Takeaways from the 2025 general election, in charts

Maya Sweedler, Humera Lodhi, Hyojin Yoo, Hannah Recht, Katie Marriner, Simran Parwani And Eunice Esomonu

A sign is displayed outside a polling site in River Edge, N.J., Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

WASHINGTON – After voters swung toward Republican Donald Trump during last fall’s presidential election, states like Virginia and New Jersey swung back towards Democratic candidates at nearly the same velocity as 2024’s shift, an Associated Press analysis of election data from this week found.

From populous suburbs to big cities to military-heavy counties, this year’s electorate moved decisively towards the Democratic Party. Some of these areas had the largest shifts towards Trump last year, particularly in New York and New Jersey, but on Tuesday, the returns more closely resembled 2020 margins.

This came alongside relatively high turnout, at least compared to recent off-year elections, suggesting that one pattern of the last decade in American politics — Republicans doing well when Trump is on the ballot, and Democrats doing better when he is not — continues to hold.

The AP’s analysis is based off county- and precinct-level data. In all cases, 2025 margins are as of 10:45 a.m. on Nov. 7. Additional votes will be counted as election officials tabulate late-arriving mail and provisional ballots. Here are some of the findings.

Virginia and New Jersey continue a trend — but with big margins

Virginia and New Jersey, the two states that elect governors in the year following a presidential election, both have a tradition of moving against the party in the White House.