No two states voted more alike and closer to the national average in last year’s presidential election than the two states that have gubernatorial elections in this odd-numbered year: New Jersey and Virginia. New Jersey voted 51.8% for Kamala Harris and 45.9% for Donald Trump. Virginia voted 51.8% for Harris and 46.1% for Trump. Aside from the seven target states and Democratic underperformance in New Hampshire and Minnesota, these were the two closest states in the country.

They have other similarities. Large percentages of their voters live in metropolitan areas centered on cities outside the state, such as New York City and Washington, D.C.

That has tilted them toward the Democratic Party in this era when upscale voters, in line with their liberal stands on cultural issues, trend that way.

It comes as second nature to political writers to seek omens in the results and trends of off-year elections. Virginia has provided plenty of grist for their mills, having elected governors of the party that lost the presidential election the year before in 11 of the last 12 contests starting in 1977.

That would seem to give an advantage to Democrats in two states carried by Harris.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., was a Navy helicopter pilot and later worked as a lawyer. After her military service, she went to graduate school, earning a law degree and an Arabic language certificate. She captured an exurban, traditionally Republican New Jersey district when the incumbent retired. She won her first primary easily and has won general elections with 53% to 59% of the vote.

Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., also earned a graduate degree, taught at northern Virginia’s Islamic Saudi Academy, and was an intelligence officer in the CIA for six years. She won her suburban House seat, stretching from Richmond to Fairfax County, against an incumbent Republican by 2 points, twice won re-election — first by 2 points, then by 5 — and stepped down in 2024.

Current RealClearPolitics polling averages have Sherrill ahead of 2021 nominee Jack Ciattarelli by a 48% to 44% margin, and Spanberger leading Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears by 50% to 44%s.

Republicans hold out some hope in both races. Ciattarelli lost by only 51% to 48% against incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy in 2021, campaigning against the high taxes that have helped Republicans win four of eight New Jersey elections starting in 1993, despite the state’s Democratic lean in presidential politics.

In Virginia, Spanberger was set back by the revelation on Oct. 3 that Democratic attorney general candidate Jay Jones sent messages in 2022 expressing a desire to shoot the then-Republican House speaker and see his children murdered in their mother’s arms. Spanberger expressed abhorrence but refused to call on him to step aside and announced her early vote for him.

The 1940 to 1965 northward migration of Black people has ebbed in New Jersey, leaving only two municipalities (East Orange and Lawnside) with Black majorities.

In those two-thirds or more Hispanic, Trump made major gains in 2024, reducing their average Democratic margins from 40% in 2020 to 12%.

In the three Trump elections, northern Virginia has voted 60%, 65% and 61% Democratic, putting a state safely in the Democratic column that, with just one exception, had voted comfortably Republican from 1952 to 2004. That’s notwithstanding Trump’s 50%, 50% and 52% wins in the rest of Virginia.

Spanberger’s cold-blooded refusal to renounce Jones, and her stubborn refusal to oppose girls in boys sports, look like efforts to avoid disenchanting Democratic voters in one of the strongest anti-Trump constituencies in America.

Trends may be working for Trump’s party in New Jersey but less so in Virginia.