Four Lessons from Tuesday's Elections

Democrats won handily on Tuesday. They took the governor’s mansion in New Jersey, held the governorship in Virginia and scored important victories in down-ballot races. So what should election watchers take away from these results?

(1) Democrats Are (Still) In Good Shape for 2018

Last night, Democrat Ralph Northam beat Republican Ed Gillespie by about nine points in Virginia, a state that Hillary Clinton won by five. In New Jersey, Democrat Phil Murphy beat Republican Kim Guadagno by 13 points, which was similar to Clinton’s 2016 victory in the state. Democrats also won key local and state legislative races, including a number of seats in the Virginia House of Delegates (recounts and the process of counting provisional ballots may delay a final call on control of the chamber). In other words, the blue team outperformed Hillary Clinton by a significant margin—something that they’ll need to do if they want to retake the House and/or Senate in 2018.

Some in the political world will likely spend today arguing that these results aren’t predictive—that Democrats outperformed their baseline in various states, but that these races are primarily local and aren’t informative about the broader national context.

But while gubernatorial results don’t have a great record of predicting midterm results, this sort of argument might miss the forest for the trees: Trump’s approval rating is historically low. Democrats lead by a wide margin in House generic ballot polls. And both the results of special elections and the pace of incumbent Republican retirements suggests that the national political environment is currently very favorable for Democrats.

Moreover, some races that have stronger ties to national politics (e.g. the Virginia House of Delegates) turned out poorly for Republicans. It might be possible to wave off a couple of these indicators. It’s tough to explain away all of them simultaneously.