Next Tuesday is Election Day. No matter what happens in this off-off-year election, this will produce a flurry of speculation about the current state of the political landscape in America, and what it will all mean for the election that is going to happen next year, when all of the House and one-third of the Senate will be on the ballot. As usual, though, drawing sweeping conclusions this far out is likely to prove laughably mistaken, since a year's time in a normal political atmosphere is still an eternity, and an entire year in the Trump era feels like an even longer time than that.

Nevertheless, pundits gotta pundit, so I thought I would weigh in with a few thoughts on the four key races that will be decided next Tuesday. These are: the governor's races in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayoral race in New York City, and the Proposition 50 race in California. While various other candidates and propositions will be on ballots next Tuesday, these four will provide most of the grist for the punditocracy's mill.

Only one of these races is likely to even be close. Democrats seem poised to easily romp home in the other three. But this may set up a conflicting narrative, because of the political leanings of the candidates.

Let's take a quick look at all the races, and then we'll try to predict what political commentators will say starting next Tuesday night.

Proposition 50

This is the brainchild of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who put it on the ballot in response to Texas redistricting mid-decade to wipe out five Democratic House seats (at the direction of Donald Trump). What it will do, in tit-for-tat fashion, is to redistrict California to wipe out five Republican House seats and convert these districts into safe Democratic ones.

This runs counter to the previously-expressed will of the California voters, who strongly voted for a plan (initially pushed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) to hand over redistricting to a nonpartisan commission. This effort was fought multiple times at the ballot box, and every single time the voters expressed a strong desire to take the politics out of redistricting.

But that was pre-Trump. There's a time for being idealistic about such things, and a time for fighting fire with fire -- which (to his credit) Newsom realized and has now capitalized upon. Trump's move in Texas was so blatant that Californians are now ready to sideline the redistricting commission for a few election cycles in order to boost the Democrats' chances of retaking the House in next year's midterms. Texas was seen as trying to "rig" the midterms, so the Prop 50 campaign argued that Californians should "un-rig" it, in response.

The polling is so bad for the "No on 50" side that they've gone silent on the airwaves. After an initial splash of television ads at the start of this campaign, they have now gone dark. This leaves only the "Yes on 50" ads up, and in the closing days of the campaign Newsom even told donors that the effort had plenty of money -- that no more donations would be necessary. That is a real mark of confidence, you've got to admit.

The "Yes on 50" ads now feature none other than Barack Obama making the plea. This is significant, since in his post-presidential phase, Obama has championed the idea of nonpartisan redistricting in as many states as possible. So it is a real 180-degree turn for him to boost the "Yes on 50" effort. But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Proposition 50 is on track to easily pass, which will blunt the Republican rush to add as many safe House seats as they can, heading into the midterms. It won't completely counteract the effort, since Texas isn't the only red state that has been doing so, but it will balance things at least somewhat. And all of it will boost Newsom's political stature on the nationwide stage, for successfully fighting back against Donald Trump. But other than boosting Newsom's personal brand, this won't have much of an effect on the political spin on Tuesday night -- it's the other three races which will do that.

Virginia

Democrat Abigail Spanberger continues to hold a large lead (double-digits, in some polls) in the Virginia governor's race, so it's a pretty safe bet that she will emerge victorious next Tuesday night. This will continue the pattern in the state of usually electing a governor from the party which didn't win the White House in the previous year.

Virginia (especially the northern suburbs surrounding Washington and the areas with large military bases) has been hit hard by all the government firings, first at the hands of Elon Musk and his tech-bro minions and now during the shutdown. So there has been real anger at Donald Trump building all year long.

Spanberger comes from a national security background, as previously she was a C.I.A. operations officer. She then won a House seat, flipping it by defeating Dave Brat, a Tea Party Republican. Notably, she was the first Democrat to win her district since 1970.

Spanberger is seen as a Democratic moderate, but she has been leaning in heavily to a very economic populist message on the campaign trail this year. More on this in a moment.

No matter who wins the Virginia governor's race, it will be historic since the Republicans have also nominated a woman for the position, and no woman has ever served as the state's governor before. So this "glass ceiling" will be broken, no matter what.

There will be one race in Virginia which could go either way, as the Democrat running for attorney general had a late-breaking scandal when text messages (to a Republican colleague) were publicly released showing Jay Jones had expressed the desire to put "two bullets" in the head of the Republican leader of the lower legislative house in the state. This tarnished his brand to the point where the Republican candidate might score an upset next Tuesday, but so far this scandal hasn't dragged down any of the other Democrats on the ballot.

Spanberger is almost certain to win her race, and the only question will be how big a margin of victory she racks up and how big a demographic shift this represents from the 2024 election.

New Jersey

Democrat Mikie Sherrill is also on top of the polls in New Jersey, but by a smaller margin than Spanberger is seeing in Virginia. If the polls are off or if there is a late-breaking move towards the Republican, she could actually lose next Tuesday, so this will likely be the race most of the analysts on television will be paying the closest attention to next week.

Sherrill, like Spanberger, is seen as a Democratic moderate. But notably, she is also leaning hard on the issue of affordability. Economic populism has migrated from being seen as solely an issue for progressives and is now seen as more of a mainstream Democratic message. Again, more on this "Overton window" shift in a moment.

There are two bits of conventional wisdom that are in opposition to each other in New Jersey, and one of them is going to be proven wrong next week no matter who wins. As in Virginia, it is traditional that whichever party won the White House in the previous year usually sees a defeat in the governor's race in New Jersey. But there's another historical trend at play, because no party has held the governor's office for more than two terms in decades. New Jersey currently has a two-term Democratic governor, so either way one of these traditions is going to be upset.

