The 2025 election cycle brought hard-fought victories for Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, California, New York City, and beyond. Higher Ground Labs' portfolio companies played a critical role in powering the infrastructure behind these campaigns. ([link removed]) Each of these wins underscored a clear trend we’ve seen building all year: the campaign playbook is changing.

At first glance, the three highest profile races couldn’t have been more different: A Democratic socialist mayoral candidate in New York City and two moderate female gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey with CIA and military backgrounds, respectively. The former, a young insurgent candidate, ran a distinctly modern campaign. The latter two executed disciplined, high-capacity statewide operations in the more traditional sense. All three won handily—and each offers lessons for what’s next.

The differences in tone and approach reflected the needs of their electorates. But under the hood, they shared a few defining strategies that are already shaping Higher Ground Labs’ investment thesis and Higher Ground Institute’s programmatic priorities for 2026:
* Make your message personal. “Life is too expensive for you" was the core message of Mamdani, Spanberger, and Sherrill—but each made that idea deeply personal to their voters. They took a broad economic theme and made it resonate personally and locally for the voters they needed to reach.
* Be everywhere. Once messaging was decided, all three campaigns maintained a persistent presence across every channel their voters engaged with. They experimented with new content formats, creating authentic content that people actually wanted to share, and ensuring their messaging was impossible to ignore.
* Empower supporters to be messengers. Volunteers, creators, and local validators were key multipliers, carrying each candidate’s story in their own voice. Across the winning campaigns, they empowered supporters to transform individual networks into active, decentralized engines of persuasion and turnout.

These campaigns took risks in their campaign playbooks that we can all learn from as we look towards 2026 and beyond. That work starts now.

HGL’s portfolio companies powered the tech and infrastructure behind every Democratic win in 2025 ([link removed]) —helping campaigns communicate more personally, organize more efficiently, and reach voters where they are. HGI’s Media Innovation Fellows created cultures of experimentation that were so needed in media programs this cycle. ([link removed]) From ad optimization and voter engagement to relational organizing and creator-led storytelling, these teams are helping build the campaign of the future.

We have more work ahead, but the 2025 cycle was a great step forward. We met voters where they were and invited them in.

Take a moment to celebrate that. Then let’s get back to work.

—Betsy and the Higher Ground team

Read about our portfolio companies' full impact—and learn how they can support your 2026 campaigns. ([link removed])
See the HGL portfolio's impact ([link removed])
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