That’ll do it for us tonight, dear readers. We got a lot of interesting new data to sift through, and we’ll have more analysis of the day’s results soon. But for now, Democrats pick up governor’s mansions in Virginia and New Jersey. The Virginia House of Delegates maybe could flip to the Democrats (a surprise). Medicaid expansion passes in Maine.
In short, it was a good night for Democrats.
As always, though, I asked members of our live-blog team for their headlines coming out of Tuesday. (And as always, many of them responded with about three or four headlines-worth of characters.)
Clare: Dems Sweep Virginia; Bannonites crush sour grapes to make victory wine for insurgent, swamp-draining 2018 midterms.
Nate: I guess I’ll make mine polling-focused to mix things up a bit. Still, this is an important sub-headline: Republicans should stop taking comfort in the fact that polls underestimated Trump in 2016. They could just as easily wind up overestimating Republicans instead in 2018, as they did in Virginia tonight.
Dave: With all the evidence in front of us, Democrats are slight favorites to retake the U.S. House in 2018.
Perry: All the fundamentals favored Northam: 1. Virginia is Democratic-leaning, 2. Republicans control the presidency and 3. that president is deeply unpopular. But a Gillespie win would have been a “holy shit” kind of thing — an establishment GOP pol had embraced Trump tactics and won in Virginia. So to me, the headline is something like, “In Virginia, Nervous Democrats Get a Much-Desired Victory Over Trumpism.”
Harry: Democrats Romp As Republican Run For The Hills Ahead Of 2018 Midterms
Meena: TV News On Election Nights Is Just Louder, More Annoying Twitter.
Dan: My take-homes: While many things in politics aren’t predictable, the fact that unpopular presidents take down their parties when they’re not on the ballot is. And state politics is looking less like a distinctive arena and more like a isplaced version of national politics.
Meghan: Live Blog Copy Comes In Messier And Messier As The Night Wears On