Can the 2023 Election Results Tell Us Anything About 2024? Part 2: New Jersey, Virginia, and the Ohio Abortion Measure
Welcome to part 2 of our analysis on the 2023 elections and what (if anything) they can tell us about what will happen in 2024. Last week looked at Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. In short, while these three states are more predictable in what way they will vote for president in 2024, that’s based much more on their historical presidential voting instead of what happened in 2023 elections.
As discussed last week, you always have to be careful when forecasting elections from one year to the one immediately after it because odd-year and even-year elections function so differently from each other. They are much different electorates: Most of the voters who participate in 2023 will participate in 2024, but a lot of the 2024 voters will not have participated in 2023. Even-year elections, especially presidential elections, have much greater turnout rates than odd-year (also called “off-year”) elections.
Today will continue this theme of 2023’s potential impacts on 2024 and how it applies to New Jersey and Virginia’s state legislative elections and Ohio’s abortion measure. Do any of these results give any insight into what might happen in those states in 2024? Let’s find out.
Now, onto Part 2:
New Jersey
Here’s a snapshot of just New Jersey from the table shown in part 1 of this analysis.
New Jersey is more straightforward than Kentucky and Louisiana — perhaps even more than Mississippi — except this is a decidedly Democratic state instead. The state has gubernatorial elections in the year after presidential elections instead of in PPEYs (pre-presidential election years), but while incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy’s reelection bid in 2021 was a lot closer than his first victory in 2017, recent presidential elections leave no doubt about which party dominates the state. New Jersey has been blue in every presidential election since 1992 onward, and in at least the last three times Republican presidential candidates haven’t even come close to winning it, as can be seen in the vote ratios above.
A big reason for this is the voter registration data, which heavily skews Democratic. Bookclosing reports (reports on voter rolls by the voter registration deadline) for November 2017 show 2,503,776 registered Democrats and 1,541,671 registered Republicans. There are 2,370,438 voters unaffiliated with any party, but being independent does not inherently mean they are a swing voter — many of them still regularly vote Republican or regularly vote Democrat. In any case, they have not been breaking enough for Republicans to compete much in statewide elections lately.
How does all this apply to 2024? It means that Democratic victory in the state is all but assured. And although there are very few instances where a state legislative election didn’t feature both a Republican and a Democrat, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are competitive races. You also have to look at the candidates themselves, their funding, their campaign strategy, etc. It is highly doubtful that Republicans will have the turnout to make this state competitive. Recent presidential elections indicate that Democrats will run away with the state again when 2024 rolls around.
Virginia
Here’s a snapshot of just Virginia from the table shown in part 1 of this analysis.
Virginia is an interesting case because it is normally considered a “purple” state. The last eight governors — including current Governor Glenn Youngkin, a Republican — have been split between the Republican and Democratic Parties at four apiece. (In Virginia, governors cannot serve consecutive terms. And their elections happen the year after a presidential election, not before it.) State senate control has bounced back and forth between the parties in recent decades as well, even becoming evenly split between Republicans and Democrats after the 1995 and 2011 elections.
The state house and presidential elections, however, are a different story. Since 1999, Republicans have controlled the state house following regularly-scheduled elections each time except for 2019 and now 2023.
Meanwhile, Democratic presidential candidates have won Virginia in presidential contests the last four times, and Joe Biden opened up the margin of victory in 2020 from what Hillary Clinton had in 2016 (1.23 vote ratio for Biden in 2020, 1.12 vote share for Clinton in 2016).
State legislative elections are not a perfect comparison point to presidential elections, though. State legislative districts break up the electorate into respective populations voting on their own state house and state senate races, while everybody votes on the same exact office for president. And in many cases, one major party or the other will not run a candidate for a state legislative district because they are so unlikely to win. These races also all have different sets of candidates, different political contexts, etc. It’s not quite an apples to oranges comparison; it’s more of a Fuji apple to Granny Smith apple comparison.
