It’s not Election Day 2020 yet, but on Tuesday we got the next best thing.
Voters all over the country headed to the polls to decide local and state elections. The headline-grabbing contest was Democrat Andy Beshear beating Republican incumbent Gov. Matt Bevin in the Kentucky governor’s race — a state President Donald Trump won by a whopping 30 percent in 2016. Some caveats: Bevin was among the most unpopular governors in the country, and other Republican leaders in the state outperformed him on Tuesday.
But Beshear’s win was still a big loss for Trump, who campaigned in Kentucky just a day before the election, explicitly tying Bevin’s race to his own reputation. The results also showed that Democrats in Kentucky were fired up — Beshear outperformed the 2015 Democratic gubernatorial candidate in many areas of the state.
The other huge story was Virginia’s state legislature elections, where Democrats flipped both the state House and Senate, ensuring a trifecta with Gov. Ralph Northam (D) already in the governor’s mansion.
Virginia has been trending blue for years, but the fact that Democrats generated so much enthusiasm in an off-year where state legislature elections were the biggest thing on the ballot means the party is organized and enthusiastic, even for traditionally sleepier races.
Many of the questions going forward are going to be what this all means for Trump and Republicans in 2020. It’s not good news for them, for sure. If we learned one thing from Tuesday, it’s that Democrats are fired up — even in redder states.
But there’s a lot of other impacts that extend far beyond Trump.
Headlining a Lexington rally for Bevin on Monday night, Trump beseeched Kentucky voters to reelect the Republican governor he was supporting.
