Election Day 2023: What you need to know about key races and ballot measures

The victories Democrats racked up on Tuesday night spanned safe blue states, Trump country, and one-time battlegrounds: A popular governor was re-elected in Kentucky; Virginia Democrats flipped control of the state house and kept their majority in the state senate; Democrats reversed GOP gains in New Jersey’s legislature; Pennsylvania voters delivered a Democratic romp in statewide contests; and the liberal positions won big in Ohio’s two ballot measures to enshrine the right to an abortion and to legalize marijuana.

Post-election vote totals show that much of that success was due to a very specific kind of American: affluent, college-educated voters who are likely to live in the suburbs of metropolitan areas. In Kentucky, that means the areas in and around Louisville, where vote totals from the secretary of state’s office show that Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear improved his 2019 margins by nearly 10 percentage points; the counties in and around Lexington, where he improved by an average of 9 points; and in the three northern counties that sit across the state line from Cincinnati, Ohio, where vote totals show he improved by an average of 3 points.

Even before Tuesday’s elections, many progressives insisted the question of whether protecting abortion rights wins elections was already asked and answered. Democrats made abortion rights the centerpiece of their campaign advertising during the 2022 midterms, a cycle where Democrats outperformed expectations, kept control of the US Senate, and staved off a red wave. Polls last year also found abortion rights to be a significantly motivating issue for both independent and Democratic voters.

Abortion rights ballot measures won in all six states where they appeared in 2022, including states like Montana, Kentucky, and Kansas that otherwise elected Republican candidates. Democrats have been winning in special elections where they ran on abortion rights, and surveys suggested voters have grown even more supportive of abortion rights since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.

The 2023 general election on Tuesday, November 7, featured only a grab-bag group of contests, but there was one clear overall theme in the results: Democrats did well.

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) won reelection in deep-red Kentucky. Democrats held onto the Virginia state Senate and took over the Virginia state House, blocking Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hopes of passing conservative policies (and perhaps his ambitions in national politics). Meanwhile, Ohio voters enshrined the protection of abortion rights in the state constitution and legalized recreational cannabis.

An incumbent Democrat running on kitchen table issues will be pitted against a Republican culture warrior in the Kentucky governor’s race this fall, and the results could send a signal about voters’ priorities in close races heading into 2024.

At the annual Fancy Farm picnic in rural far-west Kentucky this past weekend, Gov. Andy Beshear and his Republican challenger, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, channeled what might become familiar playbooks for Democratic and GOP candidates next year.

JACKSON, Mississippi — Mississippi isn’t that Republican.

Although Republicans have a monopoly on statewide office and supermajorities in the state legislature, Mississippi is a lighter shade of red than outsiders might think. It has been consistently easy in recent years for Democrats to get up to 45 percent of the vote here, but nearly impossible for them to top 50.