The latest 2021 election results

Gov. Phil Murphy thanked the voters of New Jersey for helping him make history Wednesday following projections from CNN and other media organizations declaring him the winner.

“I am humbled to be the first Democratic governor reelected to the great state of New Jersey since my dear friend the late Gov. Brendan Byrne did this in 1977. Thank you, New Jersey! Thank you for putting your trust in our team for another four years,” Murphy said during a speech. “So, tonight I renew my promise to you, whether you voted for me or not, to work every single day of the next four years to keep moving us forward; forward with renewed optimism to ensure greater opportunities for all the 9.3 million who call the Garden State their home.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has become the first Democratic governor in more than four decades to win reelection in the Garden State, CNN projects Wednesday, narrowly surviving a closer-than-expected race that dragged well past Election Day.

Murphy’s victory over Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli, albeit slim, defied the state’s trend of voting in the party out of the White House in its off-year gubernatorial contests. Virginia – the only other with odd-year gubernatorial elections – held to that historical pattern on Tuesday, electing Republican Glenn Youngkin in a resounding blow to Democrats who had made recent gains in the state.

But like Virginia, the results in New Jersey – another state that President Joe Biden carried by double digits in 2020 – are raising alarms for Democrats who will be fighting to hold onto the suburbs in next year’s midterm elections.

Republican Jason Miyares will win the attorney general’s race in Virginia, CNN projects, solidifying the Republican sweep of statewide offices in Tuesday’s election.

Democrat Mark Herring conceded in a tweet this afternoon, saying: “This afternoon I called Jason Miyares to congratulate him on his victory and assure him that my team and I will do all we can to ensure a smooth and effective transition. He will be accepting a role and leading an office that has tremendous capacity for good in the lives of Virginians.”

President Biden shared his opinion on why Virginia governor’s race, which CNN projects Republican Glenn Youngkin won over Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

“No governor in Virginia has ever won when he’s of the same or he or she is the same party of the sitting president,” Biden said during remarks at the White House Wednesday afternoon. “What I do know is, I do know that people want us to get things done. They want us to get things done. And that’s why I am continuing to push very hard for the Democratic party to move along and pass my infrastructure bill and my Build Back Better bill.”

Biden also chalked up the loss to a “whole range of things,” including the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, he said.

“People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things from Covid to school to jobs to a whole range of things,” the President said. “And the cost of a gallon of gasoline. And so if I’m able to pass, sign into law my Build Back Better initiative, I’m in a position where you’ll see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly.”

Asked if takes responsibility for McAuliffe’s loss or if he thought the Democrat would have won if his Build Back Better agenda passed before Election Day, Biden said: “Well, I think we should have passed before Election Day. But I’m not sure that I would be able to have changed the number of very conservative folks who turned out in the red districts who were Trump voters. But maybe, maybe.”

A Biden adviser acknowledged to CNN that Terry McAuliffe’s loss in Virginia is a warning sign for Democrats’ chances in the midterms next year, but cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from a single election.

The adviser also argued that McAuliffe’s loss makes clear that Democrats can’t simply run against former President Trump to win elections going forward. (This despite Biden doing exactly that when he campaigned alongside McAuliffe last week.)

“It’s incumbent on Democrats to be loud and clear about what we’re for and not just running against Donald Trump,” the Biden adviser said. “It’s also clear that voters are unhappy about inaction and this drives home the point that Democrats in Congress should move quickly on our agenda.”

The adviser said that Biden’s team is optimistic that many of the headwinds McAuliffe faced in Virginia on Tuesday will be improved in time for the midterms next year: The pandemic is waning and White House officials believe Congress will soon pass the infrastructure and reconciliation packages.

That being said, Biden advisers today are taking stock of the loss in Virginia and a too-close-for-comfort outcome in New Jersey, largely channeling that energy into getting Biden’s legislative agenda passed.

Minneapolis election officials reported Wednesday that Mayor Jacob Frey will be reelected, based on unofficial results of ranked-choice tabulation. 

Former Minnesota state Rep. Kate Knuth finished with the second most votes in the final round, according to the unofficial data.

Frey was fending off challenges from 16 candidates. The Minneapolis mayor’s race touched on issues like affordable housing, the climate crisis and rent control, but the debate centered on the historic problems faced by the city’s police department and the question of how to make police more accountable to residents.

The most progressive candidates and allied groups increasingly framed the race as a referendum on Frey’s handling of the city’s police department and whether he did enough to rein in what critics perceive as over-policing by the department before George Floyd’s death.

