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One overlooked story from the midterm elections is how Democratic governors in the bluest states underperformed Republican governors in what were once hotly contested states. One reason is that independents swung for incumbent Republican governors in the best-governed states and against Democratic ones in the worst.
Another is that voters unhappy with one-party progressive rule are increasingly voting with their feet by moving to states where leaders share their political values. This ideological sorting has been happening for some time but accelerated during the pandemic. Republicans in red-tinted states have benefited from this migration, and it might have protected some Democrats in blue ones too.
In states where Democrats enjoy enormous voter-registration advantages Democratic governors prevailed by smaller margins—5.8% in New York, 10.7% in Illinois and 13% in Connecticut—than Republican governors did in usually more competitive states such as New Hampshire (15.5%), Iowa (18.6%), Florida (19.4%) and Ohio (25.6%)
In Ohio, registered Democrats slightly outnumber Republicans, according to an October 2021 secretary of state report. Yet Gov.
Mike DeWine
trounced his opponent. Republicans in Iowa have a 4.7-point voter-registration advantage, which pales in comparison to Gov.
Kim Reynolds’s
margin. In Florida, nearly 300,000 more Republicans are registered to vote than Democrats, yet Gov. Ron DeSantis won by five times as many votes.
By contrast, New York Gov.
Kathy Hochul
defeated Rep.
Lee Zeldin
by a mere 326,000 votes even though Democrats outnumber Republicans in her state by some 3.6 million. Connecticut Gov.
Ned Lamont
won re-election by only some 164,000 votes—less than half of Democrats’ 350,000 voter-registration advantage.
Independent voters largely backed Republican incumbents in states where they have benefited from conservative policies such as low taxes, education choice and fewer Covid restrictions. Mr. DeSantis lost independents by 10 points in 2018. This year he won them by 8. Mr. DeSantis’s support for keeping schools and businesses open was no doubt one reason.
But independents also backed Republican challengers in states where they have suffered under progressive policies, including high taxes, lax law enforcement and draconian Covid lockdowns. The public unions’ stranglehold on heavily Democratic states, however, makes it exceedingly difficult for a Republican or even a moderate Democrat to win election.
Thus many conservatives have vamoosed to states where Republicans stand a chance. Between 2019 and 2021, nearly 400,000 people on net moved to Florida from other states, according to Census Bureau data. During the same period, masses of people left Illinois (235,000), New York (556,000) and California (610,000).
New York’s population flight notably exceeded Ms. Hochul’s margin of victory. It’s impossible to know how New York emigres would have voted in the election, but their reason for leaving was surely more complicated than the state’s unpleasant winter. That’s undoubtedly also true for the 1.4 million others who have fled the state since 2010.
Democrat-governed states are becoming more liberal as conservatives leave for Republican-governed states, which in turn are becoming more conservative. As recently as 2020, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in Florida. Yet Republican voter registration has increased by 540,000 since 2018, while Democratic registration has fallen by 9,000. Most of the GOP growth and Democratic decline occurred during the pandemic.
How do Michigan and Wisconsin fit in with this? Republicans last decade controlled both states for eight years during which time they cut taxes, passed right-to-work legislation and limited government-worker collective bargaining. These policies helped prevent these states from becoming basket cases like Illinois and kept them politically competitive.
So why did Democratic Gov.
Gretchen Whitmer
win handily, despite her Covid lockdowns? One reason is a statewide abortion initiative that rallied Democratic voters to the polls. Ms. Whitmer also succeeded in defining her Trump-endorsed opponent,
Tudor Dixon,
by her absolutist opposition to abortion and denial of the 2020 election result.
But the GOP-controlled Legislature also restrained Ms. Whitmer’s progressive impulses, which may have helped her among independents. The same is true for Wisconsin Gov.
Tony Evers.
The Michigan Legislature flipped to the Democrats, and independents may not be so hot on Ms. Whitmer after a few years of one-party rule, especially if she lurches left as she prepares for a 2024 presidential bid.
The Democratic governor who came out on top Tuesday was Colorado’s
Jared Polis.
While Colorado has been voting more Democratic in recent elections, the party has only a 3.1-point voter-registration advantage. Mr. Polis won in a 18.1-point rout because he has often bucked his party’s progressives.
Mr. Polis supported a ballot initiative this year to reduce the state’s income tax and has even suggested abolishing the tax. In June he vetoed a bill that would have imposed costly electric-vehicle-charging mandates on businesses. He swung back against the Biden administration’s overreach on ozone regulations that would raise gasoline prices in his state. And he pushed for schools to reopen and lifted lockdowns sooner than other Democratic governors.
In an increasingly polarized country, that’s the model Democrats with aspirations for the White House should be following.
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