New Jersey and Virginia 2025 gubernatorial races test Trump’s agenda

New Jersey and Virginia are the only two states to hold gubernatorial elections the year after the presidential election.

These elections, which traditionally attract outsized national attention, are seen by political experts as key barometers ahead of the following year’s midterm showdowns for the U.S. House and Senate.

And this year, the 2025 election is seen as a crucial first test of President Donald Trump’s unprecedented and relentless second-term agenda.

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President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House, October 6, 2025, in Washington, DC (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

They also offer Democrats their first big chance at redemption, after last year’s electoral setbacks, when the party lost control of the White House and Senate and failed to regain a majority in the House.

FIVE KEY RACES TO WATCH IN 2025

Democrats in both open-seat gubernatorial races aim to win back the Virginia governor’s office and maintain control of the New Jersey governor’s office.

New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Mikie Sherrill, right, and Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli, on stage at the start of their second and final debate, October 8, 2025, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (Paul Steinhauser/Fox News Digital)

Looking at the bigger picture, veteran Democratic strategist Chris Moyer says the 2025 election is a “test case” on the cost of living argument.

Trump and the Republicans actually used the issue of affordability to their advantage in last year’s elections.

“This is really an opportunity to look at how to turn the cost of living argument against the ruling party and the president, after they used it so effectively last year,” Moyer told Fox News, pointing to soaring health care and electricity costs.

Virginia Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, left, and his Democratic rival, former Rep. Abigail Spanberger. (Pool/Getty Images)

But longtime Republican strategist Ryan Williams views the 2025 election as a “standalone election.”

“It’s an anomaly,” he told Fox News Digital. “They don’t always predict a trend for the midterm elections.”

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And he added that “by the time the midterm elections come around, no one is thinking about what happened in New Jersey and Virginia.”

But he noted that a victory in blue-leaning New Jersey for Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli, where the Republican Party has made gains in voter registration over the past four years, “could show that working-class states like New Jersey tend to lean toward Trump and Republicans.”