As votes continue to be counted for Tuesday’s federal and state elections, predictions suggest Democrats have achieved several important victories.
In Virginia's 4th congressional district and Rhode Island’s 1st congressional district, Democrats Jennifer McClellan and Gabe Amo defeated their Republican opponents to fill seats in the House of Representatives. Notably, Amo will be the first person of color to be a congressman for Rhode Island. On the other hand, predictions suggest that Republican Celeste Maloy will win the House seat for Utah’s 2nd congressional district. All three victories conform with the partisan indices of their respective districts, supporting the assertion from chapter 11 of the textbook that party identification plays a significant role in congressional elections.
Democrat Andy Beshear won re-election as governor of deep-red Kentucky, signaling hope for the Democratic Party in less liberal states. As a state that strongly supported Trump in previous elections, Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christies described Beshear’s victory as “another loss for Trump.” In Louisiana, Republican Jeff Landry was elected governor, and in Mississippi, voters re-elected Republican Tate Reeves. Both incumbent candidates, Beshear and Reeves, defeated the challengers for their positions, emphasizing the advantage incumbent candidates tend to have in elections, as described in textbook chapter 11.
(Source: ABC News)
Perhaps most importantly for the Democrats, Ohioan voters, including the majority of Republican voters, passed an amendment to the state constitution that will preserve abortion rights. Alongside the victory of Andy Beshear, a pro-choice candidate, the Ohio election emphasizes the importance of abortion as an issue in the current political climate. Democratic strategist Lis Smith suggests that “As long as Republicans embrace unpopular abortion stances and run extreme candidates, they will continue to underperform.”
(Source: CNN)
These victories come in spite of the fact that recent polls have found public opinion of President Biden largely negative. I believe that although Biden has a challenging electoral race ahead of him in 2024, this election shows that there is cause for cautious optimism for the Democrats. In recent years, many Republicans, Trump included, seem to be taking increasingly extreme positions. These polarized positions appear to have alienated many potential Republican voters, as seen with the abortion ballot measure in Ohio. I think that if Democrats successfully harness these issues, they will be able to attract many moderate voters who may have otherwise voted Republican, signaling hope for the Democratic party in the upcoming elections.
-Konstantinos Paparrizos
Sources:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/takeaways-from-election-night-2023-as-democrats-notch-early-wins-in-kentucky-and-ohio
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-live-updates-11-07-23/index.html
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/6-election-night-takeaways-democrats-win-big-gop/story?id=104696780
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67353115
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/21/1158659747/virginia-elects-its-first-black-women-to-congress-in-richmond-area-special-elect
https://rollcall.com/2023/09/06/former-stewart-aide-maloy-wins-utah-primary-for-his-seat/
https://www.cookpolitical.com/cook-pvi/2022-partisan-voting-index/district-map-and-list
9 comments:
I find the recent election results promising, It's encouraging to see Democrats winning in traditionally conservative areas like Kentucky and achieving more diversity in congressional representation, as seen in Rhode Island. The passage of the Ohio abortion rights amendment is a significant victory for pro-choice advocates, and it underscores the importance of protecting women's reproductive rights. While there is negative public opinion on President Biden, these election outcomes suggest that Democrats can connect with voters by focusing on issues like abortion and appealing to moderates who might be put off by radical conservative positions in the Republican Party.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-live-updates-11-07-23/index.html
It is definitely interesting that Republicans do seem to be "missing the mark" with their policy positions. Their Ohio debacle is similar to what happened in Kansas around a year ago (voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution that would ban abortion).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/us/kansas-abortion-rights-vote.html
Abortion in particular is an issue that is not very winnable for them. Republican politicians are pandering to more extreme sects of their base (a.k.a the DeSantis approach) but are failing to realize that even within the Republican party, most do not support abortion policy that is that restrictive (or other similarly harsh social policies). Republicans could easily capture many more voters by placing abortion much lower on their policy agenda and choosing more popular issues to focus on (like Israel and Palestine or the economy).
