Democrats had an extraordinary night at the ballot box on Tuesday, but what does it mean for policy? Looking further down the ballot in swing states shows that while voters wanted Democratic elected officials to check President Donald Trump, they also wanted to check the power of government. And they aren’t sold on left-wing economic policy prescriptions.
Voters in North Carolina elected a Democratic senator for the first time since 2008, giving former governor Roy Cooper an overwhelming win. At the same time, they approved three measures referred to the ballot by the Republican state legislature. The first would add a constitutional requirement for a levy limit on property taxes, which is the best way to constrain the property tax burden. The second would cap the state income tax at 3.5 percent, essentially locking in a 3.49 percent flat tax that will take effect next year. The third would require photo ID for voting.
North Carolina voters are accustomed to electing Cooper while supporting GOP control in the legislature. The state had divided government all eight years Cooper was governor. A Democratic statewide win is not a mandate for populism.
In Wisconsin, Democrat David Crowley won the gubernatorial election — a remarkable comeback, considering he dropped out of the primary election. The Democratic machine in the state coaxed Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive, to reenter the race to defeat socialist Francesca Hong. Now he will be Wisconsin’s first Black governor.
Those same voters approved an initiative referred by the Republican state legislature to ban affirmative action in state institutions. They also appeared poised to restrict Crowley’s ability to use Wisconsin’s unusually powerful line-item veto to raise taxes. That’s a rebuke to outgoing Gov. Tony Evers (D), who used the line-item veto to let school districts raise taxes for — no joke — 400 years.
Iowa voters elected Democrats as governor and senator while amending their constitution to make it substantially harder to raise state income taxes. The state will have its first Democratic U.S. senator since 2015 and its first Democratic governor since 2011. But Republicans in Des Moines have been cutting taxes for years, and voters want to keep them low. The Hawkeye State has gone from a nine-bracket progressive income tax with a top rate of 8.53 percent in 2019 to, now, a flat tax of 3.8 percent. The GOP legislature asked voters to approve a constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds majority to raise income tax rates in the future. It passed with 56 percent of the vote.
Ohio, which voted for Trump by 11 points in 2024, went blue for Senate and governor. At the same time, two-thirds of voters backed an amendment to require photo ID for voting.
Moderates and independents drove Democratic gains in all these places. For all the attention garnered by the Democratic Socialists of America, most Americans roundly reject what they stand for. Among all voters nationally in the midterms, only 9 percent held a strongly favorable view of socialism, while 31 percent held a strongly favorable view of capitalism, according to preliminary network exit polls.
If voters in the most competitive battlegrounds believed in progressive policies, they would have rejected these ballot measures with as much enthusiasm as they voted for Democrats. But they approved a lot of conservative policies while voting for anti-Trump candidates. If Democrats lurch far left on policy, the voters who gave them an enormous victory on Tuesday will probably be strongly tempted to switch back to the GOP or stay home in future elections.
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