Hello and welcome to News Hour from the World Service of the BBC live from London.
This is Owen Bennett Jones and we're going to begin with the U.S.
state and local elections.
Well, it was a clean sweep for Democrats last night as the party clinched victory.
We'll be the next mayor of New York City.
Virginia is back in Democratic hands.
Democrat Mikey Sherrill will be elected governor of New Jersey.
Well, the first of those wins was probably the most eye-catching New York,
a 34-year-old Muslim winning by 10 points,
and then standing at a podium that read a new era for New York City,
he took to the stage to introduce his transition team.
Last night, we made history.
I'm so proud to be standing here today as the mayor-elect of the greatest city in the world.
Over 2 million New Yorkers cast their ballots.
Whether they were the more than million who supported this campaign or the others who supported someone else or whether they felt too disappointed by the political process to participate at all,
I will work every day to honor the trust that I now hold.
The poetry of campaigning may have come to a close last night at nine,
but the beautiful prose of governing has only just begun.
The hard work of improving New Yorkers lives starts now.
So there are different ways of reading the election results in the US.