What the 2025 Off-Year Elections Teach — Practical Lessons for Campaigns and Public Affairs

There's been a lot of great analysis of the lessons learned from the 2025 off-year elections. With a week to digest them, here's our practical takes. As always, our commentary is not for punditry purposes, but real lessons from that can be applied to future public affairs and political campaigns.

Voters across the country weighed in last week, and the signal is clearer than the noise. Democrats performed strongly in an off-year following a Republican presidential win — no big surprise there, but the thermostatic response to the Trump 2024 win was perhaps slightly higher than typical. Republicans’ 2024 gains with some non-traditional voters proved harder to replicate without Donald Trump personally on the ballot. None of this is destiny; it’s a roadmap. Our focus here is what the results do (and don’t) tell clients and practitioners about strategy, coalitions, and message discipline heading into 2026, and 2028. — with a brief note on 2028.

I. The New Off-Year: Who Shows Up — and Why That Matters

For much of the modern era, lower-turnout elections tended to advantage Republicans. That’s been changing over the last decade, and is clearly no longer the case. As Democrats have become more college-educated and suburban, and Republicans more working-class, participation patterns have shifted — particularly in municipal and off-year contexts. You can see the result in marquee 2025 contests: decisive Democratic wins in Virginia and New Jersey; a left-flank victory in New York City; and strong performance on aligned ballot questions. The key takeaway isn’t partisan — it’s structural: modeling and turnout planning must reflect the current composition of low-propensity electorates, not the one we all trained on decade ago.

This shift also contextualizes 2024’s story about Republican inroads with Hispanic and some lower-propensity voters, especially low turnout young men. Those gains were real — but the 2025 results suggest much of that performance was Trump-dependent (charisma, issue salience, and media oxygen) and doesn’t automatically transfer to other Republicans. Campaigns should treat 2024’s alignment as a moment to be consolidated, not a new baseline baked into non-presidential cycles. This represents opportunity and peril for the GOP and GOP-aligned efforts. Don't assume the Trump coalition is your coalition.

II. Coalition and Capacity: Why One Transportation Tax Won — and Another Lost

We've been heavily involved in transportation funding measures over the last two decades, and even though we weren't involved in these two, we followed them for lessons to take away. These two local sales-tax campaigns illustrate fundamentals that still decide outcomes.

• Mecklenburg County (NC) — Yes on Transit & Transportation: A broad, business-labor-civic coalition framed a 1% sales tax as a long-horizon mobility and safety investment, backed by a real implementation plan and oversight structure. Voters approved it, unlocking a multi-decade pipeline for rail, roads, and bus system upgrades. The lesson is simple — but execution-heavy: align beneficiaries early, publish credible sequencing, and make project delivery the message, not just the rate. Charlotte Observer

• Knoxville (TN) — Sales-Tax Increase Rejected: Knoxville’s proposal lacked the same breadth of coalition and the granular “what do we get and when?” rigor that builds swing-voter confidence on revenue asks. Voters decisively voted it down. The lesson: when capacity (coalition, plan detail, validators) is thin, taxes default to “no.” Build the plan — and the bench — before asking. WBIR

Across both cities, a consistent undercurrent was the affordability lens. Support campaigns that explicitly connect investments to reducing time-and-money burdens (commutes, safety, access), and opposition campaigns that credibly argue household harm both work — if they’re backed by real partners and real math.

III. Wage Ballots: Showing Help vs. Showing Harm

Minimum-wage measures produced a split screen that perfectly captures message fit and coalition quality:

• Portland, ME — Wage Increase Passed: Voters approved a phased climb toward a $19 city minimum wage. Proponents grounded the change in local cost realities; opponents struggled to translate concerns into a broadly resonant “harm to working families” case. The strategic note: where affordability strains are palpable and the opposition message is diffuse, cost-of-living-framed wage hikes can pass even when business groups are engaged. WGME

• Olympia, WA — “Worker’s Bill of Rights” Defeated: Voters rejected a package that included a $20 minimum wage and strict scheduling rules. Our firm advised the winning opposition. The campaign succeeded by centering concrete harms to working families, small businesses, local charities, and service availability — and by elevating trusted local voices who could explain the real world impacts (hours cut, hiring freezes, loss of flexible schedules, and price pressures as costs are passed on). The tactical difference wasn’t just arguments — it was the disciplined use of validators and targeted turnout to match message to the persuadable universe. The Olympian

Bottom line: If you’re opposing wage or labor packages, “job loss” abstractions won’t cut it. Show who is hurt, how, and when — using a broad spectrum of validators (owners, workers, nonprofits) who carry credibility with the voters you must move.