Sherrill has run a very cautious campaign, filled with the language of consultants who warn not to get too specific on contentious issues. So far, it has worked for her, but it's only given her a thin margin in the polls. If she loses, there will no doubt be accusations that she didn't define herself adequately to the voters and refused to take bolder stances politically, but if she wins it will also no doubt be seen as a brilliant political tactic.

One open question here is whether Donald Trump's success in getting minority voters to vote Republican was a one-off phenomenon due solely to his own personality, or whether it will become more of a lasting trend. If Hispanics (in particular) switch back to heavily backing Democrats once again, it will likely generate a lot of speculation about what to expect in voting patterns across the country next year in the midterms.

New York City

The race for New York City mayor is freaking a whole lot of people out, that's for sure. The leading candidate, Democrat Zohran Mamdani, has been attacked not only by Republicans but also by more than a few of his fellow Democrats. But at this point it seems like he is on a clear path to victory next week, in a very unusual race. The only real question Tuesday night is likely going to be whether he manages to top 50 percent or not (some polls show him doing so, but others show him only getting close to this mark).

The reason he's still going to win even without a simple majority of the votes is that this is a three-way race. Andrew Cuomo expected to waltz to victory here and thus begin his political comeback story. Unfortunately for him, the voters in the Democratic primary didn't agree and Mamdani soundly beat Cuomo. Irritated by this snub, Cuomo then decided to run as an independent.

Cuomo did convince the sitting mayor, Eric Adams, to drop out of the race and endorse him, but so far he has failed to convince the Republican to do so as well. This leaves three big candidates in the race, although polling shows that even if it had become a one-on-one race between Cuomo and Mamdani, Cuomo would still be trailing (although not by as much as he currently is).

Mamdani is a young, fresh face in politics. He generated a ton of enthusiasm among younger voters and people disaffected with the way things are being run in New York City, but he did so by proposing some rather radical solutions -- including hiking taxes on rich people and corporations. He has promised free child care, free bus service, a rent freeze, government-run grocery stores, and other ideas that his detractors call not economic populism but actual socialism. Mamdani was formerly associated with the Democratic Socialists, but he has backed off from some of the more-radical positions he used to hold (such as defunding the police).

All of this is what has terrified a certain faction of the Democratic Party, to the point where neither U.S. senator from New York has endorsed Mamdani (although he did convince the current governor to endorse him, as well as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries).

Mamdani has been hit hard for his refusal to support Israel and for his own Muslim faith. But when it gets down to it, the mayor of New York City actually has nothing whatsoever to do with foreign policy in any way, although you wouldn't know that from the amount of times the subject has come up during the campaign.

Mamdani's natural political skills have allowed him to rise up against so much concerted opposition, and he now stands anywhere from 10 to 26 points ahead of Cuomo in the polls, so his victory Tuesday night is all but assured.

Making sense of it all

Pundits always want to tell a story of conflict, especially conflict between two factions within one political party. So there will be a whole lot of analysis of what the election results mean next week.

The progressives will argue that their side is ascendant, after Mamdani wins handily, even with all the opposition from within his own party. They'll point out that the two "moderate" Democrats in New Jersey and Virginia both won by leaning in to the economic populist position of fighting for affordability.

The moderates, meanwhile, will argue the opposite -- that their candidates won in New Jersey and Virginia precisely because they were moderates, and that if any candidate who had been further left had run, they would have lost the race. They will discount Mamdani's win and chalk it up to both the three-way nature of the race and the serious flaws of Andrew Cuomo as a candidate (and as a human being).

The moderates will also be quaking in their boots over the effect that Mamdani is going to have on the midterms, but I think these fears are largely overblown. Centrist Democrats fear Republicans attempting to tie the entire Democratic Party to Mamdani (they fear the label "Mamdani Democrats," to put this another way) and using this to fearmonger voters in districts and states far from New York City.

The reality is probably going to be that Mamdani will try to implement his agenda items, some of which will be successful and some of which won't. Raising taxes (among other things) will require the state government in Albany to act, which they may not do. Even for the plans he does manage to get up and running, some of them will likely work well and some won't. This is the nature of trying to do big things in politics, after all. But New Yorkers are likely to take it all in stride, mostly because they will see Mamdani at least trying to make their economic lives better.

Fearmongering Mamdani is going to be a lot harder to do if he can point to some successes next year. "What's so frightening about free child care?" he will be able to say, and that's a pretty convincing argument no matter where it is made.

Maybe I am being just a cockeyed optimist here, but it seems to me that (assuming the Democrats win in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City) this could actually prove to be more of a unifying election for Democrats than one creating division within the party.

If there's a common thread of championing affordability and economic populism, then that could prove to be an agenda that all Democrats -- both moderates and progressives -- can rally behind next year. Maybe the old "It's the economy, stupid!" message will be seen as the theme all Democrats should run on in the midterms? That wouldn't be a horrible thing, as far as I am concerned. Maybe the Republican insistence on fearmongering on hot-button social issues will be seen as horrendously out-of-touch, and maybe even Donald Trump will also start to be seen that way, since he is never going to admit any economic pain exists out there under his watch.

So maybe all the pundits can agree on a very simple conclusion -- addressing voters' economic fears and problems is a winning message for Democrats at this point in time. And maybe that (more than anything else) will unify the Democratic Party heading into next year's midterms.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant