AMY GOODMAN: Tuesday’s general elections saw Democrats post big wins across the United States.

In California, voters passed Proposition 50, approving a new congressional map that could help Democrats pick up five additional congressional seats in the move to counter Texas’s redistricting effort to help Republicans gain five House seats.

In New Jersey, Democratic Congressmember Mikie Sherrill won the governor’s race, defeating Jack Ciattarelli.

In Virginia, Democrats reclaimed full control of the state’s executive branch, as Abigail Spanberger flipped the governorship, becoming Virginia’s first female governor. Virginia voters also chose Ghazala Hashmi to be Virginia’s lieutenant governor, making her the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office anywhere in the United States. Meanwhile, Democrat Jay Jones defeated Virginia’s incumbent Republican attorney general.

In Minneapolis, Democratic Mayor Jacob Frey led democratic socialist challenger Omar Fateh, but neither got more than 50% of the votes, so the race moves to a second round of ranked-choice voting.

And in Pennsylvania, Democrats retained control of the state Supreme Court, after three justices won their races.

For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Daniel Nichanian, editor-in-chief of Bolts, who covered the general election closely.

We welcome you back to Democracy Now! Daniel Nichanian, start off by just talking about the national picture.

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Well, thank you for having me.

And, you know, it was really — there’s no other way to put it — an epic night for Democrats last night. I’ve been following election nights for a long time, and I’ve never really quite seen this level of systematic win for pretty much anything that there was to win between the parties for a Democratic candidate. You already named a lot of the big picture races, but it was — pretty much anywhere that there was an election yesterday, there was just a small earthquake or a big earthquake in favor of Democrats.

So, let me give you just one big picture example, that there were 13 statewide races yesterday for statewide office. There was the ones you mentioned. There was one in Jersey, three in Virginia, two in Georgia, as well as seven in Pennsylvania, all judges. And Democrats won all 13 of these races, and they won them by comfortable margins, ranging from six points to 24 points. That’s right. In Georgia, Democrats won two seats by 24 points. And what’s super interesting is that Democrats had never won a statewide race for a race that isn’t federal, for a state government, in 20 years, almost 20 years, and they won them by 24 points last night.

And if you move down-ballot to county-level races, to city races, you are seeing the same thing over and over again, of Democrats winning counties or offices that they hadn’t won for a long time. The Democrats broke the supermajority, the Republican supermajority, in the Mississippi upper chamber. Democrats won the most seats they have in the Virginia House since the ’80s. Democrats flipped Erie County, Pennsylvania. Democrats flipped Onondaga County in New York for the first time since the ’70s.

And I could go on and on, and I’m not going to do that. But also to — I think maybe another last place to look at is, even if you go all the way down to school board races, you know, that was really the center of the conservative ideological takeover in 2021, 2022, a lot of — a lot of conservative takeovers at the school board level. Even there, we’re seeing a lot of conservatives lose their seats, in Colorado, in Pennsylvania, in Texas. So, that, I think, really gives you an idea of the sort of night that we’re speaking about.

AMY GOODMAN: So, in California, Prop 50, very quickly, your response?

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Right. So, Prop 50 is a very — was a very important part of this war that is happening right now on the — for the U.S. House next year. In California, Democrats responded to efforts by Republicans elsewhere to draw maps in their favor. And that, itself, is going to shift five seats in favor of Democrats.

I think a big takeaway yesterday of the type of swings that I was just describing, as well — again, we’re talking about a 24-point win in Virginia, large wins in Virginia, Jersey — is that Republicans could get a little spooked, a little scared, about the type of maps that they’re drawing, that are not necessarily equipped to withstand the type of wave that we saw last night, so that that’s also something to watch, whether Republicans continue now to try and draw the maps in their favor, as they’ve been planning to, in places like Florida or Indiana.

AMY GOODMAN: The significance of the three liberal judges in Pennsylvania keeping their seats?

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Right. I mean, there’s so much to talk about. There were three races for the state court, for the state’s highest court in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state in the nation. And Republicans were really hopeful to take back the court in advance of the 2028 presidential election, because this is a state where President Trump kept suing to try and overturn the 2020 result, and kept losing at the state’s highest court. And yesterday was the Republican opportunity to erase the majority that Democrats enjoy there. Democrats won those races very easily. They are now very likely to hold that court until 2029.

AMY GOODMAN: And in Minneapolis, now the — neither candidate, the mayor, Frey, or Omar Fateh, got 50%. So, explain what happens right now between Jacob Frey and Omar Fateh. It’s ranked-choice voting.

DANIEL NICHANIAN: Right. So, that is one of the main mayoral races we were watching, as a companion of what’s happening in New York that you’ve covered during the show, where there was a more centrist incumbent mayor running against a progressive challenger. In the first round of voting, there’s about a 9 percentage point gap, something like that, between Frey, who’s ahead, and Fateh, who’s second. But now we move to ranked-choice voting, their third, fourth candidate that got a large share of the vote, and a lot of them are aligned more with the left and with Omar Fateh’s campaign. So we could see a very tight election when the ranked choice is run at some point, I think, in this afternoon.

AMY GOODMAN: And the significance — he is called, Omar Fateh, the “Mamdani of the Midwest” — but of Mamdani himself, and President Trump saying, overall, he wrote, ”TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT, AND SHUTDOWN, WERE THE TWO REASONS THAT REPUBLICANS LOST ELECTIONS TONIGHT”? He refers to himself in the third person. The shutdown and that he himself wasn’t on the ballot.

DANIEL NICHANIAN: I mean, I just heard the excerpts from his speech earlier in the program and when he said, you know —

AMY GOODMAN: Mamdani.

DANIEL NICHANIAN: — “I am an immigrant,” and that’s such an important part of his win, of his victory. And that was very striking, first because of the Islamophobic campaign that really was ran against him in the final weeks of the campaign, also because, as you mentioned a few minutes ago, there was the first Muslim woman to win a statewide office anywhere in the country, that really stands in parallel — as a companion result, given that context, but also because we saw the topic of immigration and ICE, and obviously Trump’s agenda around those issues, be very important around the country. Just as one example, the Republican — 

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

DANIEL NICHANIAN: — nominee for governor — OK, well, there were a lot of races where immigration was on the ballot and the big issue, and that’s what I was going to end with.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Nichanian, you got a lot in there, editor-in-chief of Bolts. We’ll link to your coverage of the elections at democracynow.org.

I’ll be in St. Louis Friday night. Check our website, democracynow.org.