NYC mayoral election live: Mamdani, Cuomo and Sliwa await results after polls close

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Mikie Sherrill wins New Jersey governor's race

Democratic representative Mikie Sherrill wins New Jersey governor’s race, according to the Associated Press.

Jake Wasserman

The energy for Mikie Sherrill is high after Abigail Spanberger was declared the victor in the Virginia governor’s race.

“It won’t be long now,” Senator Cory Booker joyfully proclaimed to the crowd in the East Brunswick Hilton ballroom as results poured in. “New Jersey has come together and tonight the whole nation will hear us roar.”

Mikie Sherrill’s campaign vice chair Dr. Patricia Campos-Medina declared that “We are the firewall against Donald Trump,” praising the New Jersey’s diverse immigrant communities that turned out for the Democratic Party.

Attacks against New Jersey by the Trump administration are top of mind for speakers — on Snap, on healthcare, and on the Gateway Tunnel project. Upon display of CNN’s coverage of the first results for the mayoral election in New York City, the crowd did not cheer.

Virginians are making history tonight!

NBC News projects that Ghazala Hashmi has prevailed in the state’s lieutenant governor’s race, becoming the first Muslim American woman elected to statewide office in the US.

Hashmi, a Democrat, flipped the seat currently held by Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, who lost her bid for the governorship to Abigail Spanberger.

Spanberger is the first woman elected governor in the state.

Read more about Hashmi here.

Polls close in New York City

Polls have officially closed in the high-stakes and closely-watched race to be the next mayor of New York City.

Turnout was high. The New York City board of elections is reporting that New Yorkers have cast more than 2m ballots for the first time in more than a half-century.

reporting from Zohran Mamdani’s election night party at the Brooklyn Paramount:

Twitch streamer Hasan Piker at an election night watch party for Mamdani in Brooklyn. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The Guardian

Mamdani supporters were set to start arriving at the venue from 9pm ET. Right now, there are hundreds of members of the press gathered at the Brooklyn Paramount theatre in Brooklyn.

Twitch streamer Hasan Piker has arrived and is speaking with members of the press.

Saam Niami reporting from Little Bangladesh in Queens:

In Jackson Heights, one of New York’s most diverse neighborhoods, locals bought from vendors and headed home from the polls on Tuesday evening.

Erbab Hussein, 58, a retiree from Astoria, said of Mamdani: “I don’t know what’s in his mind – I know he likes biryani. But when you put him up against Cuomo and Sliwa, I think Mamdani is the best. This is a city of change and I think his ideas are a little better off for a city that needs change.”

Hussein also referenced the sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo, which Cuomo has denied. “I think he’s learned his lesson: you can’t compromise on family values here in New York,” Hussein said. “And Trump is trying to say [Mamdani] is a communist – come on! He’s a socialist, not a communist.”

His friend Zubair, a 58-year-old fire safety director from Queens, chimed in: “He’s a very positive person. I think he’ll be our next mayor and I hope he has a very positive impact on the city.”

at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in midtown Manhattan

There’s a couple of hundred Cuomo supporters at his watch party now. I just saw a man down a bottle of Stella Artois. No sign of Cuomo yet. Among the attenders is Suzanne Miller, a realtor who volunteered for the Cuomo campaign. She said she is “50-50” about his chances of winning. Miller said she was nervous because of Zohran Mamdani’s energetic closing few days of the campaign.

“There’s not a lot of substance, but there’s a lot of energy,” Miller said of the frontrunner. By contrast, Cuomo appealed because of “his passion, and his experience about running government, and how he’s going to really care and make New York great again”.

Miller, who told me several times that she has a podcast, said Cuomo “understands politics”.

“He understands how the left and right works, and he’s really the only Democrat running. He’s a true Democrat. He knows how it works. He’s a true politician, and he understands both sides, and that’s why he’s running on an independent line, where he’s going to hopefully get the support from both sides,” Miller said.

Cuomo is running on an independent line because he lost the Democratic primary to Mamdani in June.

at Abigail Spanberger’s victory party in Richmond, Virginia

Abigail Spanberger has taken the stage, speaking from a podium where stagehands just posted a sign reading “governor-elect Spanberger”.

Spanberger avoided mentioning Donald Trump on the campaign trail, but began her victory speech with what seems to be a nod to how her election will be interpreted in the context of his first 11 months in office.

“Tonight, we sent a message. We sent a message to every corner of the Commonwealth, a message to our neighbors and our fellow Americans across the country,” she said. “We sent a message to the whole world that in 2025, Virginia chose pragmatism over partisanship. We chose our commonwealth over chaos.”

“Chaos” is doing a lot of work there, but it’s worth keeping in mind that the state is home to many Washington DC suburbs - which are full of federal workers whose jobs have been transformed since Trump came to office, if they’ve been able to keep them at all.

All that being said, Spanberger has taken pains to strike a conciliatory tone to the 40% or so of Virginia voters who did not back her.

