DOWN BALLOT BLOCKBUSTERS — As votes continue to be counted, 48 hours after the polls closed, there remain some consequential races yet to be called; House control, for example, has yet to be decided. After months of hand-wringing about a razor-thin election that could drag on and involve plenty of expensive court challenges, there was little drama on the presidential level. And yet, there remain all kinds of results from Tuesday evening to parse through that don’t involve Vice President Kamala Harris or President Elect Donald Trump. The consequences of ballot initiatives, gubernatorial and state legislative control — and all sorts of other local races — will have a significant effect on Americans’ lives in the next four years. So, to better understand exactly what happened this week beyond the topline results, Nightly spoke with Paul Demko, our cannabis editor at POLITICO Pro and the editor of The Fifty, stories focused on the states, governors, mayors and more who are making essential decisions about the country’s future. This conversation has been edited. Did we see the same kind of trends down ballot that we saw nationally at the top of ticket? I think that’s a fair assessment. Republicans exceeded expectations in state legislative races. They broke up Democratic trifectas in Michigan and Minnesota that had been seen as potential models for enacting bold progressive agendas. They also limited their losses in Wisconsin, despite new maps that gave Democrats their best chance to compete in a decade. It wasn’t a total debacle for Democrats in state legislative races. They eliminated the GOP’s supermajority in the North Carolina General Assembly, which will give Democratic Gov.-elect Josh Stein significantly more power, and still might flip a legislative chamber in Arizona, depending on how the results ultimately play out. There wasn’t much drama in the eleven gubernatorial contests, with no changes in party control. But Republicans did score a surprisingly comfortable victory in New Hampshire, with Kelly Ayotte prevailing by more than 9 percentage points. What were some surprising results on ballot initiatives — in either direction? What defied expectations? Recreational weed legalization was defeated in all three states where it was on the ballot. That’s surprising in the sense that roughly 70 percent of Americans support legalization, according to polls. But marijuana supporters were operating on tough terrain on Tuesday. North Dakota and South Dakota are both staunchly conservative states with electorates that skew older — not a weed-friendly demographic. And Florida’s constitutional referendum required 60 percent support for passage, but only garnered backing from about 56 percent of voters, despite legalization advocates waging the most expensive ballot campaign ever on the issue. Another somewhat surprising result: California’s notoriously liberal voters overwhelmingly passed a tough-on-crime ballot measure that increases penalties for certain retail theft and drug crimes. Democrats spent a lot of energy getting pro-abortion rights measures on the ballot. How did those perform, and did that affect other races in states where those measures were on the ballot? They endured their first defeats since the rollback of Roe , with voters in three states — Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota — upholding abortion bans. But they still prevailed in seven other states, including the conservative strongholds of Montana and Missouri. And in Florida, the ballot measure garnered support from 57 percent of voters, but still fell short of the 60-percent threshold needed for a constitutional amendment. Those results show that abortion rights remain a popular, potent issue for voters, but perhaps not a panacea for Democrats. Millions of voters are backing abortion rights at the ballot box while still voting for Republicans. What states might see their politics most radically change after the 2024 down ballot results? I would point to Michigan and Minnesota. Both states elected Democratic trifectas in 2022 and enacted bold progressive agendas. In Minnesota, for example, they adopted up to 20 weeks of paid family and medical leave and universal free school lunches, touting their accomplishments as the “Minnesota Miracle.” But they also came with a big price tag: Spending is projected to increase by 37 percent in the current biennium. Republicans made significant inroads in both states. In Michigan, they flipped the House and possibly the Senate. The Minnesota House appears to be deadlocked at 67 seats for each party, with control of the chamber still up in the air. Another contender, although not a state: Puerto Rico, where both legislative chambers flipped control. How did the top of the ticket affect down ballot races? Did we see candidates riding Trump or Harris’ coattails? Did they drag others down? In most cases, the state-level results mirrored what happened in the presidential contest, so undoubtedly there was some coattail effect. And we’ve seen for many cycles now just how hard it has become for local candidates to disentangle themselves from national political currents. That’s only been exacerbated by the polarizing influence of Trump. But there were a couple of notable exceptions to that rule. In North Carolina, Democrats rolled to a 15-point thrashing in the governor’s race, admittedly against a scandal-ravaged GOP candidate, while Trump won the state by more than 3 percentage points. And in New Hampshire, Ayotte easily triumphed, despite Harris carrying the state by a comfortable margin. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @calder_mchugh.
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