Polls are open in New York and New Jersey, with voters deciding the next mayor of the country’s most populous city and whether to flip a blue state red.
The results of those contests — the first general election of Trump’s second term — will be heralded by the victors as either a major repudiation or resounding stamp of approval of his second-term agenda.
The polls don’t close until 8 p.m. or 9 p.m., depending on which state you’re in, and exit polls won’t be out for awhile. In the meantime, here are some takeaways from early voting, according to an NBC News analysis.
(Follow along here for live Election Day results once the polls close.)
Who is winning NJ governor race?
Democrat Mikie Sherrill faces off against Republican Jack Ciattarelli in a battle to turn the blue state red. Polls show Sherrill with a slight lead or the race in a dead heat.
Heading into Election Day, Democrats in New Jersey have so far “won” both the vote-by-mail vote and the in-person early vote in the 2025 elections. This performance by Democrats compares favorably to how the party performed in the 2024 presidential election, where more registered Democrats voted by mail than registered Republicans but more registered Republicans voted in person early than registered Democrats.
So far in 2025, nearly 675,000 registered Democrats have already voted, and they account for a larger percentage of the early vote than they did in the 2024 presidential election.
In contrast, only around 386k registered Republicans have voted early so far. As a percentage of the total early vote, the percentage of Republican early vote in 2025 is only 93% of what it was for early voting in 2024.
The over-performance of Democrats combined with the underperformance of Republicans means that nearly 290,000 more registered Democrats than registered Republicans have voted so far in 2025 – a difference going into Election Day 2025 that is larger than the 270,000 lead in voting that Democrats had going into the 2024 presidential race – a race that Vice President Harris won by a little more than 250,000 votes (5.9%).
Who is winning NYC mayor race?
Democrat Zohran Mamdani is the frontrunner squaring off against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent. Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, is hoping for an upset.
This is a younger electorate, so far. In NYC, the early vote is skewing younger than the final vote in the 2021 election. So far, almost 733,000 voters cast ballots in the 2025 elections.
Nearly 14% (13.8%) of those votes were cast by those under the age of 30 and 19.1% of those votes were cast by those between the ages of 30 and 39.
This is a far larger percentage of votes that were cast overall in the 2021 election, an election in which only 10.8% of votes were cast by those under 30 and 15.7% were cast by those between the ages of 30 and 40.