Ohio is projected to vote “yes” on Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution. The courts had previously blocked Gov. Mike DeWine’s six-week abortion ban, and the new constitutional amendment protects the right to abortion through fetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

—Leah Askarinam, 538

As Leah mentioned, ABC News now projects that Ohioans have voted to add protections for abortion to their state constitution. According to estimates from the New York Times, the abortion referendum in Ohio is on track for a +15 point "yes" margin. Compared to a partisan benchmark of Ohio — the 2020 election — that's a 23 point "swing" for Democrats, since they lost by 8 in 2020. Yes, I know, this is not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but it's not the topline I'm interested in anyway. Rather, I'm looking at the results of ABC News's exit poll, which preliminarily shows that Trump only won the people who turned this year out by 3 points back in 2020. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest about 5 points of the Democrats' 23 point swing is due to a turnout advantage, then. The rest of it is due to residual overperformance of abortion as an issue.

The upshot here? Democrats are continuing a pattern of beating expectations in off-year elections, likely due to a concentration of highly engaged, educated voters in their coalition. We may be looking at a new era of off-year Democratic overperformance.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

One race I'm watching in New Jersey is in the 3rd Legislative District, where Republican state Sen. Ed Durr is running for re-election two years after he pulled off the upset of the year by defeating powerful state Senate President Steve Sweeney. Durr, a former truck driver, spent barely any money that year and his win rocked the balance of political power in the state. This year, he's facing a spirited challenge from former state Assemblyman John Burzichelli. With a little more than half the expected votes counted, per the New York Times, Burzichelli leads Durr, 62 to 38 percent.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

ABC News projects that Beshear will win re-election as governor of Kentucky. In national elections Kentucky has been reliably Republican, and Trump won the state by nearly 26 points in 2020. But Beshear has been popular with the state's voters and way ahead in fundraising. The vote stands at 53 to 47 percent, with 83 percent of the expected vote in. Kentucky is a unique case, but this could give Democrats, worried about Biden's favorability numbers, an emotional boost ahead of the presidential campaign season.

—Monica Potts, 538

Three Southern states hold gubernatorial elections the year before a presidential election: Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. But despite the strong Republican lean of these states, Democrats held the governorships of Kentucky and Louisiana coming into this election. The GOP began the year with a real shot of winning all three, and entering today, they’re already one step of the way there: On Oct. 14, Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry won Louisiana’s governorship outright, avoiding a November runoff. This was an open-seat pickup for Republicans since Democratic incumbent Gov. John Bel Edwards was term-limited. Now, all eyes are on Kentucky and Mississippi, where each incumbent governor is slightly favored to win reelection in a competitive contest, based on limited polling and race ratings from Inside Elections, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and The Cook Political Report.

In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear faces Republican state Attorney General Daniel Cameron. Beshear won in 2019 by less than 1 percentage point against an unpopular GOP governor, but has maintained a high approval rating despite his party identification. He’s painted Cameron as an extreme Republican because of Cameron’s support for Kentucky’s near-total ban on abortion. That message might work: Although Kentucky is conservative, voters last year rejected a constitutional amendment that would have formally stated there is no right to abortion under the state constitution. In his campaign, Cameron has tried to tie Beshear to the unpopular Biden while criticizing the incumbent for his vetoes (later overridden) of anti-transgender legislation. We have very little polling here, but in mid-October competing partisan polls from Hart Research and from co/efficient each found Beshear ahead by differing margins. However, a poll from Emerson College released on Friday showed the two candidates running just about even.

On the flipside, Mississippi is more likely to remain in Republican hands. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves faces Democratic Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, one of just two Democrats in Mississippi’s executive branch (and, yes, a second cousin of Elvis). Reeves has played to the GOP base by highlighting his opposition to transgender women playing women’s sports, while Presley has tried to ding Reeves by connecting him to an ongoing scandal involving the misuse of federal welfare funds by the Mississippi Department of Human Services. We have even less polling to go on here than in Kentucky, however. A late October Public Policy Polling survey on behalf of the Democratic Governors Association gave Reeves only a tiny edge, but that’s maybe the rosiest picture for Presley. The next most recent poll from the Mason-Dixon/Magnolia Tribune put Reeves up 8 points.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538