Frey was endorsed by prominent Democrats, including Gov. Tim Walz, Sen. Amy Klobuchar and state Attorney General Keith Ellison.

CNN’s Maeve Reston contributed reporting to this post. 

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy’s team is still waiting for the race to be called the day after election day — and they remain confident it will be for them – but they are already trying to assess what went wrong. 

For now, an obvious conclusion from the Murphy team is their people simply didn’t show up, and the other guy’s supporters did. 

A Murphy adviser said it is noteworthy to them that places like Hoboken had a fraction of the turnout compared to four years ago, while GOP areas like Ocean County had robust turnout. 

This adviser said while it is early to diagnose in detail why exactly enthusiasm wasn’t there for them this time around, they pointed to one issue as having been an animating factor that ultimately helped Jack Ciattarelli – masks and vaccines. 

“You saw astronomical turnout in places like Ocean (County) where people were up in arms on masks and vaccines,” the adviser said. “What you see is that people who are upset about vaccines and masks were more likely to vote on that than the people who were happy with his progress.”

CNN projects that Jason Mariner will win the Republican special primary in Florida’s 20th Congressional District and advance to the general election on Jan. 11.

In a district where President Biden won 77% of the vote, the Democratic primary remains too early to call. In that race, Dale Holness currently holds a 12 vote lead over Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.

Some background: Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings, Florida’s longest-serving member of Congress, died in April. A crowded field of Democrats is vying for the nomination in the 20th District in southeast part of the state that includes parts of Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. It is one of the most Democratic-leaning districts in the state and expected to stay in their control after the general election on Jan. 11, 2022.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday that “last night was a difficult evening for Democrats” and the results strongly rebuke President Biden and Democrat’s policies.

“The American people will not stand for this,” McConnell said in floor remarks. “That’s what voters told Democrats last night all across the country.”

He continued to say, “The results from different parts of our country demonstrate that this was in large part a referendum on national issues. But it’s not too late. Democrats should listen to the voters: drop this reckless taxing and spending spree, and stop trying to ram through a socialist transformation that the American people never asked for.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio congratulated Eric Adams on becoming mayor-elect during a news conference Wednesday morning.

Adams, a retired New York Police Department captain who embraced a public safety message, will be the second Black mayor in the city’s history, after the late David Dinkins.

“We saw democracy in action yesterday and I want to offer my congratulations to Mayor-elect Eric Adams. I’m really, really excited about what Eric’s going to be doing for New York City going forward. This is a really good day for our city. Overwhelmingly, the people of this city said Eric Adams is the right choice to lead us into the future. And I can tell you – I know him well, I’ve known him a long time. I think he’s going to be an exceptional mayor,” de Blasio said.

De Blasio went on to say that he looks forward to “helping and supporting in any way over these next weeks as he gets ready.”

“I think it’s going to be an example of a really great handoff. Eric Adams is going to take us to the next level and help bring this recovery forward in our city. It’s a good day for New York City,” de Blasio said. 

CNN’s Gregory Krieg contributed reporting to this post. 

A source close to the White House argued the results in last night’s election showed that voters were expressing frustration with the lack of action in Washington and used the Democratic Party’s loss as a call to action on President Biden’s agenda.

“Voters were clear that they were unhappy with inaction and nitpicking,” the source said. “And Democrats widely agree that there is greater impetus to go ahead, faster, with bills that will be economic game-changers for middle class families and ensure the economy delivers for hard-working people in their daily lives, not just those at the top.”

“If voters are frustrated with inaction, the obvious response is to be more decisive and pass bills based on an agenda for the middle class that received a record-breaking 81 million votes last year,” the source added. “And there’s a strong consensus about that across the party. Doing less is plainly the opposite of what people want.”

Minneapolis Elections reports that Question 1 has passed based on unofficial results.

The measure gives the mayor’s office executive control of the rest of the city’s departments, which had been shared with the city council. 

It brings Minneapolis’ structure in line with most other major cities, where mayors have day-to-day responsibility for managing the city’s affairs.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said Wednesday that congressional Democrats are to blame for Terry McAuliffe losing the VA governor’s race to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

Kaine said McAuliffe was a “solid candidate.”

“I think it was on the shoulders of Democrats here who have the majority,” he said. “People had a lot of hope for Joe Biden and the Joe Biden agenda, but Democrats didn’t want to give Biden a win,” he said.

He continued to say that he thinks the responsibility is shared between all congressional Democrats.

