Democrats came away the clear winners of 2023s off-year elections, with a string of wins across red-tinted and swing states showing the party can overcome President Joe Bidens unpopularity with a focus on electable candidates and abortion access.

The results give Democrats something to celebrate just days after new polling showed Biden trailing former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, in several key swing states over concerns about Bidens age and the direction of the economy. Democrats are defending not only the presidency next year but also a narrow Senate majority in states that Trump won and where he remains popular, so their balance of power in Washington hangs in the balance.

It wasnt all wins for Democrats. The Republican Party managed to keep its governor in office in Mississippi despite the Democratic challengers call to expand Medicaid an outcome that revealed the limits of the Democratic brand in conservative Southern states.

In the end, the GOPs messaging on cultural issues, such as gender-affirming therapy for transgender minors, wasnt nearly as potent as Democrats call to action on preserving abortion rights.

Joe Biden May Be In Trouble, But Hes Not Yet A Drag On Democrats Down Ballot

Discussion of Bidens weak political standing has dominated the political world in recent days following the release of a suite of New York Times polls on Sunday showing him trailing Trump in five out of six key battleground states. The surveys also showed Bidens standing slipping with Black and Latino voters in particular, accelerating a troubling trend for Democrats with two core components of the partys base.

But Bidens low approval rating and standing in the polls, a year before the 2024 presidential election, did not have a clear effect on Democrats in competitive races Tuesday. Those results are consistent with a strong Democratic performance in special elections this year, which is often a predictor of performance in subsequent federal elections.

In the sole statewide race in a presidential swing state, Democrat Daniel McCaffery won an open Pennsylvania Supreme Court seat by a comfortable margin, preserving Democrats 5-2 majority on the high court. Pennsylvania Democrats also maintained their control of the Allegheny County executive office, albeit by a much smaller margin than might have been anticipated.

In blue-tinted Virginia, which elected a Republican governor in 2021, Democrats maintained their hold on the state Senate and gained a slight majority in the House of Delegates. The shift will create a stronger check on Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

And the anti-Biden headwinds were not strong enough for Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) to dislodge Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in a state that Trump carried by 26 percentage points in 2020.

Kentucky Values, a group affiliated with the Republican Governors Association, touted Camerons endorsement from Trump in a TV ad, as well as lawsuits hes brought against the Biden administration. Another spot aired audio of Biden thanking Beshear and tried to link the governor to Bidens radical transgender agenda.

Some of the gap can be explained by Democrats increasing superiority among college-educated voters, who are more likely to turn out in comparatively low-turnout off-year races. Even so, the delta between Tuesdays results and what you would expect from a party whose president has an approval rating in the high 30s is tough to explain.

There are two ways to spin the resulting gap: One is to say that for all of Bidens weaknesses, voters still prefer his Democratic Party over a MAGA-led Republican Party. The other is to argue that Bidens weaknesses, especially his age, are his own. The latter interpretation will only increase the almost-certainly fruitless chatter about replacing him with another Democratic presidential nominee.

Abortion Rights Stays A Winning Issue

Tuesdays races proved once again that abortion rights are a winning issue at the ballot box, with enough momentum to carry an entire Democratic ticket.

The headline of the evening was Ohios passage of Issue 1, a ballot measure that codifies abortion rights in the state Constitution following the U.S. Supreme Courts overturning of Roe v. Wade last summer. Broad support for Issue 1 across a state that voted twice for Trump bolsters the argument of abortion rights advocates that given the chance to weigh in directly on abortion access, voters in both red and blue states will decide in favor of protections .