By LINLEY SANDERS, JOSH BOAK, and AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wasn’t on the ballot in Tuesday’s elections, but many voters in key races made their choice in opposition to him or considered him to be irrelevant, according to the AP Voter Poll.

It was hardly an endorsement of his nearly 10 months back in the White House.

That theme played out in the governor races in New Jersey and Virginia, the mayoral contest in New York City and a state proposition to redraw congressional districts in California.

The AP Voter Poll, which surveyed more than 17,000 voters in those places, found that most voters disapproved of Trump’s performance as president, and many thought his aggressive approach to immigration had “gone too far.” Republicans and those who lean toward the Republican Party were more likely to say Trump wasn’t a factor for their vote, even though most approve of his job performance.

Few cast a vote to support Trump, while more wanted to oppose him

Most presidents fare poorly in the off-cycle elections that come a year after their White House wins, and Trump fit solidly into that pattern as Democrats boasted victories in Tuesday’s key races.

In both Virginia and New Jersey, slightly fewer than half of voters said Trump was “not a factor” in their respective votes for governor. Beside some social media posts and tele-rallies Monday night, Trump did little to help Republican candidates in those states.

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About 6 in 10 voters in New York City’s mayoral race said Trump did not play a role in their decision. That’s despite his threat to withdraw federal funding if Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani won, and his social media endorsement of Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor. New York City voters picked Mamdani to be their next mayor, setting up a possible showdown with the Trump administration.

For those who did identify Trump as a factor, it was to his disadvantage.

Roughly 4 in 10 voters in New Jersey and Virginia said they were casting ballots to oppose Trump. Fewer said they were voting to show their support for the Republican president.

Trump weighed more heavily in the minds of California voters, who were voting on a proposition to determine whether to redistrict the state’s congressional seats in favor of Democrats. The whole effort is designed to rebut Trump’s efforts to redraw congressional districts in Republican states with the specific goal of preserving the GOP House majority in next year’s midterm races.

Only about 4 in 10 California voters said Trump did not factor into their decision. But about half said they were voting to object to Trump. Roughly 1 in 10 California voters said they were voting with support for him.

Voters largely disapproved of Trump, and many cast ballots accordingly

Many voters disapprove of how Trump has performed since returning to the White House in January. That could be a problem for Republican candidates, as Trump has made loyalty to him a must for GOP candidates.

Only about 4 in 10 voters across Virginia and New Jersey approve of how the president is handling his job. Approval was even lower in the Democratic strongholds of California and New York City, where close to two-thirds of voters disapprove of his leadership so far.

Not surprisingly, the voters who were likeliest to disapprove of him were more likely to say they were signaling their dislike of him when casting a ballot. Meanwhile, voters who like Trump’s job performance were more likely to say the president wasn’t a factor in their choice.

Most Republican voters in Virginia and New Jersey approved of Trump’s performance as president, but that didn’t mean they saw him as a major motivator. About 6 in 10 Republicans in both states said Trump wasn’t a factor in their vote.

Many voters were unhappy with Trump’s immigration approach

In 2024, Trump capitalized on voters’ concerns about border crossings by immigrants without legal status.

This year, immigration fell far behind economic issues for voters when they were asked to think about what’s the most important issue facing their state or city. It wasn’t a top concern for voters in any of the four states where the AP Voter Poll was conducted. The survey also found that many voters were unhappy with Trump’s aggressive approach on deportations and arrests of immigrants believed to be in the country illegally.

Voters in California, New Jersey, New York City and Virginia were more likely to say that the Trump administration’s actions on immigration enforcement had “gone too far” than “been about right” or “not gone far enough.”

But voters in Virginia and New Jersey were about evenly split on whether their next governor should cooperate with the Trump administration on immigration enforcement.

Voters in New York City and California were more definitively opposed. About 6 in 10 voters in each place said their leaders should not be cooperating with the White House on immigration enforcement.

The 2025 AP Voter Poll, conducted by SSRS from Oct. 22 – Nov. 4, includes representative samples of registered voters in California (4,490), New Jersey (4,244), New York City (4,304) and Virginia (4,215). The AP Voter Poll combines data collected from validated registered voters online and by telephone, with data collected in-person from election day voters at approximately 30 precincts per state or city, excluding California. Respondents can complete the poll in English or Spanish. The overall margin of sampling error for voters, accounting for design effect, is plus or minus 2.0 percentage points in California, 2.1 percentage points in New Jersey, 2.2 percentage points in New York City, and 2.1 percentage points in Virginia.

By RODNEY MUHUMUZA, Associated Press

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — The opposition leader in Ugandan Parliament sees the Ugandan-born Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York mayoral race as an inspiring political shift but somehow too distant for many Africans at home.

