President Donald Trump's relentless campaign against "wokeness" has apparently inspired the majority of American voters to fully embrace it, as evidenced by Tuesday's sweeping Democratic victories across multiple states.
After Trump declared in March that "our country will be 'woke' no longer" during his address to Congress, voters in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City responded by electing the most progressive slate of Democratic candidates in recent memory, including Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist who will become New York City's first Muslim mayor.
Democratic gubernatorial candidates Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey won by margins exceeding 13 and 15 points respectively, vastly outperforming the narrow 5-point margins by which Trump lost those states in 2024. Political analysts noted that voters seem to have interpreted Trump's anti-woke messaging as an enthusiastic endorsement of wokeness itself.
"When the President spent the last year targeting Smithsonian museums, banning 'woke AI' from federal contracts, and threatening universities over DEI programs, we thought he was discouraging that behavior," said a Republican strategist from Facebook. "Turns out he was creating the world's most effective advertising campaign for progressive values."
Exit polls revealed that voters overwhelmingly sided with Democrats on economic issues, with independents breaking for Democratic candidates by 13 to 19 points. When asked why they voted Democratic, many cited Trump's focus on cultural issues while ignoring rising costs of living.
"The President kept saying 'woke is broke' while my grocery bills kept going up," said a New Jersey voter from Reddit. "I figured if he's so obsessed with fighting wokeness, maybe the woke people know something about fixing the economy that he doesn't."
The trend was particularly pronounced among Latino voters, who supported Democratic candidates by 2-to-1 margins in both Virginia and New Jersey, a dramatic reversal from Trump's historic gains with the demographic in 2024. Experts suggest Trump's aggressive immigration enforcement may have inadvertently made progressive cultural values more appealing to the community.
California voters also approved Proposition 50, a ballot measure that redraws congressional districts to favor Democrats, potentially giving the party up to five additional House seats in 2026. When asked why they supported the measure, California voters cited Trump's repeated insistence that the country must reject woke ideology as their primary motivation for ensuring more woke representatives in Congress.
