A look at last night’s election results.
Yesterday’s elections went well for the Democratic Party.
Gov. Andy Beshear won re-election in normally red Kentucky, 53 percent to 48 percent, by emphasizing his support for abortion rights and the economic benefits of Biden administration policies.
In increasingly red Ohio, voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment that keeps abortion legal until roughly 23 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 57 percent to 43 percent. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, all seven states to have voted on abortion rights have chosen to protect or expand them.
In Virginia, Democrats flipped the House of Delegates and kept control of the State Senate, albeit narrowly. That will likely doom Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hopes of passing a 15-week abortion ban. It may also quiet some Republicans’ calls for Youngkin to run for president, given that he had trumpeted his approach to abortion as a sensible middle ground for his party.
“Democrats, to their credit, made this their signature issue of this campaign,” J. Miles Coleman, an election analyst at the University of Virginia, said of abortion. “It’s still a very potent energizer.”
In New Jersey, Democrats are expected to keep their comfortable majorities in the state legislature, with Republican candidates losing even in more conservative parts of the state.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats won a seat on the state Supreme Court, padding their majority. The court would have jurisdiction over lawsuits related to the 2024 election in a key swing state.
It wasn’t a perfect night for Democrats. In Mississippi, Brandon Presley, a state official who ran for governor on a platform of expanding Medicaid, lost to Tate Reeves, the Republican incumbent. In New York, a Republican flipped the Suffolk County executive’s office for the first time in two decades. A Republican-backed candidate also flipped the mayor’s office in Manchester, N.H.
Nationwide, though, Democrats continued a strong recent electoral run that dates to last year’s midterms and has continued through most special elections (which are held to fill unexpectedly vacant posts) this year. Democrats have done well despite President Biden’s low approval ratings for several reasons.
One, Donald Trump and the so-called MAGA movement are also unpopular, and candidates aligned with him have fared poorly. Two, the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe — and subsequent Republican-passed abortion bans — have upset many voters. Three, college graduates and affluent professionals increasingly vote Democratic and also have higher turnout in off-year elections. Four, many Democratic politicians — like Beshear in Kentucky — have managed to remain more popular than Biden.
In the rest of today’s newsletter, we’ll walk through other results from last night.
Notable races
Marijuana: Ohio became the 24th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Voters approved the initiative 57 percent to 43 percent.
Mayoral races: Cody Smith, a former mayor of Uvalde, Texas, won the office again, defeating the mother of a girl killed in last year’s school shooting there. Philadelphia and Des Moines elected their first female mayors. And two Democrats — a liberal and a moderate — will compete in a runoff next month for Houston mayor.
Affordable housing and homelessness: Voters in Seattle and Santa Fe, N.M., passed initiatives to fund affordable housing. In Spokane, Wash., voters approved a measure to let the police issue tickets to people who camp near schools, parks and playgrounds.
Education: Liberals led school board races in suburban Philadelphia and Northern Virginia, where gender issues have been central. In Pella, Iowa, voters narrowly rejected a measure that would have given the City Council more control over the public library, which had resisted efforts to ban an L.G.B.T.Q. memoir.
Criminal justice: In Allegheny County, Pa., Stephen Zappala, a Democrat-turned-Republican, defeated a progressive candidate in the district attorney race.
Democracy: Kentucky’s Republican secretary of state easily won re-election; he previously rejected Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. And in Derby, Conn., a Republican charged with trespassing at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 lost his race for mayor.
For more
“The night’s results showed the durability of Democrats’ political momentum,” our colleagues Jonathan Weisman and Reid Epstein write. Read their other takeaways.
Politico described the results as a “banner year” for Democrats. “They really needed it,” The Washington Post wrote.
Republican attacks on transgender rights appeared to fizzle. In Virginia, voters elected the South’s first transgender state senator.
Ohio’s referendum on abortion won outright in 18 counties Trump won in 2020. Democrats hope abortion will energize their base in 2024.