Something interesting I found in some research was that much of this success was attributed to an increased voter turnout, something discussed in chapter 9 section 5. Likely through appeal to independent voters, the Democratic party was able to garner more support than in previous years in these typically Republican states, leading to this surprising success. Additionally, I think that when you take this idea of the Democrats already starting to gain traction in areas that historically have been more Republican, and couple it with Biden's pushes to change the presidential primary calendar, there is the potential for an incredibly large swing across the country. While it is unlikely that these calendar changes will be able to be effected, the potential could hold more merit in coming years, mirroring the Democratic wins mentioned above.
(https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4298989-five-takeaways-from-a-winning-election-night-for-democrats/#:~:text=Democrats%20benefited%20from%20high%20turnout,surge%20that%20clearly%20benefited%20Democrats.)
It’s interesting to see how much the issue of abortion rights has become a major dividing line between candidates, and how the liberal side has been winning these victories in this round of elections, with the Ohio ballot measure and Andy Beshear’s victory in Kentucky espousing the pro-choice position. Despite how strongly Republican Kentucky may lean, having favored Trump by almost 26 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election, the state was able to settle on a pro-choice governor. Virginia’s legislature also saw strong victories from the Democratic party, though what surprised me was the straightforward response one member of the Virgina Senate, Mamie Locke, gave regarding the strength of pro-choice legislatures:
“there will be absolutely no abortion ban legislation sent to Glenn Youngkin’s desk for the duration of his term in office, period.” It's surprising that, while it seemed a trend was occurring of resistance to pro-choice policy as with the Dobbs Supreme Court ruling, it seems this may be more of a trend among political elites, if elections are seeing voters elect pro-choice candidates even in conservative states. However, regarding the potential for a similar election in 2024, Trump’s appeal has always helped with the turnout of generally infrequent voters, so it seems unclear whether this same strong Democrat showing will be quite as strong next year, or whether there’s still a large contingent that might rally behind someone like Trump while not showing for smaller elections.
https://apnews.com/article/election-2023-highlights-868a21bf3537a0533ae3fd8007d07eef
https://apnews.com/article/virginia-legislature-election-2023-79f9337731c25decc83b83eeb4d3e00e
I'm not particularly surprised that most voters, including Republicans, oppose the most restrictive "heartbeat" abortion bans that are being implemented in some states; many Americans, even those who are pro-life, prefer to keep abortion out of the government's hands. However, I'm surprised that Ohio's gone so far as to enshrine it in the state constitution, as only 10 other states do so. It's a great move in terms of making a stance to show that most Americans don't agree with what's going on at the national level.
Personally, I don't think Biden's low approval ratings are a cause for major concern as many of the people who don't "approve" of Biden would still likely vote for him over a Republican candidate.
https://reproductiverights.org/state-constitutions-abortion-rights/
As I was reading this post, one thing that stuck out to me was the importance of the issue of abortion for politicians, which got me thinking, “how influential could a certain stance on one topic actually be?” It is true that extreme stances repel a good amount of voters, but to what extent does it really have an effect on the outcome of the election as a whole? What percent of voters are single-issue voters? These are the people that would run to or from topics like abortion. I’m connecting this idea to the Downs’ Model, that theoretically, the best way for politicians to gain the most support is by taking a moderate stance on large issues that divide the nation, to win the votes of a greater number of people. While still connected, however, the blog post was talking about something along the lines of a Republican candidate maintaining all his previous beliefs (both extreme and moderate) except for that of abortion. What would happen if a Republican actually did this? How would this change the party constituents and widely agreed upon historical party ideals? I think it’d change a lot, and it would definitely muddy up the party in the electorate and only feed into the increasing overlap between the two parties’ values. Interesting things to ponder about…
I think most of the republican party has taken a stance to reinforce and activate voters instead of trying to convert voters as the textbook mentions in chapter 9. I think many republicans are embracing more extreme policies hoping to recreate what Trump did in 2016: increase voter turnout among voters who strongly identify with the republican party. The democrats are more likely to appeal to moderates and it seems to be working at the local and state level which could imply that Trump's ability to increase voter turnout was either lucky or unique to Trump since his passionate speeches rile up his supporters very well.
Just read that Ohioans apparently also voted to legalize recreational marijuana last Tuesday, which is interesting considering that a majority of Republicans oppose full legalization.
https://apnews.com/article/ohio-marijuana-legalization-election-2023-6d15efb27fdcd41e7364f2b7cd3177f4
https://www.newsweek.com/oklahoma-marijuana-vote-republicans-result-1786071
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