Election 2023 results and analysis: Democrats excel in Kentucky, Ohio, Virginia

After the results come in tonight, you can bet that pundits will rush to the airwaves breathlessly explaining why this result or that result is a good omen for Democrats or Republicans in the 2024 election cycle. We recommend that you pump the brakes on such analysis, though. Bear in mind that pretty much every election on the ballot today has some unique circumstance surrounding it:

-Virginia may be a blue state in presidential elections, but Youngkin is a popular governor, and voters there are still comfortable voting Republican down-ballot. As Sabato’s Crystal Ball noted recently, Democratic state-legislative candidates have historically done worse than Democratic presidential nominees in their districts.
-Kentucky and Mississippi are hosting gubernatorial elections, and gubernatorial elections have historically not hewed closely to presidential partisanship either. Instead, candidate quality matters a lot, with candidates often able to carve out a moderate brand for themselves separate from the national party.
-Issue 1 in Ohio could be a good check-in on whether abortion is still a motivating issue for Democrats more than a year removed from the Dobbs decision, but as Leah wrote last week, the unique circumstances and messaging of that vote could make it a poor litmus test.
-The one thing I am fairly confident in as an indicator for 2024 is special-election results (or, more accurately, which party does better than its partisan baseline in the eight special elections today). Those have historically been predictive of the House popular vote in the subsequent general election.
-That said, you can probably pay a little more attention to the punditry if all of these races go the same way. For example, if Democrats win or do better than expected in all of these states, that’s probably the sign of a national groundswell of support rather than unique factors in each race.

But just remember that the national mood can still change in the next year. Republicans did quite well in the 2021 off-year elections, but the Dobbs decision helped improve the political environment for Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterms. Just because the wind is at one party’s backs today doesn’t mean it still will be on Nov. 5, 2024.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, abortion rights issues have won every time they’ve been on the ballot. Tonight, we’ll see if that trend holds as Ohio voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitution.

But more broadly, abortion rights proved to be a motivator for Democratic voters in last year’s midterm elections, helping propel their party to better-than-expected midterm election results. Abortion remains an important issue for Democrats: 86 percent view it as very or somewhat important in the Oct. 25 weekly YouGov/The Economist poll. It’s a sharp contrast to Republicans, who are much less likely to support abortion rights than the general electorate, and also less likely to rank it as an important issue: only 68 percent did so in the YouGov/Economist poll.

That could keep Democrats likely to show up at the polls even when abortion is only implicitly on the ballot, like in Virginia, where Republicans have a chance to win full control of the state government. Hoping to drive turnout, Virginia Democrats have campaigned on abortion rights in competitive legislative districts this year, warning voters that Virginia could join other Southern, Republican-led states in banning abortion. Republicans in the state have denounced these efforts as fearmongering.

If the Ohio abortion-rights amendment wins and Democrats once again outperform expectations in other elections, it could be a sign that abortion is still driving Democrats to the polls. But no matter what happens tonight, abortion will likely continue to shape the presidential primary and election season that begins next year.

—Monica Potts, 538

If you’re trying to kill time before polls close, may I humbly recommend my video on today’s legislative elections in Virginia?

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2023 elections to watch: Virginia legislature

Republicans are hoping to win a "trifecta" in Virginia.

ABCNews.com

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

In Virginia, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and the GOP-controlled House of Delegates have been at loggerheads with the Democratic-controlled state Senate since the 2021 election. But today, all 100 House seats and all 40 Senate seats are on the ballot, giving Republicans a chance of capturing a “trifecta” — control of the governorship and the entire General Assembly. Such a result would have major ramifications, most notably for abortion rights. Youngkin has pushed for a 15-week abortion ban, which would reverse Virginia’s status as the last Southern state with lesser restrictions on abortion rights.

There hasn’t been much polling, but things look highly competitive. A handful of polls in late September through late October asked likely voters if they planned to vote for a Democrat or Republican in the upcoming election and found party preferences pretty evenly split.

Control of both chambers will come down to a small number of hotly-contested districts, which look much different after the latest round of redistricting. The most competitive seats lie in suburban or exurban areas of the state’s three major metropolitan areas of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads. In the Senate, Democrats may have a slight edge, as they appear favored in 19 seats to the GOP’s 16. That means Republicans would need to win four of the remaining five highly competitive seats to get to a 20-20 tie (which would hand them control via Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears’s tiebreaking vote). The House map looks closer to a pure toss-up, with fewer than 10 seats likely to decide things.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538