How the 2025 Election Could Affect Abortion Rights and Child Care Costs (Updated)

Update, Nov. 5, 2025: The Associated Press has called the following races:

• Democrat Abigail Spanberger will be Virginia’s next governor. She beat Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, the state’s current lieutenant governor, to become Virginia’s first woman governor. Democrats won at least 61 of the state House of Delegates’ 100 seats, with eight more yet to be called as of publication, and they are expected to advance an abortion rights ballot measure in 2026.
• Democrat Mikie Sherrill will be New Jersey’s next governor, beating Republican Jack Ciattarelli by a wide margin.
• Democrat Zohran Mamdani has won New York City’s mayoral race. He beat his closest competitor, independent Andrew Cuomo, surpassing 1 million votes. It was the first New York City mayoral election since 1969 with a turnout of more than 2 million voters.

On Nov. 4, voters across the country will cast their ballots for state and local elections. The results in some of these races could have serious implications for abortion access and other reproductive justice initiatives.

Abortion has become a major electoral issue since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Of the ten states that put forward abortion-related ballot measures in 2024, voters in seven states passed pro-choice initiatives.

Abortion isn’t explicitly on the ballot in any November 2025 elections. But candidates in several state and city-wide races have made reproductive rights—or, in some cases, abortion restrictions—a key part of their platforms.

These are the races we’re watching this Election Day.

Virginia

Virginia is the last bastion of abortion access in the South, and the two candidates vying to be the state’s next governor have vastly different visions for reproductive rights.

Democrat Abigail Spanberger, a former U.S. Congresswoman, has said she supports Virginia’s current abortion laws, which ban abortion after the end of the second trimester (or about 27 weeks). The laws include exceptions to preserve the pregnant person’s life or general health, including mental health.

Her Republican opponent, Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s current lieutenant governor, has signalled support for either a six-week or 15-week abortion ban.

Virginians will also select all 100 members of the House of Delegates, which is expected to pass a ballot initiative allowing voters to decide whether to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution in 2026. The measure was passed once by the Virginia Senate in January 2025, but lawmakers must pass an identical proposal again for it to be put forward to voters.

The latest polls give Spanberger a 8-to-10-percentage point lead.

But the makeup of the legislature will be more influential on abortion rights, Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the nonpartisan University of Virginia Center for Politics newsletter Sabato’s Crystal Ball, said in an interview with RNG earlier this month.

“Democrats probably still would be favored to hold the House of Delegates,” he said, even if the anti-abortion Earle-Sears were to become Virginia’s next governor.

New Jersey

The Garden State’s next governor could also drastically change New Jersey’s abortion landscape.

The Guttmacher Institute, which produces research on sexual and reproductive health and rights, considers the state’s abortion policies “very protective.” New Jersey doesn’t place any gestational limits on abortion care, requires private health insurance to cover abortion, and has a shield law protecting providers who provide abortion care in states with bans.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate and current U.S. Rep. Mikie Sherrill supports existing state law, News From the States reported. Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli says he supports banning abortion after 20 weeks and parental notification laws for minors seeking abortion care.

Current New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who is term-limited out after eight years in office, signed abortion rights into state law in January 2022 through the Reproductive Freedom Act, six months before the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ended federal abortion protections. He also announced plans to stockpile mifepristone, one of two drugs commonly used in U.S. medication abortions, in January 2025. The current status of the stockpile is unclear.

Ciattarelli opposes the Reproductive Freedom Act, and one of Ciattarelli’s staffers recently confirmed to POLITICO that an anti-abortion state assemblyman is on the candidate’s shortlist of potential state supreme court nominees.

The latest polls give Sherrill a lead of between 1 and 4 percentage points, a very narrow lead that some pollsters consider a dead heat.

New York

New York City’s mayoral election—largely a showdown between the state’s disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who lost the Democratic primary, and the Democratic nominee, progressive state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani—has gained national attention as an apparent indicator of the future of the Democratic Party.

But for New Yorkers, its more direct impact could be a reduction in child-care costs.

Raising children in the Big Apple is notoriously expensive. Mamdani, 34, has run on making the city more affordable, and one of his campaign pledges is providing free child care for kids aged 6 weeks to 5 years old. The latest polls give Mamdani a 5-to-16-percentage point lead over Cuomo. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa trails further behind.

New York City currently provides free early childhood education starting at age 3. Until then, day care can cost at least $2,000 a month. Research shows that programs like universal child care can boost families’ disposable incomes and increase mothers’ ability to work.

Keeping families is a well-known challenge in the nation’s biggest city.

The New York City Council in June 2025 approved $3 million for guaranteed income programs, like the Bridge Project, which provide unconditional cash payments to parents for a specified amount of time, such as the first three years of a child’s life. The results have been life-changing for some families.

“More cash equals more opportunities, more choices,” Bridge Project National Director of Programs Tegan Lecheler said in a previous interview with RNG. “It means getting to live in a safer neighborhood. It means getting to choose to go back to work and put your child into child care, having access to more nutritional food for yourself and for your baby.”

Mayoral races

Other major U.S. cities are selecting mayors on Nov. 4, including Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Seattle. Local leaders strongly influence reproductive rights—as Heidi Gerbracht wrote in 2022, “abortion clinics exist nearly entirely in cities, and city governments have the power to make it easier or harder to ensure access.”

This article was adapted from a Bluesky thread.

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