“It’s on progressives who wanted to be too purist, it’s on moderates who wanted to be too purist, on the House who wanted it their way and the Senate who wanted it their way,” he said. “You got to be able to make a deal and deliver results … They want more results and we got to deliver because we are the majority and they expect us to deliver.”

With Democrats losing in Virginia and a really narrow result in New Jersey, Kaine said they “now have a tough narrative that we have to face.”

 “Democrats control both houses and they have to act like it,” he added. “Have to be disciplined, have to get results.”

Kaine also pushed back on the idea that the result in Virginia was a rejection of Democrats’ proposed sweeping social policy changes.   

“No, they would love, absolutely love like pre K and childcare, are you kidding me that’s exactly what suburban parents are hungry for, especially after a tough pandemic,” he said.

Aboard Air Force One, people familiar with the matter said the mood was grim as a weary Biden team returned to what undoubtedly will become a swirl of recrimination and second-guessing. 

After months of in-fighting over the President’s multi-trillion dollar legislative agenda, which laid bare the divisions in the Democratic party, it has not taken long for finger-pointing and panic to set in among Biden’s allies.

Over the final weeks of the campaign, Virginia’s Democratic candidate for governor, Terry McAuliffe, and his allies repeatedly raised warnings that Biden’s inability to pass a sweeping social safety net expansion was hindering his race.

Some of Biden’s advisers have chaffed at the notion the President’s stalled domestic agenda was to blame, pointing instead to a lingering pandemic and its economic aftereffects. Some Democrats close to Biden have also privately lamented at McAuliffe’s stumbles, including sparking outrage with a comment on education that came to define the closing weeks of the race.

Read more about what this means for Biden here.

President Biden on Wednesday received an unwelcome wake up call for his still-new presidency as the Democrat arrived back in Washington from a European excursion suddenly facing a transformed political landscape.

Republican Glenn Youngkin’s projected victory over Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, which Biden won by 10 points, and a too-close-to-call race in New Jersey made for unwelcome news for the Democratic President as he flew over the Atlantic.

Returning to the White House in the dark, Biden declined to answer questions about the race, which he’d incorrectly predicted Democrats would win eight hours earlier. The results had been called a half-hour before Biden touched down at Joint Base Andrews. Aboard Air Force One, people familiar with the matter said the mood was grim as a weary team returned to what undoubtedly will become a swirl of recrimination and second-guessing.

After months of in-fighting over Biden’s multi-trillion dollar legislative agenda, which laid bare the divisions in the Democratic party, it has not taken long for finger-pointing and panic to set in among Biden’s allies.

Over the final weeks of the campaign, McAuliffe and his allies repeatedly raised warnings that Biden’s inability to pass a sweeping social safety net expansion was hindering his race.

Some of Biden’s advisers have chaffed at the notion the President’s stalled domestic agenda was to blame, pointing instead to a lingering pandemic and its economic aftereffects. Some Democrats close to Biden have also privately lamented at McAuliffe’s stumbles, including sparking outrage with a comment on education that came to define the closing weeks of the race.

Questions remain over how the shifting dynamic will play out in the coming days, weeks and months.

Biden has for months been locked in a repeating cycle of pressure-packed weeks for his legislative agenda as his party has failed to pass his sweeping domestic agenda, comprised of a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan and a $1.75 trillion social safety net expansion bill. Those priorities remain unfinished – and a potential government shutdown and default on the nation’s debt looms in early December.

Read more here.

Demoralized Democrats need a reckoning after a rough election night that sent serious warning signs that they have misjudged the nation’s mood as their window closes before next year’s midterms.

While the party feuds over its vast social spending agenda, Republicans are highlighting issues that preoccupy voters more immediately, like a sluggish economy, high gas prices, expensive groceries, crime rates and concerns about the rights of parents to influence what is taught in schools. Those concerns in many cases have been exacerbated by a prolonged pandemic, which President Biden declared all but over in July but that spiked over the summer in a new blow to an exhausted nation’s morale.

Virginia governor’s race especially was seen as a one-year referendum on Biden’s presidency in a state he won by a whopping 10 points a year ago. Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin didn’t just triumph, according to a CNN projection, he showed Republicans everywhere how to win, keeping former President Donald Trump out of the state to make inroads in suburbs lost to the GOP in 2018 and 2020 elections.

If Democrats only underperformed in Virginia, they could have put their misfortune down to an erratic and unfocused campaign by veteran party heavyweight Terry McAuliffe, who was trying to win a second, non-consecutive term as governor.

But in New Jersey, a state Biden won by an even more comfortable margin, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s squeaker reelection race – which is still too close to call – reinforced a sense that the President’s party has lost the country’s confidence as he struggles to live up to his vow to restore competency to the White House and post-pandemic normality to American life.

As the President arrived home from Europe in the early hours of Wednesday, it was not clear that Democratic leaders and many of the voters that ejected Trump from the White House last year are still on the same page. The party’s lawmakers in Washington have spent weeks feuding with one another over the most sweeping social spending plan in generations – a cornerstone of Biden’s agenda.

Read the full story here.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe conceded the Virginia gubernatorial contest to Republican Glenn Youngkin on Wednesday morning. 

“Congratulations to Governor-Elect Glenn Youngkin on his victory. I hope Virginians will join me in wishing the best to him and his family,” McAuliffe said in a statement.

The morning after election day, New Jersey’s Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has taken a narrow lead over his GOP opponent Jack Ciattarelli — and Murphy’s team says they expect to hold on to that lead until the moment the race is called for them.

They’ve been watching more returns get processed overnight and into the morning, and say they expect the majority of the outstanding votes to favor them. But they don’t have a great guess as to how quickly those remaining votes will be uploaded into the system, and whether we’re talking about minutes or hours.

The adviser billed the current moment as a “waiting game.”

One reminder of how much closer this race has been than the Murphy camp had hoped — it was around midnight last night that one Murphy aide was predicting that they would take the lead over Ciattarelli soon.

A number of candidates made history on election night Tuesday. Here’s what you need to know about their historic wins:

Virginia lieutenant governor

CNN projects Winsome Sears to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor, making her the first female and the first woman of color in the office in the commonwealth’s 400-year legislative history.

“It’s a historic night — yes, it is — but I didn’t run to make history. I just wanted to leave it better than I found it,” Sears said before a crowd of supporters early Wednesday morning.

A conservative Republican, Sears will serve alongside Republican Glenn Youngkin, whom CNN projected would win the Virginia gubernatorial race.

Sears, who was born in Jamaica, is the first Black Republican woman to be elected to the Virginia General Assembly.

Boston mayor

CNN projects Michelle Wu to be Boston’s next mayor. She’ll be the first woman and person of color elected to the top post in the city’s history.

“From every corner of our city, Boston has spoken. We are ready to meet this moment. We are ready to become a Boston for everyone,” Wu said to a crowd of supporters Tuesday night. “I want to be clear, it wasn’t my vision on the ballot, it was ours, together.”

City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, also a woman of color, conceded the Boston mayoral race with a large share of the vote still waiting to be counted.

From the beginning, this election was a remarkable departure from Boston’s history. Uncontested mayoral races, where there is no incumbent seeking reelection, are hard to come by in Boston and often draw crowded primaries in the Democrat-heavy city. And in this year’s unaffiliated primary, every serious contender was a person of color, and most of them were women.

Championing hallmark policies like a Green New Deal for Boston, Wu racked up support from high-profile Massachusetts progressives, such as Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren. Pressley, who represents a portion of Boston, also served on the Boston City Council with both Wu and Essaibi George.

Wu ran on a progressive platform, including calling for a fare-free transit system.

Pittsburgh mayor

Ed Gainey will be Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor, CNN projects.

Gainey, a Democrat, bested Republican Tony Moreno, a retired Pittsburgh police officer.

During the campaign, Gainey said he wanted to make Pittsburgh the country’s most “safe, affordable and diverse” city and touted police reform and affordable housing. He has represented Pittsburgh in the state legislature since 2013 and previously worked for Pittsburgh Mayors Luke Ravenstahl and Tom Murphy.

During an exchange over mayoral efforts to tackle violence in a recent debate, Gainey emphasized using a public health blueprint. 

“The reality is, if it was that simple, it would be solved already,” Gainey said. “This is a real-life situation, and we will deal with it,”

In the Democratic primary, Gainey comfortably beat the current incumbent Mayor Bill Peduto in May — making him the first mayoral challenger to unseat an incumbent since 1933.

New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams said New Yorkers elected him because they felt a connection with his story.

“While others were attempting to be heard by New Yorkers, I wanted to be felt,” Adams said in an interview with CNN. “I wanted people to know my story, being a dishwasher, having a learning disability, being arrested as a child, going to school at night, working in a mailroom. That was a story I wanted to send New Yorkers, and they felt me and because of that, I’m now going to become the mayor of one of the greatest cities on the globe.”

