On Nov. 4, people across the country went to the polls to vote in their special elections. Although there were plenty of elections occurring, the main five included Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court retention, the Virginia and New Jersey governor races, California’s Prop 50 decision and the New York City Mayoral Race.
Pennsylvania voters went to the polls to vote for many positions across the state, including commissioners, school board and the Supreme Court. At this moment, PA has three Democratic leaning judges and two Republican leaning judges, and even with plenty of funding toward voting “no” to retaining the judges, Pennsylvania voted to keep the judges.
Looking at the south, Virginia voted in its first female governor, Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, flipping the party of the governor from their current Republican governor Glenn Youngkin. This is the first time that two women ran against each other for governor in Virginia.
New Jersey had its own governor race, with Democrat Mikie Sherrill winning by a landslide against Jack Ciattarelli. New Jersey’s political map showed a large jump from a very even split of Republican and Democrat to a large majority of Democratic counties.
One of the most watched elections on the west coast was California’s voters’ decisions on Prop 50, which would approve the redistricting of California temporarily for the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections in an attempt to make the districts favor Democrats to balance out Texas’ redistricting to favor Republicans. After a strong campaign for it from Governor Gavin Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris, Prop 50 was approved to begin.
The most closely watched election from around the world was the New York City mayoral election, with Zohran Mamdani (Democrat) running against former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa. Zohran Mamdani, who started his campaign in October of 2024, won the primary against Cuomo and narrowly won the mayoral election after gaining massive amounts of support throughout the spring and summer of 2025.
