Tuesday night's big Democratic wins weren't just due to massive turnout, The New York Times writes, but because the Democrats managed to win over Trump supporters.
Writer Nate Cohn notes that while Democrats have been successful in attracting "highly engaged, highly educated voters," on Tuesday, they also succeeded in attracting "more irregular and less educated voters" who only vote during presidential elections.
The Democrats won Virginia and New Jersey governor races by wide margins, Cohn says, not only because more Democratic voters showed up, but because "the Democratic candidates also succeeded at winning over a modest but meaningful sliver of President Trump’s supporters, based on exit polls and authoritative voter file records."
The data, Cohn says, shows that these "party switchers" contributed to the huge wins.
"Democratic gains were driven slightly more by flipping Mr. Trump’s supporters than by benefiting from a superior turnout, at least for Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey," he writes.
"Together, the combination of a more Democratic electorate and success among those swing voters was enough to turn light blue Virginia and New Jersey into Democratic romps," he adds.
The wins allowed the Democrats to reverse the loss the party experienced among a key bloc of voters in 2024, too, Cohn says.
"Many of Trump’s new Hispanic supporters from 2024 stayed home and many others returned to the Democrats," he writes.
According to exit polls, Hispanic voters "snapped back toward Democrats in both states."
Exit polls show that Spanberger and Sherrill "won so decisively because they also flipped a crucial sliver of voters who said they supported Mr. Trump in 2024," Cohn writes.
"The exit polls in New Jersey found that Sherrill won a whopping 18 percent of Mr. Trump’s Hispanic support in the state (no figures were reported for Virginia, where the Hispanic vote is smaller)," Cohn notes.
Together, it was enough for Sherrill to win Hispanic voters by 37 points, according to the exit polls. Exit polls also showed that they both won 7 percent of Trump's supporters.
"It may not seem like much to flip 7 percent of Mr. Trump’s backers, but consider: When a voter flips, it adds one voter to one party and also deducts one from the other, making it twice as significant as turning out a new voter," Cohn says.
Voter records also show that "Sherrill benefited from Democrats’ improved turnout, but she benefited even more from flipping some of Mr. Trump’s 2024 supporters to her side," Cohn says.
And while Cohn says that previous elections allowed him to make predictions based on how people voted in 2020 because "voters were consistent in their party support, and Democratic strength in those races was being driven by turnout alone." Bu this time it was different.
"My old trick wouldn’t have worked in these New Jersey counties in this election. Too many Trump voters flipped to the Democrats," he says.