Tuesday’s election results dealt Democrats what was almost universally perceived as a bad hand, with Republicans winning a marquee governor’s race in Virginia and coming close in a New Jersey gubernatorial contest that no one anticipated being close.
The outcomes in those races and beyond sent Democrats this week into a period of introspection, with party leaders discussing the path forward for their agenda after a humbling showing in states that Democrats carried with ease last year.
HOW GLENN YOUNGKIN CLINCHED VICTORY OVER TERRY MCAULIFFE
But beyond the good results for Republicans, the winners and losers revealed several other lessons about the current political landscape.
Here are some of the top takeaways.
Defund the police dies
Activists staged a last stand for the divisive “defund the police” movement in Minneapolis, where voters weighed in on a ballot question that asked them whether they wanted to abolish the city’s police department.
If passed, the proposal would have replaced the police department with a new Department of Public Safety, which would have, among other things, removed minimum funding requirements from the city charter and allowed officials to reduce the size of an already-hamstrung police force.
City Question 2 failed by a double-digit margin, with 56% of Minneapolis voters saying “no” and 44% of voters saying “yes.”
Cities all over the country that slashed police budgets in response to social unrest last year have in recent months begun to add resources back to their law enforcement agencies in the face of rising crime and staffing shortages.
Democrats had largely moved away from the calls to defund police that featured prominently in Black Lives Matter protests nationwide in response to the death of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police last summer.
But in Minneapolis, the site of Floyd’s murder, liberal activists hoped to capitalize on the personal nature of the tragedy and the remaining energy behind anti-police protesters in the city to implement what would have been one of the most radical police reform initiatives in the country.
Hennepin County, which contains Minneapolis, swung overwhelmingly for President Joe Biden last year, with 70% of voters there supporting Biden and 27% of them backing Donald Trump.
The decisive rejection of abolishing the police department in such a dedicated Democratic stronghold is a strong sign the progressive rallying cry has lost its pull even with left-leaning voters.
Voters rejected a socialist
Political observers closely watched a mayoral race in Buffalo after a self-described socialist, India Walton, defeated incumbent Democratic Mayor Byron Brown in the primary over the summer.
Walton’s victory was an upset, and she was the only name that appeared on Tuesday’s ballot.
Big-name liberals threw their clout behind Walton in the final weeks of the race, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, hoping to elevate a candidate who had pulled off a surprise win in a primary few were watching.
Walton received an outsize amount of national media attention due to her embrace of liberal ideas and unapologetic affiliation with socialism.
But Brown managed to launch a successful write-in campaign that kept him in office on Election Day, in large part by arguing Walton was too radical to be trusted with control of Buffalo.
Brown defeated Walton by more than 17 points on Tuesday evening despite not appearing on the ballot, a likely sign of the skepticism many Democrats feel toward far-left policies and personalities in the current political climate.
But liberalism is still alive
In Boston, the mayoral contest boiled down to another front in the war between the progressive and centrist wings of the Democratic Party when far-left Michelle Yu squared off against the more traditional Annissa Essaibi George, a Boston city councilwoman.
Yu won a decisive victory on Tuesday, defeating Essaibi George by nearly 30 points in the mayoral contest that was poised to place the first woman in control of the city in its history.
Wu successfully cast Essaibi George as an extension of the status quo while pitching a more liberal vision for a city that has rapidly diversified in recent years.
Essaibi George ran on more centrist ideas, such as adding more officers to the police force in the face of rising crime and opposing rent control proposals floated by Wu.
Republicans can run parallel to Trump
Democrat Terry McAuliffe made Trump the centerpiece of his Virginia gubernatorial campaign against Republican Glenn Youngkin, trying aggressively throughout the race to tie his opponent to a former president who was deeply unpopular in the blue state.
Youngkin was able to sidestep the political trap successfully, however, by refusing to engage on the topic and keeping the focus of his message on Virginia voters throughout the campaign.
However, the Republican governor-elect also refused to repudiate the former president, remarking in May that Trump represents “so much of why I’m running” but declining for months to express much explicit support of Trump and resisting any appearances with him.
Youngkin’s victory could provide a road map for Republicans running in swing districts and purple or blue states in 2022.
His middle-of-the-road strategy when it comes to Trump allowed the former president to attempt to claim credit for his victory after Trump held a tele-town hall on Monday evening that Youngkin declined to attend.
But Youngkin’s refusal to embrace him, or even to acknowledge his influence over the GOP outside a few scattered comments, could show Republicans how to navigate fraught political waters with a former president who still holds enormous sway over the party’s crucial base — but who turns off the persuadable voters Republicans saw on Tuesday that they can still court.
Suburban gains
Youngkin’s upset victory was built in large part by his ability to attract suburban support that had eluded Republicans during the 2016 and 2018 election cycles and, to a lesser extent, during the 2020 election.
Trump’s unpopularity with college-educated suburban voters cost Republicans chunks of the voting blocs they’d relied upon for years, although the former president was able to make it up, at least in 2016, with a stronger performance among blue-collar non-college voters.
Youngkin successfully retained support in rural parts of the state while also winning back some of the suburban vote that Trump was not able to hold on to, according to election night data from Virginia.
The same trend nearly caused a shock victory in New Jersey, where Republican Jack Ciattarelli came within an eyelash of defeating incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy despite polling that showed Murphy with a sizable lead heading into Election Day.
Issues matter
In Virginia exit polls, voters cited the economy and schools as two of the most important issues in deciding their vote before selecting Youngkin as their next governor.
Youngkin dominated with the roughly one in four voters who cited education as their top issue in exit surveys and also performed well with voters who cited the economy as their top issue.
Youngkin’s focus on schools throughout the final month of the race elevated the issue from a point of discussion to the decisive issue that brought centrist voters into his column. Polls leading up to Election Day revealed an eleventh-hour surge of independents breaking for Youngkin.
His success in transforming education into the top issue of the race, which arguably won the entire contest for him, demonstrated that a focus on issues specific to a candidate’s race and constituency can shape the contours of the campaign regardless of the national political winds.
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McAuliffe, by contrast, was perceived as having ignored the issues voters said they cared about in favor of focusing on racial divisions and opposition to a president no longer in office.
Democrats are likely to reevaluate that approach heading into the midterm elections despite the success they’ve previously enjoyed when they’ve turned the attention on Trump.