“It’s a big encouragement even to us here in Uganda that it’s possible,” said Joel Ssenyonyi, who represents an area of the Ugandan capital of Kampala. “But we have a long way to get there.”

Uganda, where Mamdani was born in 1991, has had the same president for nearly four decades, despite attempts by multiple opposition leaders to defeat him in elections. President Yoweri Museveni, an authoritarian who is up for reelection in January, has rejected calls for his retirement, leading to fears of a volatile political transition. His most prominent challenger is a 43-year-old entertainer known as Bobi Wine, who charges he was cheated in the 2021 election.

Mamdani was briefly raised in Uganda and kept its citizenship even after he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. He left Uganda to follow his father, political theorist Mahmood Mamdani, in South Africa and, later, the United States. His mother is filmmaker Mira Nair, whose work has been nominated for an Academy Award. The family maintains a home in Kampala, to which they regularly return and came earlier this year to celebrate Mamdani’s marriage.

The influence of his professor father

The elder Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University, is known as a demanding teacher and a key influence in the son’s outlook as a leading scholar in the field of postcolonial studies.

He has written critically of the Museveni government. His most recent book — “Slow Poison,” published in October by Harvard University Press — has juxtaposed the legacies of Museveni and late dictator Idi Amin, who is blamed for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans between 1971 and 1979. He argues that both leaders made violence central to their success and that while Amin retained popular support and didn’t die a millionaire, Museveni’s family is immensely wealthy while he’s no longer popular.

Robert Kabushenga, a retired media executive who is friendly with the Mamdani family, said Zohran Mamdani, like his parents, is unconventional. He “follows a tradition of very honest and clear thinkers who are willing to reimagine the politics,” said Kabushenga. “(His father) must be pleasantly surprised.”

Ugandans see hope in more youth joining politics

Mamdani’s victory in New York offers “a beacon of hope” for embattled activists and others in Uganda. The lesson is that “we should allow young people the opportunity to shape, and participate in, politics in a meaningful way,” Kabushenga said.

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Okello Ogwang, a professor of literature who has worked with the elder Mamdani at Uganda’s Makerere University, said the son’s success abroad means “it’s an important thing that we should invest in the youth.”

“He’s coming from here,” he said. “If we don’t invest in our youth, we are wasting our time.”

As a shy and soft-spoken teenager, Mamdani was briefly interested in a possible career as a newsman and later was part the rap ensemble Young Cardamom and HAB, whose eccentric music videos set in Kampala can still be viewed online.

Before he became a New York assembly member in 2021, the self-described democratic socialist was a community activist in the New York borough of Queens, helping vulnerable homeowners facing eviction.

His mayoral campaign, whose success in the Democratic primary sent a shockwave through the political world, focused on lowering the cost of living, promising free city buses, free child care, a rent freeze for people living in rent-stabilized apartments and government-run grocery stores, all paid for with taxes on the wealthy. Some Republicans have called for his denaturalization and deportation.

“He breaks new ground,” said Kabushenga. “He is willing to try in places that are new.”

Ssenyonyi, the Ugandan lawmaker, said Mamdani’s unlikely victory, as remote for Ugandans as it seems, deserves to be celebrated. “It inspires us,” he said. “Mamdani is Ugandan-born, like us.”

By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press

The new congressional map that California voters approved marked a victory for Democrats in the national redistricting battle playing out ahead of the 2026 midterm election. But Republicans are still ahead in the fight.

The unusual mid-decade redistricting fray began this summer when President Donald Trump urged Republican-led states to reshape their voting districts to try to help the GOP retain control of the House in next year’s election. Democrats need to gain just three seats to win the chamber and impede Trump’s agenda.

Texas responded first with a new U.S. House map aimed at helping Republicans win up to five additional seats. Proposition 50, which California voters supported Tuesday, creates up to five additional seats that Democrats could win.

What’s the score in the redistricting battle?

If the 2026 election goes according to the redistricting projections, Democrats in California and Republicans in Texas could cancel each other’s gains.

But Republicans could still be ahead by four seats in the redistricting battle. New districts adopted in Missouri and North Carolina could help Republicans win one additional seat in each state. And a new U.S. House map approved last week in Ohio boosts Republicans’ chances to win two additional seats.

Some big uncertainties remain. Several Ohio districts are so competitive that Democrats believe they, too, have a chance at winning them. Lawsuits persist in Missouri and North Carolina. And Missouri’s redistricting law faces a referendum petition that, if successful, would suspend the new map until it’s put to a statewide vote.

What’s next in California?

Republican legal challenges are likely to continue against California’s new districts, which impose boundaries drawn by the Democratic-led Legislature in place of those adopted after the 2020 census by an independent citizens commission.

But candidates can’t afford to wait to ramp up campaigns in the new districts.

Though Democrats could win up to 48 of California’s 52 U.S. House seats, several districts are closely divided between Democratic and Republican voters.

