On Tuesday, millions of voters will go to the polls for the first time since Donald Trump’s surprise victory last year. These off-year races are not especially good predictors of next year’s midterms, but they will offer some lessons about what’s resonating, one year after Trump scrambled the electoral map.
In Virginia and New Jersey, the Republican candidates for governor have leaned into Trump-style attacks on immigration, without exactly embracing the president himself. In New York City, Bill de Blasio is expected to coast to a second term on an anti-Trump message. Meanwhile, Ohio and Maine voters are considering whether to cap drug prices and expand Medicaid, respectively.
Here are a few things to look for as the day unfolds:
Virginia
The Virginia governor’s race is the biggest prize on Tuesday, and a victory would prove that Democrats can win a big race in the Trump era, after a couple of narrow defeats in special elections for House seats. Capturing this closely-watched contest would give Democrats some momentum heading into 2018. Losing—in a state that Hillary Clinton carried by 5 percentage points—would set off another round of finger-pointing about the party’s direction. A Democratic win is not assured. The Democratic candidate, Lt. Gov Ralph Northam, is locked in a tight race against Republican Ed Gillespie, with polls giving Northam just a slight lead heading into Election Day.
Gillespie, a former lobbyist and card-carrying member of the Republican establishment, nearly won a Senate seat in 2014 when he ran a surprisingly close race against the incumbent Democrat, Mark Warner. This time, Gillespie has reinvented himself as a Trumpish culture warrior. His ads have promised to protect Confederate monuments, targeted Northam for supporting immigrants, and invoked Trump’s crusade against NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem. He has also assailed the current Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, for restoring voting rights to felons.
What makes this particularly interesting is that Gillespie is running on Trumpism, without actually embracing Trump. He has mostly avoided mentioning the president, and Trump—who lives just up the road—has not made a campaign swing on Gillespie’s behalf, though he did Tweet his support on Monday, along with some immigration-related attacks on Northam on Tuesday.
Northam, a moderate former Army doctor, has struggled to calibrate his response. After attacking Trump during the primary, Northam has pledged to work with him when it benefits the state. Last week, he was denounced by progressive groups after he promised to ban sanctuary cities. Much of this will be forgotten if Northam wins. If he loses, though, it will only increase the intraparty anxiety about whether Democrats can unite around a core message next year.
While most of the coverage will center on the governor’s race, the better barometer might be in the 100 races for the state’s House of Delegates. As Dave Wasserman explains for NBC News:
Virginia’s delegate races have often foreshadowed midterm results: In 2009, the GOP’s six-seat gain took Democrats by surprise and presaged Republicans picking up the House in 2010. This year, if Democrats pick up fewer than five GOP-held seats, Republicans would probably take it as a relief. If Democrats pick up between five and 10 seats, it would confirm the House is in play. If Democrats surprise and gain 10 or more seats, it would be a sign they are probably on track to take back the House next year.
New Jersey
In New Jersey, Democrats aren’t so much worried about losing the governor’s race as they are about the margin of victory. Phil Murphy, a former Goldman Sachs executive and ambassador to Germany, holds a double-digit lead over Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno in the race to replace Chris Christie.
But in the last few weeks, Murphy’s lead has dropped from around 20 points to something closer to 12. Both candidates maintain the overwhelming support of their respective parties, and Murphy’s lead seems safe, considering Democrats’ big registration advantage—there are nearly 900,000 more Democratic voters than Republicans in New Jersey.
The larger question in Jersey is whether Guadagno’s attacks on sanctuary cities can make the race close. After an early focus on property taxes failed to resonate, Guadagno has gone all-in on immigration, promising to cut off aid to sanctuary cities, and running a Willie Horton–style ad that accused Murphy of supporting a gang member who murdered four high school students in Newark.
Among independent voters, Guadagno is now running about even, despite her long ties to Christie, whose approval ratings have sunk to record lows in the state. If her immigration attacks help her close the gap with Murphy, it could provide a roadmap for Republicans in other blue states.
New York City
Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to become the first Democrat to win re-election in New York City since Ed Koch in 1985, but a record-low turnout could dampen the victory.
The race has been a sleepy affair, with Republican Nicole Malliotakis failing to gain much public attention. Most of the excitement has come from Bo Dietl, an outspoken former NYPD detective and Fox News commentator, who is running on the “Dump de Blasio” ballot line and has echoed Trump’s rhetoric on race. Dietl has blamed a “Muslim guy” for his tax problems, referred to his “Jewish lawyer,” and said he knew a judge would rule against him in a ballot lawsuit, because she looked like de Blasio’s wife, who is African-American.
De Blasio, for his part, has run hard against Trump, as he hopes to make himself a central player in the Democratic resistance heading into 2018 and 2020. He has struggled to excite Democratic voters in the city, and turnout could be embarrassingly low, though he should benefit from the aggressive support of the city’s labor unions, who were pleased by the new contracts they received during the mayor’s first term.
Ohio
An initiative to cap prescription drug prices has invited a torrent of spending from pharmaceutical companies who defeated a similar proposal in California last year. The proposal would require state entities, including its Medicaid Department, to purchase drugs at the same price as the federal Department of Veterans Affairs. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has appeared in ads supporting the measure, and a victory could help spread the idea to other states. Polls show voters are largely confused by the competing advertisements and are roughly split on the measure.
Maine
Voters in Maine will decide on Tuesday whether to expand Medicaid, after the state’s Republican governor declined to take advantage of the subsidies in the Affordable Care Act. The proposal would extend coverage to about 80,000 Mainers and would make Maine the first state to expand Medicaid by referendum. It could be a model for the 18 other states that have yet to expand Medicaid.
