Rep. Mikie Sherrill gives a speech after she is announced the winner of the New Jersey gubernatorial Democratic primary in the Westin Governor Morris, Morristown, N.J., June 10, 2025.
An election sign for former U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, the democratic candidate for Virginia’s governor’s race, is visible among other political signs in front of a home in Fredericksburg, Va., on Sept. 18, 2025. Spanberger is running against republican candidate Winsome Earle-Sears, the state’s current Lieutenant Governor.

There's a reason the political world is obsessed with the Nov. 4 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia: They're the only ones we've got this year.

The off-year elections in two random states, plus the New York City mayor's race and the California redistricting referendum, provide the first significant opportunities since the 2024 presidential race for voters to weigh in on which party they credit and which one they blame for what's happened since then.

Can Republicans in New Jersey turn out the new voters who supported Donald Trump even though he's not on the ballot? Have Democrats in the two states found a template for victory by nominating moderate women with national security backgrounds? Can presidential hopefuls build credibility for 2028 by delivering on favored causes this November?

A dose of caution is advisable. Predictions of what will happen down the road are open to misinterpretation, and whatever signals they send could be overtaken by developments.

That said, here we go.

Can the GOP turn out Trump voters without Trump?

History says Republican Jack Ciattarelli should win in New Jersey.

Never in the past six decades has either party managed to hold the Garden State's governorship for more than two terms in a row, and Democrat Phil Murphy has been in power for the last eight years.

But Democrat Mikie Sherrill, 53, now leads the 63-year-old Ciattarelli by 50%-44%, according to a Quinnipiac Poll taken Oct. 9-13. That six-point edge is a stitch closer than Sherrill's eight-point lead in a September survey.

The poll did give Ciattarelli an edge on enthusiasm: 55% of his likely voters said they were "very enthusiastic" about supporting him, compared with 42% of Sherrill's likely voters.

A Democratic victory would be a warning flag for the GOP − a sign that the traditionally Democratic voters Trump gained, especially in Hispanic and working-class communities, may not show up for other Republican candidates.

While Trump lost the Democratic-leaning state in 2024, he scored a stronger performance than in his previous two presidential runs, finishing just under 6 points behind Democrat Kamala Harris. It was one of the biggest swings in his direction of any state in the country.

"I think Trump has done right by New Jersey," Ciattarelli told the USA TODAY Network, praising the president's tax cuts and other policies. "I do not think that his endorsement or his involvement is hurtful to my campaign."

Still, he bristled when pressed on Trump's impact. "Why are you so fixated on him?" he demanded.

"I think voters in New Jersey are largely focused on New Jersey," Sherrill, a four-term member of the House and former U.S. Navy officer, said when asked whether the election would be a litmus test for politics nationally. Still, she told the USA TODAY Network, "Often there's a lot you can learn as a precursor to what's coming."

Can Republicans defy history and hold Virginia?

For 11 of the past 12 elections, Virginia has chosen as governor the candidate of the party that didn't carry the White House a year earlier.

That's been true regardless of which party won the presidency and whether Virginia backed the winner. Since 1977, the pattern has been broken just once. In 2013, Democrat Terry McAuliffe prevailed a year after Barack Obama's reelection. (By the way, it was in the wake of a government shutdown that was generally blamed on congressional Republicans.)

But when McAuliffe tried to stage a comeback in 2021, a year after Joe Biden's election, the historic pattern held. He lost to Republican Glenn Youngkin.

This time, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, 46, a former three-term House member who once worked for the CIA, has held a consistent lead over Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, 61, now the lieutenant governor. A Suffolk University survey, taken Oct. 19-21, showed Spanberger up by 9 percentage points, 52%-43%.

Democrats hope a backlash to the current government shutdown and the Trump administration's previous federal layoffs will boost their candidates. Tens of thousands of federal workers live in the northern Virginia suburbs.

A late controversy has enmeshed the Democratic nominee for attorney general, Jay Jones, over text messages he sent in 2022. In them, he joked about shooting a former Republican House speaker with "two bullets in the head." He has apologized. Spanberger denounced the texts as "absolutely abhorrent" but didn't call on him to withdraw from the race.

There has also been a small drama over whether Trump will endorse Earle-Sears. In August, he said, "I would, yeah," but at least so far, he hasn't. It's possible he remembers her comment in 2022 that she wouldn't support his third presidential bid, saying it was "time to move on."

Whoever wins will make history: The first female governor in Virginia.

In NYC, a leftward turn for Democrats? Or just for New York?

History is brewing in New York City's mayoral race, too.

Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, 34, is poised to become the first Democratic Socialist and the first Muslim to be elected mayor of the nation's largest city.

He led former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, 67, a registered Democrat running as an independent, by 10 points in a Suffolk University poll taken Oct. 23-26. That's closer than the 20-point lead Mamdani held in September − taken before incumbent Eric Adams abandoned his reelection bid and endorsed Cuomo − but it's still in the comfortable territory of double digits.

For Republicans, Mamdani's election would be welcomed as evidence that the Democratic Party has taken a sharp leftward turn. Trump called Mamdani "one of the best things to ever happen to our great Republican party," labeling him a Communist and threatening to withhold federal funds to the president's own hometown if he wins.

But even top Democrats are divided over whether to back him. Mamdani has been endorsed by the state's Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, but House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow New Yorker, waited until the day before early voting began to back him. Mamdani has still not won over either of New York's Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer or Kirsten Gillibrand.

Some Democrats credit Mamdani, now a member of the state Assembly, as a charismatic figure who has energized young and racially diverse voters in the city. But others worry that his very progressive proposals will reverberate against Democratic candidates who face more centrist electorates.

He backs temporarily freezing rents in rent-stabilized apartments, opening five city-owned grocery stores, raising the minimum wage to $30 per hour, and offering free child care and fare-free city buses. He has also pledged as mayor to order the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York, honoring a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Gaza.

For Newsom and Shapiro, 2028 is just around the corner

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken on Republican efforts to flip Democratic-held seats by redrawing House district lines in Texas and elsewhere. He's trying to do the same thing in California, with the goal of costing Republicans seats.

Because of the state's laws, which require voters to pass a referendum, now on the ballot in November.

Proposition 50 seems poised to pass, favored by 20 points in an Emerson College poll taken Oct. 20-21.

California's move could help offset the five additional House seats Republicans hope to gain in Texas' redistricting. Every seat counts in the 2026 midterms, where Democrats at the moment need to gain just three seats to win control of the House of Representatives.

It could also help Newsom's ambitions to run for president in 2028 as a leader who pushed back against Trump and the GOP. Polling for the 2028 field is sensibly scarce, but an Emerson College survey in August found Newsom leading the Democratic field, with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg second and former vice president Kamala Harris third.

Then there's Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, another presidential hopeful. He's appearing in TV ads supporting three state Supreme Court justices in a yes-or-no "retention" vote, on whether to grant them new 10-year terms.

At stake could be the political disposition of Pennsylvania's highest court, where liberals now have a 5-2 majority. Shapiro could name interim successors, but permanent justices would have to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate.

Boosting the justices' retention just might be a good thing for Shapiro and his bigger ambitions, too.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Clues for the midterms and 2028? Watch VA, NJ, CA now. (Maybe.)

Reporting by Susan Page, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect