States Are Different

Some are trying to make a national story out of last night’s elections, but I don’t see one.

• In Mississippi, Governor Tate Reeves was reelected and got the same proportion of the vote he got the first time around in 2019, 52 percent. That might seem like underperformance in a state where Republicans usually win a higher vote share (Trump won 58 percent in 2016 and 2020; Senator Roger Wicker won 59 percent in 2018; Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith won 54 percent in 2018). Reeves is the second-least-popular governor in the country, according to Morning Consult polling, with a 46 percent approval rating. He is seen by some voters as being adjacent to scandals in the previous Republican governor’s administration, when he served as lieutenant governor. But Mississippi is still a red state, so he still wins.
• In Kentucky, voters really like Beshears. The first Beshear, Steve, was elected attorney general in 1979, lieutenant governor in 1983, and governor in 2007 and 2011. The only statewide general election he lost was against Mitch McConnell for Senate in 1996. His son, Andy, was elected attorney general in 2015 and governor in 2019 and now again in 2023. The 2023 elections for attorney general, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, and agriculture commissioner were all blowout Republican wins, but none of the Democratic candidates in those races was named “Beshear.” Holding gubernatorial elections in odd-number years probably helps Kentucky voters separate the governor’s office from federal elections in even-number years. The state has only elected two Republican governors, each only for one term, since 1972, despite consistently voting for Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul (and Jim Bunning before him), and GOP presidential tickets for most of that span.
• In Virginia, as Charlie has already noted, Republicans didn’t really underperform. They didn’t overperform, either, and they should have done better. But the legislature was basically 50-50 after 2021 and it’s basically 50-50 now. Districts were redrawn between those cycles, so we should expect things to look a little different. The GOP had a net gain of one seat in the state senate and a net loss of three seats in the house. Because things are so close, that means the GOP lost the house majority, which is dispiriting. The GOP also set expectations much higher than it achieved, which adds to the disappointment. But remember: This is a state Joe Biden won by ten and Senator Mark Warner won by twelve in 2020, Senator Tim Kaine won by 16 in 2018, Governor Ralph Northam won by nine in 2017, and Hillary Clinton won by six in 2016. Having a popular Republican governor (Youngkin’s approval is at 53-36 in the Morning Consult poll) and a basically 50-50 state legislature is not a crushing defeat.

Note that none of these stories has much to do with Donald Trump, or much to do with abortion. Democrats definitely smeared GOP candidates in Virginia as “ultra-MAGA,” which didn’t help with voters in the suburban districts the GOP needed to flip. The abortion ballot referendum in Ohio was won by the pro-choice side by a large margin, joining the trend we’ve seen in other states. But knowing nothing but the fundamentals of each state beforehand, you’d expect Tate Reeves to win comfortably but by a lower margin than other Republicans, Andy Beshear to win, and the Virginia legislature to be about 50-50 — and that’s exactly what happened.