“Some of the Democratic districts are probably going to vote blue, but I wouldn’t call them locks,” said J. Miles Coleman, of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You could still have some expensive races,” Coleman added.

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Next up: Indiana?

Republicans who control the Legislature chose not to convene a special session on redistricting Monday, after Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun had called for it. But efforts to round up enough votes continue. Lawmakers now are planning to consider redistricting during a rare December regular session.

Republicans currently hold seven of Indiana’s nine U.S. House seats and could attempt to gain one or two more through redistricting.

Kansas Republican lawmakers had been collecting signatures from colleagues to call themselves into a special session to try to draw an additional Republican-leaning congressional district. But some lawmakers remained reluctant, and House Speaker Dan Hawkins ended the effort Tuesday.

Redistricting could still come up during Kansas’ regular legislative session that begins Jan. 12.

Could more Democrats join in gerrymandering?

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said he hopes approval of California’s redistricting “sends a chilling effect on Republicans who are trying to do this around the country.” But “if the Republicans continue to do this, we will respond in kind each and every step of the way,” Martin said.

On Tuesday, Democratic Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced a commission on congressional redistricting, even though the Democratic Senate president has said his chamber won’t move forward with redistricting because of concerns the effort to gain another Democratic seat could backfire.

National Democrats also want Illinois lawmakers to redistrict to gain an additional House seat. But lawmakers thus far have resisted, citing concerns about the effect on representation for Black residents.

Virginia’s Democratic-led legislature recently endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade redistricting. But it needs another round of legislative approval early next year before going to voters. Democrats currently hold six of Virginia’s 11 U.S. House seats and could try to gain two or three more by redistricting, though no specific plan has been released.

Does all this remapping matter?

Over the past 90 years, when the president’s party has held a House majority, that party has lost an average of more than 30 seats in midterm elections. No amount of Republican redistricting this year could offset a loss of that size. But the 2026 election may not be average.

Those past swings were so large partly because the president’s party often held large House majorities, which meant more competitive seats were at risk.

The Republicans’ current slim majority is most similar to GOP margins during the 2002 midterm election under President George W. Bush and Democrats’ margins during the 2022 midterm under President Joe Biden. Republicans gained eight seats in 2002, when Bush was widely popular after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Democrats lost nine seats in 2022, when Biden’s approval rating was well under 50%, as Trump’s is today.

If next year’s swing is similarly small, a gain of just half-dozen to a dozen seats through redistricting could make a difference in which party wins the House.

“Because we have this tiny numerical sliver separating a Democratic majority from a Republican majority, the stakes are incredibly high — even in a single state considering whether to redraw its districts,” said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College.

What does this mean for future years?

The battle to redraw congressional voting districts for partisan advantage isn’t likely to end with the 2026 election.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which supports GOP candidates in state legislative races, warned in a recent memo that “the redistricting arms race has escalated to an every cycle fight” — no longer centered around each decennial census.

Democratic lawmakers in New York are pursuing a proposed constitutional amendment that could allow redistricting ahead of the 2028 election. Several states currently under split partisan control also could pursue congressional redistricting before 2028 if next year’s election shifts the balance of power so one party controls both the legislature and governor’s office.

“It’s important to recognize that the fight for 2027 redistricting — and the U.S. House in 2028 — has already started,” RSLC President Edith Jorge-Tuñón wrote.

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press writers John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas; Marc Levy in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called for “deep reflection” in the United States about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that “many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”

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The Chicago-born pope was responding Tuesday to a range of geopolitical questions from reporters outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, including what kind of spiritual rights migrants in U.S. custody should have, U.S. military attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela and the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East.

Leo underlined that scripture emphasizes the question that will be posed at the end of the world: “How did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him, or not? I think there is a deep reflection that needs to be made about what is happening.”

He said “the spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered,’’ and he called on authorities to allow pastoral workers access to the detained migrants. “Many times they’ve been separated from their families. No one knows what’s happening, but their own spiritual needs should be attended to,” Leo said.

Leo last month urged labor union leaders visiting from Chicago to advocate for immigrants and welcome minorities into their ranks.

Asked about the lethal attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela, the pontiff said the military action was “increasing tension,’’ noting that they were coming even closer to the coastline.

“The thing is to seek dialogue,’’ the pope said.

On the Middle East, Leo acknowledged that the first phase of the peace accord between Israel and Hamas remains “very fragile,’’ and said that the parties need to find a way forward on future governance “and how you can guarantee the rights of all peoples.’’

Asked about Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians i n the West Bank, the pope described the settlement issue as “complex,’’ adding: “Israel has said one thing, then it’s done another sometimes. We need to try to work together for justice for all peoples.’’

Pope Leo will receive Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican on Thursday. At the end of November he will make his first trip as Pope to Turkey and Lebanon.