(I’ll be biased here, though: Fuji apples are FAR superior to Granny Smith.)
But because everybody’s state house representative in Virginia is up for election every two years, it can serve as somewhat of a proxy (albeit one with major caveats) for how the state will vote for president, since all eligible voters can participate in that election. Republican presidential candidates didn’t win the state in 2012 and 2016 despite gaining a large majority in the state house elections the year prior (67 seats in 2011, 66 seats in 2015). However, Democrats taking the majority in the state house in the 2019 election was followed up the year after by a larger Democratic margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election compared to that of 2016.
Does the Democratic Party retaking the state house majority mean, therefore, that Joe Biden will win Virginia in 2024 by an even wider margin than he did in 2020? Not necessarily, though the trend suggests this will be the case. How well Democrats do in state house elections may be correlated with Democratic presidential candidate vote share, but it does not mean causation. There are other factors influencing both the 2023 election results and the even 2024 results. Still, that and recent previous presidential elections in Virginia suggest that the state will vote in Democrats’ favor in 2024.
Ohio
The case of Ohio is inherently vastly different from the previous five states. Unlike Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia, Ohio does not have regularly-scheduled elections occurring in odd-numbered years — it has them in even-years. What it did have was a pivotal ballot measure for voters to make their choice on: Ohio Issue 1, Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative (2023).
Since the Ohio ballot measure vote wasn’t an election for a public official as with our other scenarios, and we have many more elections happening statewide in Ohio than those five other states, our approach to analyzing it is also going to differ. So, this section will look at Ohio Issue 1 and potential implications for both state legislative elections and the presidential election in Ohio in 2024. Ballotpedia has fantastic, in-depth coverage of the ballot measure itself, so this will just cover its most salient points.
(Let me also make clear, especially for those new to my work, that I am not making arguments for or against abortion, or whether this measure should or shouldn’t have passed, in any way. I’m simply trying to impartially analyze what made the abortion ballot measure successful and if that can be parlayed into 2024 success for Democrats.)
The Results
Ohio Issue 1 passed with 2,186,962 out of 3,862,690 total voters voting “yes” (56.62%). For ballot measures in Ohio to pass, they only need a simple majority. Just over half of the 18 states that allow for initiated constitutional amendments have a simple majority requirement for ballot measures to pass (Arizona only has this stipulation for non-tax measures; tax measures must get 60% of the vote).
Context
Last year saw the ruling of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which held that there is no constitutional right to abortion. This overturned the precedent that had been set in the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. Across the country, abortion activists have rallied in the hope of enshrining a constitutional right to abortion in state constitutions and state statutes. In 2023, Ohio saw the first such major effort that succeeded.
Language of the Amendment
When gauging people’s opinions on anything political, how you word things is of paramount importance. Biased words often prime us to think a certain way, and they can cause us to change our answer to a question such as on a survey. As a result, public opinion on a given topic can vary greatly due to wording.
It’s the same case for ballot measures, and the wording of Ohio Issue 1 was the subject of heated debate, even leading to three Ohio Supreme Court cases. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled against the plaintiffs in each case, meaning that they did not see issues with the wording of the ballot measure. In the court’s view, the vote was not going to be unduly influenced by the ballot language. What’s notable about this is that the plaintiffs were all Republican groups and still lost their cases even though the Ohio Supreme Court has a Republican majority.
Ohio Issue 1 and the 2024 Presidential Election
So, does Democrats’ success on the abortion ballot measure bode well for them in Ohio in 2024? Not necessarily. Since Ohio does not track voters by party affiliation, it’s difficult to ascertain how many Republicans crossed the typical partisan boundary on abortion and supported Ohio Issue 1. Maybe Ohio Republicans happen to be more open to abortion than Republicans in general. Maybe Ohio Democrats were more amped than usual for 2023 and/or Ohio Republicans weren’t so juiced up like they normally would be in even-year elections.