“Those who were supporting my opponent are disappointed today. And to those Virginians who did not vote for me, I want you to know that my goal and my intent is to serve all Virginians,” she said.

The cheers were particularly loud at Abigail Spanberger’s watch party when MSNBC noted that she was outperforming Kamala Harris in Virginia’s Loudoun county.

A year ago, Harris’s underperformance in the Democratic-trending county on Washington DC’s far outskirts was the first sign that she was not going to be the next president. But for Spanberger’s campaign for governor, it’s clearly a different story.

In New York, Yemeni cafes and beer gardens across Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, are at capacity as New Yorkers await the results of Tuesday’s mayoral election.

Long lines formed outside Ayat, a Palestinian bistro that just opened a location in Astoria, that was holding a free community dinner in honor of Mamdani.

New Yorkers at an election watch party at Peg’s Cavalier in Ridgewood, Queens. Photograph: Sarah Grace Holcomb

Democrat Abigail Spanberger wins Virginia governor race

The Associated Press projects Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won the Virginia governor’s race, defeating Republican Winsome Earle-Sears.

It’s a lightning-fast call in the closely watched race as polls closed just over an hour ago.

All 100 of the seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates are also up for grabs tonight. Democrats currently hold a 51-48 majority in the chamber.

Virginians cast more than 1.1m early in-person votes and nearly 330,000 mail-in ballots before election day, according to AP tallies.

Abigail Spanberger, the new governor of Virginia. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Voters in several US states cast ballots for redistricting in California, the mayor of New York and other elected offices. Take a look at US election day in pictures:

US elections: voters went to the polls in NYC, New Jersey, Virginia and California and more

Voters in several states went to the polls on Tuesday for elections that will provide a crucial window into nationwide support for Donald Trump’s Republican allies, and potentially signal new momentum for the beleaguered Democratic party.

Outside New York City, voters in deep-blue California could tear up their congressional maps in favor of a Democratic gerrymander meant to counter gains the GOP is expected to make elsewhere. And Virginia and New Jersey held high-stakes gubernatorial and legislative elections that may serve as a proxy for voters’ views on the president.

Here’s a look at all the elections of the day:

Here are clips of Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and independent candidate Andrew Cuomo casting their votes in New York City’s mayoral election.

New York City’s voters are deciding the outcome of a generational and ideological divide that will resonate across the country as they choose the next mayor to run the nation’s largest city.

When will results be announced?

Polls in New York City close at 9pm ET. The first results will come in shortly after and will continue to come in throughout the night. In 2021, most of the votes were counted before midnight, and the Associated Press declared Eric Adams the winner around midnight.

Ever since his victory in the Democratic primary, Zohran Mamdani has been the clear favorite to win. Polls aggregated by the New York Times have Mamdani anywhere from five to 25 points ahead of his opponents, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, and Andrew Cuomo, who entered the race as an independent after losing in the Democratic primary.

We will cover all the latest results and reactions from New York City and elections across the country here – and you can follow NYC results as they come in in our live results tracker:

Welcome to our live coverage of election day evening across the US. Polls will soon close in the closely watched New York mayoral race, where Zohran Mamdani, the self-described democratic socialist, faces off against former governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

If you’re just joining us now, here’s a recap of key moments today so far:

• In New York City, frontrunner and Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, former governor Andrew Cuomo who is running as an independent, and Republican outlier Curtis Sliwa all cast their ballots earlier today. Polls close at 9pm ET, but more people have already voted in this election than in the entire 2021 mayor’s race, according to city election data. The first results will come in shortly after the polls close, and will continue to come in throughout the night. We’ll bring you the latest from our reporters on the ground.

• In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger has won the Virginia governor’s race, defeating Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, AP projects. All 100 of the seats in Virginia’s House of Delegates are also up for grabs tonight. Democrats currently hold a 51-48 majority in the chamber. Virginians cast more than 1.1m early in-person votes and nearly 330,000 mail-in ballots before election day, according to AP tallies.

• Earlier, Mamdani said he “will not be intimidated” by Donald Trump, as the president urged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo. When asked about Trump’s comments on Truth Social that he plans to limit federal funds to the city if Mamdani wins, the Democratic nominee said he will “will treat his threats as they deserve to be treated, which are the words of a president and not necessarily the law of the land”. Earlier, Trump said that “any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!”

• Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer declined to reveal whom he voted for in the New York City mayoral race. At a news conference with other Democratic leaders at the Capitol in Washington DC, he was asked whether he had cast a ballot for Cuomo or Mamdani. Schumer, who voted early, told reporters: “Look, I voted and I look forward to working with the next mayor to help New York City.”

• The outgoing New York City mayor, Eric Adams, cast his vote for Andrew Cuomo at an elementary school in Brooklyn, according to the New York Times. Speaking briefly to reporters outside, Adams said: “My vote is clearly for Governor Cuomo. We can’t go backwards. This city’s not a socialist city. The only message I can give to New Yorkers as I go to the next leg of my journey: I’m leaving you a good city. Don’t mess it up.”