For a Democratic Party still struggling to rebuild in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s loss, last night represented a remarkable turnaround. For months, Democratic candidates have struggled in special elections, with national fundraising efforts hobbled by self-doubt, mixed messaging, and constant recriminations. Party officials remain consumed with suturing the wounds—many self-inflicted—left by the contentious primary between Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Yet on Tuesday, voters themselves came out to deliver a stunning rebuke of Donald Trump and the G.O.P. in a series of gubernatorial and down-ballot races and referendums. “There is no denying that this was a repudiation of both Trump and Trumpism,” Steve Israel, a former New York congressman who previously served as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told me. “[Republicans] can’t run away from that.”

The party arguably secured its greatest victory in Virginia, where Ralph Northam bested Republican Ed Gillespie by nearly nine percentage points in the race for governor—a greater margin than Clinton’s victory over Trump in the traditionally purple commonwealth last year. Despite keeping Trump at arm’s length, Gillespie latched onto a number of Trumpian issues during his campaign, including immigration and preserving Confederate monuments. But Gillespie’s decision to employ the tactics that propelled Trump into the White House fell flat. “Virginia’s wipeout was almost a perfect laboratory for studying the impact of Trump on the G.O.P.,” Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist and vocal Never Trumper, told me. “Ed Gillespie [ran] the ‘Trumpism Without Trump’ playbook . . . Trumpism wins the base and loses almost everyone else. Trump himself becomes a political anchor tied around the necks of Republican candidates.”

As results rolled in, the president and his right-wing allies scrambled to distance themselves from Gillespie, blaming his loss on his failure to go “full Trump”. But Wilson dismissed the idea that embracing Trump would have shifted the election in the Republican’s favor. “Listening to [Steve] Bannon’s call to ‘be more like Trump’ is like going to an oncologist who tells you, ‘Smoke three packs of unfiltered Camels a day,’” he said. Exit polls bolster Wilson’s argument: Politico reports that half of all voters in Virginia—where Trump’s approval rating is 40 percent—identified the president as the reason for their vote, with 34 percent of voters saying they were casting their ballots to oppose Trump. Meanwhile, Northam won 95 percent of voters who strongly disapproved of the president’s job performance.

Notably, Gillespie bled support among core Republican demographics. While Trump won white college-educated voters in 2016 by four points, Northam carried them by three. Among white women with college degrees, the Republican nominee lost by a staggering 16-point margin. Northam also won two affluent Virginia suburbs, Loudoun County and Prince William County, by double digits—20 and 23 points respectively, improving on Clinton’s margin in both. “It is hard not to stress the things that we have been seeing all over the place, in particular, this sort of suburban revolt against Donald Trump and suburban revolt against the current state of the Republican Party,” Democratic strategist and pollster Jefrey Pollock told me.

Nor was the Democratic Party’s triumph limited to the governor’s race. A slate of Democratic newcomers—including Danica Roem, who will be one of the nation’s first openly transgender elected officials after beating out a 13-term Republican incumbent—potentially robbing the G.O.P. of its majority in the Virginia House of Delegates. “I don’t believe huge national conclusions can be drawn from an individual race, but Virginia wasn’t just one race; it was a total wipeout for Republicans,” Terry Sullivan, the G.O.P. strategist who served as Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign manager, told me. “The top of the ticket isn’t the best indicator for how poorly Republicans did . . . those losses for down-ballot Republicans are going to be more indicative of voting by party versus for an individual candidate. Democrats clearly had much more energy on their side than anyone thought.”