Republican donors hoped Glenn Youngkin would enter the presidential race, taking control of the party from Trump. Virginia’s elections were a dose of reality.
THE LATEST NEWS
Israel-Hamas War
A month into the fighting, Israel said its ground forces have reached deep into Gaza City.
Northern Gaza, including the city, still contains hundreds of thousands of people.
Hamas’s leaders said the group attacked on Oct. 7 because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away. “We succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table,” one told The Times.
Response to the War
Foreign ministers from G7 countries, including the U.S., called for “humanitarian pauses” in the fighting.
Leaders from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have asked the U.S. to help broker a cease-fire. They fear the war could destabilize their countries.
The White House cautioned Israel against reoccupying the Gaza Strip.
The House of Representatives censured Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, for comments that seemed to call for the eradication of Israel. More than 20 Democrats voted against Tlaib.
South Africa has recalled all its diplomats from Israel.
Politics
Questions asked by Supreme Court justices suggested that they are likely to uphold a federal law meant to stop domestic abusers from getting guns, despite the conservative majority’s friendliness to gun rights.
The Senate confirmed Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, a cancer surgeon, to lead the National Institutes of Health.
Climate
Wildfires are burning across the South, caused by drought, warmer-than-normal temperatures and possibly arson.
Nations that have promised to address climate change are expanding fossil fuel drilling.
Other Big Stories
Lessie Benningfield Randle survived the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. At nearly 109, she’s still waiting for her day in court.
The prime minister of Portugal resigned unexpectedly after police officers on a corruption inquiry put out an arrest warrant for his chief of staff.
The number of infants born with syphilis is growing, the C.D.C. says.
The journal Nature retracted a high-profile paper claiming to have found a superconductor that worked at room temperature.
A pod of orcas sank a boat for the fourth time in two years, this one near Morocco. Sailors are worried.
Opinions
The American left’s celebration of Hamas’s atrocities has shown Jewish people who their friends are not, Bret Stephens writes.
Here is a column by Thomas Edsall on the Democratic Party and Israel.
MORNING READS
Starry skies: The first images from Euclid, the European Space Agency’s new telescope, offer ethereal views of the cosmos.
Health: Many popular nicotine vapes look like toys. Experts worry that could entice young users.
Eruption: An undersea volcano is building a new island in Japan.
Lives Lived: Mortimer Downey helped revive New York City’s subway, bolstered Amtrak and secured federal funds for public transit. He died at 87.
SPORTS
N.F.L.: The Dallas Cowboys signed the receiver Martavis Bryant, recently reinstated after serving a five-year suspension for substance abuse issues.
Michigan: The Wolverines told the Big Ten yesterday that they had evidence of other teams sharing information on their own signs.
ARTS AND IDEAS
21st-century Springfield: Over its three decades on the air, “The Simpsons” has changed to meet evolving sensibilities. The show stopped making fun of gay characters, for instance, and stopped using a white actor to voice Black and Indian characters. Now, it is abandoning the long-running joke in which Homer Simpson strangles his son, Bart. “I don’t do that anymore,” Homer said on a recent episode. “Times have changed.”
A recent article in Vulture — titled “The Simpsons” Is Good Again — argues that such willingness to change has made the show fresh and funny for the first time in years.
More on culture
Climate protesters took hammers to the glass covering an 18th-century painting by Diego Velázquez at the National Gallery in London, causing “minimal damage” to the canvas.
Jimmy Fallon mocked tonight’s Republican debate.
THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …
Browse the best Thanksgiving recipes.
Set a beautiful table.
Secure early Black Friday deals on Wirecutter-approved items.
GAMES
Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were hometown and townhome.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — David and Ian
Correction: Monday’s newsletter misstated the Ukrainian president’s response to a Russian attack on a military ceremony. He called it a crime, not a war crime.
P.S. Erica Green, who has covered education and domestic policy for The Times, is now a White House reporter.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
