Democrats are giddy from this week’s electoral sweep
America’s off-year elections can be summarised by the tale of two promising governors—one who triumphed and another who flopped. On November 7th, Andy Beshear cruised to reelection in Kentucky, one of the reddest states in the country, despite the fact that he is a Democrat. Meanwhile in Virginia, Republican governor Glenn Youngkin, who campaigned for his party’s state candidates as if he were on the ballot himself, suffered a political reverse by losing control of the lower chamber of the state legislature.
Amid doom and gloom over the upcoming presidential election, Democrats won on friendly turf and in enemy territory. In Kentucky Mr Beshear improved markedly from a half-point victory in 2019 to a five-point win. In a sign of his appeal outside of comfortable urban terrain, he managed to win two rural counties that Donald Trump had won by over 50 points in the 2020 presidential election.
In Ohio, a state that Mr Trump handily carried twice, voters chose to break with conservatives and enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution. According to analysis by Politico, turnout in the counties that supported Mr Trump was high. But support for abortion exceeded support for President Joe Biden by a margin of ten points. Voters in New Jersey expanded Democratic legislative majorities; those in Pennsylvania added another Democrat to the bench of the state supreme court. Only in Mississippi, deep in the conservative heartland, did Democrats lose a big race (as expected). Even there the challenging candidate Brandon Presley fell two points short of forcing Tate Reeves, the incumbent governor, into a run-off.
2023-11-09 09:01:38
Article from www.economist.com