Adams also said that after an election is over, it’s important to stop debating and “get stuff done.”

“I think it’s imperative that we have a discussion, we debate, we have conversations pre-election, but once that election is over, post-election, you have to become a GSD elected — get stuff done,” he said. “… To continue to debate after the election is just a failing solution for the people on the ground,” he said.

The national Democratic Party “can’t be so philosophical and theoretical that we just simply giving out and throwing out terms instead of looking on the ground, what people need,” Adams said. 

“That’s what I’m hoping the party that I love, the Democratic Party, realize,” he said. “We must get back on the ground and impact the things that are important to people.”

Adams also said a lesson to Democrats around the country is “practical is progressive,” talking about closing jail buildings and disbanding police departments “when crime is increasing” is not progressive.

On the topic of the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for municipal workers, Adams said he encourages outgoing Mayor Bill de Blasio to sit down and talk to leaders of police and firefighter unions to come to a resolution.

“I reached out to some of the union leadership late last night. They stated that … we want to sit down. We have not been able to sit down with the mayor. Listen, they are the credible messengers. If we are going to get through this Covid crisis, we get through it by communicating with the credible messengers, to speak to their rank and file,” Adams said. 

“If he doesn’t, if this is still going into January, I’m going to sit down with them and we’re going to get this resolved,” said Adams. “We have to defeat Covid and make sure we don’t have crime turning our city.”

Watch:

Republican Glenn Youngkin celebrated his win in the Virginia governor’s race early Wednesday morning, taking the stage in Chantilly to Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” at 1:05 a.m. ET after waiting for the major television networks to call the race. 

Youngkin delivered a shortened version of his stump speech, discussing his agenda for his first day in office in January — starting with education, the topic that animated many of Youngkin’s crowds. 

He said he would seek the largest education budget in Virginia’s history for teacher raises and would launch an expansive school choice program, including new charter schools. 

“We’re going to embrace our parents, not ignore them. We’re going to press forward with a curriculum that includes listening to parents, as well as a curriculum that allows our children to run as fast as they can, teaching them how to think, enabling their dreams to soar. Friends, we are going to re-establish excellence in our schools,” he said. 

He did not mention critical race theory, even though in his stump speech during the campaign’s closing weeks he frequently said he would ban critical race theory from Virginia’s schools. 

He also repeated his plans to eliminate Virginia’s grocery tax, suspend the most recent increase in the gas tax and double standard deductions on income taxes. 

The crowd in the Westfields Marriott ballroom had been watching Fox News all night, and erupted in a huge cheer at 12:41 a.m. ET when the network projected — minutes after CNN and other networks had done so — that Youngkin had won the race. 

Youngkin was introduced by his wife, who described the day he had told her he wanted to quit his job as chief executive of the private equity firm The Carlyle Group the next day and run for governor. 

She said her first reaction was, “Clearly, you’re having a midlife crisis.” But she said Youngkin felt a “call on his heart” to public service. 

“A defining moment together started with two people on a walk,” Youngkin said. “And a defining moment that is now millions of Virginians walking together — walking together, sharing dreams, hopes.” 

Republican Glenn Youngkin’s projected win in the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday erased any doubt: Democrats’ slim congressional majorities are in grave danger in next year’s midterm elections.

Democratic former Gov. Terry McAuliffe had hoped former President Trump’s continuing unpopularity would halt the pendulum swing against a new president and his party that nearly always takes place in Virginia and often continues in the following year’s midterms.

Instead, Youngkin drafted a playbook for Republicans to navigate around Trump — keeping the former President’s base energized while also winning back a share of suburbanites who had fled the party during Trump’s tenure.

While the New Jersey governor’s race remains unsettled, with ballots left to count, its neck-and-neck status through the night Tuesday was another shocker for Democrats who expected Gov. Phil Murphy to coast to reelection. The close New Jersey race, which received much less national attention than the Virginia contest, might be an even more ominous indicator for Democrats that the political environment, at least for the moment, has shifted hard in Republicans’ favor.

And in cities across the country, Democrats dominated mayoral races, according to CNN projections — but offered mixed messages on the direction of the party, with progressives securing historic wins in Boston and Pittsburgh, while a moderate champion was crowned in New York City.

Minneapolis rejected a measure to overhaul its police department in a closely watched vote that showed the backlash against a protest movement that followed the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020.

Read eight takeaways from the 2021 elections here.