In reliably red Ohio, voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion rights.
"This is where voters, a majority of voters, sit."
Political analyst Amy Walter says the results prove abortion is still a key issue for Democrats, more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
"I think the takeaway for Democrats should be that the issue of abortion, which was critical to Democrats' success in the 2022 midterms, remains a very potent issue there and, quite frankly, a very good issue for Democrats and their successes, whether it is at the state level or the federal level."
In Virginia, Democrats won control of both chambers in the state legislature, a rebuke to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who sought to unify candidates from his party around a proposal to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
"Voters are pretty locked in on their perceptions of which party is the more extreme, which would be Republicans, and which is the more pro-choice or open to abortion access, and that would be Democrats. So that's why you saw, in Virginia, very few of the legislative candidates actually run on the issue that Glenn Youngkin was talking about. He wanted Republicans to talk about a reasonable limit on abortion access. Almost every one of those competitive state Senate Republicans ran on crime and safety instead."
In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear won a second four-year term, defying the conservative lean of a state that voted for Donald Trump by more than 25 percentage points in 2020.
Beshear defeated Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican who was endorsed by Trump.
"Trump is a double-edged sword. If you're running as a Trump candidate without Trump on the ticket, you're not able to bring those same voters out that would show up for Donald Trump. But guess who does show up? A lot of the people who don't like Donald Trump. And that's what we saw in the midterm elections and that's what we saw here in 2023 as well. And so the question going forward in 2024 to me is, does Donald Trump still have the ability to bring out those voters as he did in 2020?"
Trump's rivals for the Republican presidential nomination tried to tie him to the disappointing showing in the 2023 elections.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the "results show why Republicans need a winner to lead the future of the party."
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said that "After Republicans suffered big losses in the 2022 midterms, the pattern continues one year later."
And former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has been Trump's sharpest critic among his challengers, called the former president "electoral poison" for the party.
