Just a week ago, before the off-year elections, Democratic strategists were feeling bullish about their prospects in the South. In Louisiana, a Democrat had surpassed the state’s senior senator on October 24 in the first round of voting for the next governor. In Kentucky’s gubernatorial race, opinion polls showed Jack Conway, the state’s Democratic attorney general, holding a small but consistent lead over tea-party Republican Matt Bevin. Democrats had high hopes they could take advantage on November 3 of the divisions Bevin has caused among Republicans. But that wasn’t how things played out. It’s always a little problematic reading national import into the results of odd-year elections, just because there are so few of them. An even-year, midterm election offers a bigger sample; all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the ballot, along with a third of the Senate and batches of governorships and state legislatures. The year before a presidential race, like 2015, features just three gubernatorial races, in Mississippi along with Kentucky and Louisiana. Still, these elections offer larger meanings, chiefly in what they say
Subscribe Today
Our subscribers have first access to individual race pages for each House, Senate and Governors race, which will include race ratings (each race is rated on a seven-point scale) and a narrative analysis pertaining to that race.