Still, recent voting history for state government in the state indicates a Republican leaning. While Ohio Issue 1’s passage may be somewhat of a surprise considering the general partisan leaning of the state, it’s that same partisan leaning that is likely more indicative of what 2024 has in store for the state.
The only partisan state-level elections in Ohio in 2024 are for the whole state house and 16 of 33 state senate seats. As of November 2023, Republicans hold 66 of the 99 state house seats and 26 of the 33 state senate seats. And for every election of the past three decades except for 1992 and 2008, Republicans have won majorities in both chambers, as these charts from Ballotpedia show.
It’s hard to see how the success of Ohio Issue 1 makes a sizable cut into the Republican majority in 2024, even if the ballot measure’s passage indicates a Democratic voter uptick in the state. To gain a majority, Democrats would need a net gain of +10 seats in the state senate and +18 seats in the state house (potential third-party/non-party candidate bids notwithstanding). That’s a tall task in this state legislature.
Maybe Ohio Issue 1 signals a decrease in the Republican majority in 2024, but the Republican Party is still highly likely to feel comfortable with their state legislative lead following the next presidential election. The heavy Republican leanings of the state legislature point to that party’s advantage in 2024. (Remember, however, that state legislative elections are not a perfect comparison point for presidential elections.)
But since they are both statewide elections, could Ohio Issue 1’s victory indicate how Ohio will vote for president in 2024? As said before, previous presidential elections are the most analogous to the upcoming one. And the wording of a ballot measure like with Ohio Issue 1 is irrelevant in the case of picking the president.
Below are the election results in Ohio for the past three presidential elections and the vote ratio between the Republican and Democratic candidates.
Barack Obama won re-election in part because of his Ohio win in 2012, though his margin of victory in the state was a bit less than what it was in 2008. Trump flipped the script in 2016 and then won by roughly the same margin (in terms of vote ratio) in 2020.
If Trump does reclaim the Republican nomination in the 2024 cycle, presidential election history and the current red leanings of the state government suggests that he’ll win the state again. If he’s won it twice already, and by a fair margin both times, it’s likely he wins it a third time. It’s certainly possible that doesn’t happen, of course, but Joe Biden will have his work cut out for him.
The success of Ohio Issue 1 could be a momentum boost to Biden’s campaign in 2024 by giving Ohio Democrats some confidence as the state trends red. Or it could kick Ohio Republicans into high gear and incentivize them further to turn out in 2024. Either way, using a 2023 election (in a state that doesn’t normally see state-level elections in odd-years, no less) to predict a 2024 election is always going to be tricky.
Bringing it All Together
Hopefully, parts 1 and 2 clearly demonstrate how predictions of presidential elections based on the results of the preceding PPEY need to be tempered. The 2023 elections are by no means worthless in analyzing how they can affect 2024, but putting too much stock into 2023 will lead to improper analysis of 2024.
This especially becomes the case when expanding the analysis to the whole country. What happens in one state, or in one locality, is not applicable on a 1:1 basis in another state or locality, even though there may be similarities. There is a tendency for many political pundits and media figures to make broader predictions about an upcoming election based on the elections from the previous calendar year, mistakenly projecting how the country will vote overall based on how a few states chose elected officials in a completely different kind of election.
The vast majority of 2023 elections in the 44 states we didn’t cover in this two-part analysis are local contests, making it hard to extrapolate what will happen in those states overall. That’s why looking at the same type of election in the past (e.g., the 2020 presidential and the 2024 presidential) is oftentimes more useful. The past is often a strong indicator of what will happen again.
In short, how much impact will 2023 have on 2024? It undoubtedly will turn out to be foreshadowing to some extent. But exactly to what extent is impossible to accurately predict at the moment. Even after the 2024 presidential election happens, it won’t necessarily be straightforward to analyze the impact 2023 had on 2024.
Just remember: Wherever your political beliefs lie, don’t get ahead of yourself.
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