Notwithstanding the Republican Party’s huge midterm losses—including in purple and even red states—it would be wrong to overinterpret the results as a sign of a progressive policy ascendancy.
A key counterproof is the dozens of ballot initiatives across the country that produced conflicting outcomes at worst and, at best, demonstrated the ongoing resonance of conservative policy preferences. American voters may indeed want to express frustration with the excesses of the Trump administration. But it’s far from obvious that they’re endorsing Democratic priorities or rejecting center-right ideas themselves.
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Yuval Levin captured the distinction in his National Review postelection analysis: voters delivered “a negative verdict on the loser, not a positive verdict on the winner.” The ballot initiatives are a useful way to test that proposition because they asked Americans to express a direct preference on particular policies rather than on individual politicians or along party lines. And in several states, voters who handed Democrats important victories also endorsed conservative policies. These results ought to inform how both parties interpret the election.
Of the more than 160 statewide ballot questions posed on November 3, a substantial number resulted in right-leaning outcomes. Many of these results came in red states. Tennessee voters approved a constitutional prohibition on a state property tax; Indianans expanded the circumstances in which judges can deny bail to defendants who pose a substantial risk to others; and Nebraska voters supported reserving female school and college sports for female athletes.
More intriguing, though, were the results in blue states or states where Democrats made gains. The highest-profile example may be California’s proposed billionaire tax, which appeared to be headed for defeat as the votes were counted. As of Wednesday evening, the proposed one-time levy on billionaire wealth was trailing by ten percentage points—55 percent opposed to 45 percent in favor—despite the state’s otherwise reliably Democratic politics.
California was hardly the only example. In Iowa, where Democrat Rob Sand is the first to win the governorship in 20 years, voters approved a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote in each legislative chamber to increase individual or corporate income-tax rates or establish a new income tax.
Or consider Colorado. Voters who elected Democrat Phil Weiser governor with approximately 60.5 percent of the vote also approved, with approximately 62 percent support, life imprisonment without parole for trafficking a child for sexual servitude. Measures increasing fentanyl penalties, establishing sex-based eligibility for school and college sports, and prohibiting specified gender-transition surgeries for minors were also leading in preliminary returns.
And in Wisconsin, which elected a new Democratic governor, David Crowley, voters approved, with approximately 56 percent support, a constitutional amendment prohibiting affirmative action based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, education, or contracting.
These results tell a straightforward story of a partisan defeat but complicate the story of a progressive victory. Common-sense prescriptions on restraining taxes, enforcing criminal laws, and protecting female sports were strongly backed despite voters’ choices further up the ballot.
The lesson, as politicians and pundits analyze the results, is to separate partisan conclusions from policy ones. Such an insight matters for the incoming Democratic Congress, which risks overinterpreting its mandate and advancing a legislative and policy agenda that’s far offside from where the American public is positioned.
It also matters for Republicans, who need to discern clearly what went wrong. Voters were, according to some polls, conveying their dissatisfaction with the excesses and erraticism of the Trump administration. But that doesn’t mean Democrats won the substantive arguments on taxes, public safety, or a range of other issues. The ballot results cannot explain precisely why Republicans lost, but they imply that conservative ideas remain broadly popular even if the Trump-led Republican Party is decidedly not.
One logical interpretation is that Republicans ought to get back to basics. A familiar conservatism—keep taxes low, arrest criminals, reject gender ideology, and affirm a color-blind meritocracy—still has considerable public appeal. It may be more popular than the Republican Party itself, and it offers a stronger basis for rebuilding GOP support than reinventing conservatism, as some suggest.