IV. The Issue That Won the Night: Affordability

From wage questions to transportation taxes to key candidate races, “can I afford life here?” dominated voter frames. In 2024, Republicans rode that narrative against Democrats. In 2025, Democrats reclaimed it with messages that married competence and cost relief — especially in suburban and government-adjacent geographies (think Virginia’s workforce dynamics). For practitioners, this isn’t about one party’s advantage — it’s about the discipline to define your contest through household economics and then prove it with specifics. At HexaCom Group, we've been talking about the cost of living crisis as the issue of our times for over a year now, and it will continue to dominate in the year(s) ahead.

V. Intra-Democratic Tensions Are Real — and Strategically Relevant

The same election day that rewarded moderate, female, veteran and credentialed Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey also produced a Democratic Socialist victory in New York City. That tension matters for corporate and public-affairs clients because governing agendas — and the advocacy venues you’ll need to influence — may diverge sharply across jurisdictions controlled by the same party label. Effective issue management in 2026 will require bespoke coalition mapping: labor locals, housing advocates, small-business associations, and institutional players will not line up the same way in NYC as they do in Richmond or Trenton.

VI. California’s Prop 50 and the 2028 Chessboard

California voters approved Prop 50, enabling mid-decade congressional redistricting as a response to other states’ moves. Again, we saw this result coming and even the scope of it for weeks. But regardless of one’s view of the policy, the electoral impact is immediate — and it materially strengthens Gov. Gavin Newsom’s national profile by delivering a high-salience win on an issue Democrats framed as “fairness and representation.” Democrats want a fighter against the Trump Agenda, and Newsom delivered. We flagged months ago that Prop 50 would be a credibility test for Newsom; the scale of victory will now be baked into 2028 narratives. Recent public polling aggregates generally show Newsom has emerged as the early Democratic front-runner, consistent with the momentum that follows a visible win of this size.

Strategic implication: Expect the Governor’s 2026 agenda to be evaluated — internally and externally — for presidential optics. For stakeholders with California priorities, that means the coalition, messenger, and sequencing choices you make in Sacramento over the next 12 months should assume heightened national scrutiny. This is the lens the Governor will be looking through, and you need to be evaluating there too.

VII. The GOP Question for 2026: Can You Rebuild the 2024 Coalition Without Trump on the Ballot?

The 2025 returns sharpen, rather than answer, the core Republican challenge: replicating the 2024 coalition in midterms and off-years. Affordability messaging retains potential, but absent Trump, turnout and persuasion lift become heavier — especially among low-propensity and younger men who responded to his personal brand in 2024. For Republican-aligned campaigns, that argues for earlier investment in voter identification and community-based validators; for Democratic-aligned campaigns, it argues for protecting affordability credibility with proof points that reach beyond rhetoric.

What We’d Do If You Called Us Tomorrow

1) Start with coalition math — not slogans. Before budgets or creative, identify who must be with you, who must be neutralized, and who can be safely ignored. Map named validators to each segment and confirm they will actually deliver. Mecklenburg’s win wasn’t a slogan — it was coalition architecture with a spend plan behind it.

2) Put affordability at the center — and quantify it. Whether you’re advancing a policy or opposing one, convert values into calculators: commute hours saved, rent pressure avoided, utility bills reduced. If you can’t measure it, voters won’t credit you for it.

3) Fund for the path you’ve chosen. Underfunded campaigns can win — we’ve done it — but only when the strategy matches the resources. If you don’t have TV money, your plan can’t rely on frequency; if you lack field, your persuasion can’t depend on one-to-one contact. Be ruthless about aligning tactics to budget reality.

4) Treat wage and labor packages as persuasion battles, not just turnout fights. The Olympia win for the “No” side happened because real voices explained real-world consequences. If you’re the pro side, bring equally specific, credible benefits — and show who is protected and how. If you’re the opposition, don’t rely on macroeconomics; make the harm tangible.

5) Anticipate ideological variance within parties. If your issue needs city action in a place electing democratic socialists and state action in a place electing moderates, you don’t have “a Democratic strategy” — you have two different journeys. Plan them separately.

6) In California, assume a presidential lens through 2026. For clients with California exposure, build campaigns that withstand national press treatment — with validators that speak beyond Sacramento and message frames that survive partisan reframing.

A Final Word

At HexaCom, our interest isn’t in punditry, it's in winning difficult public affairs and political campaigns for our clients. We win by making hard choices early so tough campaigns can win. The 2025 results reinforce the same disciplines we brought to No on Olympia Prop 1 and to our early analysis of Prop 50 and Newsom’s positioning — deep research, honest coalition math, affordability-first messaging, and plans that match budgets. If you need to pressure-test your 2026 strategy against these realities, we’re ready to put a team on it.