn’t make good on it; the governor collected an A-team of Democratic stars for ads and rallies that sold the measure as a way to save the 2026 election from Trump.

Democrats led in early mail voting, and the president never weighed in for Republicans. Polls close at 8 p.m. Pacific.

Poll average: Yes: 57.0%, No: 37.5%

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court: Voters will decide whether to retain three state supreme court justices for 10-year terms, an up-or-down vote that usually favors incumbents.

State Republicans have built a “No in November” campaign to beat them, and Democrats started fretting about the vote when a PAC funded by GOP mega-donor Jeff Yass began mailing voters literature with democracy-focused, anti-gerrymandering messages meant to appeal to liberals.

“We had to do our part to actually get Democrats and moderate Republicans and independents interested in this on its own,” state Democratic Party chairman Eugene DePasquale told Semafor last week. Gov. Josh Shapiro was the star of their TV campaign, which highlighted the state high court’s potential role in abortion law.

Both sides spent around $15 million combined on the races, by far a record; there are few other competitive municipal or county races driving turnout. (Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, seeking his third term, has barely campaigned against a Republican.)

Polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern.

New York City is the biggest of several cities where left-wing candidates could replace more centrist Democrats.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey is facing state Sen. Omar Fateh, who won local Democrats’ endorsement then watched it get retracted over a vote count challenge. Gov. Tim Walz has campaigned for Frey, and Fox News has christened Fateh “Minneapolis Mamdani.” (Both men are allied with the Democratic Socialists of America.)

In Seattle, Mayor Bruce Harrell faces left-wing transit activist Katie Wilson, who won more votes for him in the June primary; so did a progressive Democrat challenging the Republican city attorney.

Elsewhere, Republicans are trying to build on Trump’s stronger-than-expected urban performance last year, with varying degrees of difficulty. Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval easily out-ran Cory Bowman, the sitting vice president’s brother, in the first round of voting; in Dearborn, Republican Nagi Almudhegi is running against a Democratic mayor who endorsed the “uncommitted” Gaza protest movement, then watched Kamala Harris lose his city.

Some of Democrats’ down-ballot targets are places where they won for years, and lost in the 2021 backlash to higher crime and pandemic restrictions. That includes New York’s Nassau County, where GOP executive Bruce Blakeman is a loyal Trump ally, and Pennsylvania’s Erie County.

Republicans are targeting Lehigh and Northampton counties in northeast Pennsylvania, where Democratic executives are retiring but Trump won in 2024.

And Democrats trying to flip two seats on Georgia’s state utility commission, yet another test of whether their new, more highly-educated coalition can perform better when Trump is off the ballot.