“It’s in the Water, It’s in the Air”: The Ripple Effect of National Politics through Campaign Translation in the 2025 New Jersey and Virginia Gubernatorial Elections

Abstract

Do off-year gubernatorial elections serve as a referendum on the current presidential administration or can candidates and their campaigns translate national political forces into state-level and state-specific campaign strategies? While traditional referendum models treat off-year elections as reflections of presidential popularity, this independent research proposes the “Ripple Effect” framework, which emphasizes the mediating role of state-specific circumstances and campaign strategies. The 2025 New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections offer a natural experiment to compare and analyze how the candidates and campaigns interpreted and translated national political forces in their specific circumstances. Using comparative case studies of the 2025 New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections, this thesis combines campaign advertisements, county-level electoral data, and expert interviews to trace how national forces were interpreted and translated. The findings show that national political pressures shaped both races but were mediated differently by candidates and their campaign staff into campaign strategy. In New Jersey, campaigns dampened national cues and emphasized state-level governance issues. In Virginia, campaigns amplified national partisan conflict, embedding the race within national political narratives. These results suggest that gubernatorial elections are neither purely national referenda nor purely local contests. Instead, campaigns act as translators of national political currents within state-specific institutional environments.