WASHINGTON: The latest midterm elections in the United States set a new trend in America’s electoral politics, with women, liberal and immigrant voters uniting against President Donald Trump.

And their unity brought a much-needed victory for the Democrats in Tuesday’s election, the first since President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012.

In Virginia, Democrat Ralph Northam was elected governor by an unexpectedly large margin of nine percentage points. He won more votes than any previous candidate for Virginia governor.

In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy won the governor’s race by 13 points over Chris Christie’s lieutenant governor. In 2013, Mr Christie, a Republican, got re-elected from this state with a 22-point margin.

Democrats also gained far more seats in the lower chamber of the Virginia legislature than anyone expected. They won a state Senate seat in the Washington, picked up three more legislative seats in New Jersey, added three in Georgia and one in a New Hampshire.

Democrats swept several mayoral races and made gains across the nation in local governments. Voters in Maine adopted a ballot measure to expand Medicaid, which is seen an endorsement of Mr Obama’s health policy, which President Trump has vowed to undo.

But even more important than these results, is what the voters told exit poll conductors after the vote: they voted to show their indignation with President Trump, who, according to recent opinion surveys, is the most unpopular US president in 75 years.

The Washington Post noted that 34 per cent of voters said expressing opposition to Mr Trump motivated them to vote. Only 17pc said they voted to show support for the president. The rest said they voted for their candidates, not for or against Mr Trump.

One of the reasons often cited for Mr Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election was that a large number of women, liberal and immigrant voters stayed at home.

A week after the election, Democrats held a large anti-Trump rally in Washington, DC, and many among this angry crowd told reporters that they had not voted because: they did not like Hillary Clinton and thought Mr Trump could never win.

But Mr Trump’s unexpected victory forced them to come out this time. About a dozen women activists, who were having lunch at a restaurant in Springfield, Virginia, after casting their votes, admitted that they did not vote in the presidential election.

“But this time, we did because we want to say ‘No to Trump’,” said one of them. When reminded that this election was not about Mr Trump, she said: “Yeah, but we still wanted to say no to him.”

“Voters came out in droves. They braved the rain and the cold to send a message to President Trump. The results across the country represent nothing less than a stinging repudiation of Trump on the first anniversary of his election,” The Washington Post reported, confirming the sentiments expressed by this small group.

“Republicans did hold the only US House seat contested on Tuesday, which was in Utah. But other than that, it was a wipeout,” the Bloomberg news agency added.

Congressman Scott Taylor, a Virginia Republican, acknowledged that both Democrats and Republicans registered their disenchantment with Mr Trump.

Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia, said that the Trump factor was “a huge drag” on the Republican ticket as “it motivated the Democratic base. Democrats came out en masse in protest”.

Commenting on the election results, Mr Trump distanced himself from Ed Gillespie, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia. “Ed Gillespie worked hard but did not embrace me or what I stand for,” he tweeted from South Korea. “With the economy doing record numbers, we will continue to win, even bigger than before!” he added.

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2017