State elections to test Democrats’ turnout fears

The Biden campaign will be parsing election results for clues to help explain the president’s abysmal polling

State-level elections on Tuesday could give Democrats a much-needed break from their angst about the 2024 election — or turn their distress into a full-blown freakout.

Voters in a handful of states holding off-year contests — from legislative races to an abortion-rights ballot initiative — will finally deliver hard data for the Biden campaign to parse ahead of 2024. The outcomes could have implications for everything from how the Democratic Party emphasizes abortion rights messaging to the resources it devotes to turning out young voters and people  of color. They also could suggest how President Joe Biden’s unpopularity trickles down to other Democrats on the ballot.

Already, national Democrats are warily looking for signs about the electorate’s mood, how it might mirror recent abysmal public polling for the president, and what work must be done ahead of next November.

“These [public polling] numbers are not good for Biden, no matter which way you slice them,” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist. He likened this moment to when then-President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign “laid out what we’re going to do for people on the economy, not just what we’d done.” The Biden campaign has to make a similar comparison to likely GOP candidate Donald Trump, he said.

“They have to set up a choice with what the economic future looks like under Trump versus how it will look like under Biden,” Giangreco said.

Tuesday’s elections come in the immediate aftermath of disastrous results from a New York Times/Siena College poll that found Biden leading in only one of six battleground states. There’s already clear warning signs for the Biden coalition, as voters under 30 favor Biden only by one percentage point and the president’s lead among Latino voters dropped into the single-digits, the poll found. In 2020, Biden won both those groups by double-digit margins.

Evidence of that deterioration — and the broader challenge faced by the Biden campaign — could materialize in some of these races, from Black turnout in Newport News, Va., to youth participation in Columbus, Ohio.

“If I was the Biden campaign, I’d be watching for turnout levels in specific base communities, and if they’re matching other similar elections,” said Stephanie Schriock, a Democratic strategist who led EMILY’s List, a pro-abortion rights group. “My gut is that we need to do a lot more turnout work, especially if it’s a rematch [in 2024].”

One senior Democratic party official, granted anonymity to give a candid assessment, argued that off-year elections are over-analyzed but noted that Democrats have seen a “12-point over performance” throughout 2023, “from small little specials to the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.”

“Question is — is that receding or is it still there” in Tuesday’s contests, asked the official, who argued the race results will provide another data point but not be predictive of 2024.

Nationally, some of the most closely watched results will be those in Ohio and Virginia, where Democrats will learn whether keeping abortion rights as a predominant issue has continued to energize the party’s base. In Ohio, voters will weigh in on a ballot initiative to establish abortion access as a constitutional right.

Abortion rights activists have campaigned in support of the measure in the socially conservative state. And their TV ads, which have framed the issue as a matter of privacy and personal control and a fight against government interference, could offer a test case nationally for how to sell it to voters, said Angela Kuefler, a Democratic pollster who is working on the initiative.

“How we frame this matters, which means not only talking about abortion access all the time,” Kuefler said. She noted that “one challenge is that not everyone, not all voters, have gotten to the point where they understand how a vote for a candidate connects with abortion policy.”

Virginia Democratic candidates are also banking on abortion messaging. They spent more than $13 million on abortion-focused TV ads, more than double their spending on campaign ads for other topics like crime and education, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact. Democrats cast their GOP counterparts as “extremists,” a similar playbook to how they went after Republicans in 2022, when their attacks yielded better-than-expected performances across battleground states.

But Virginia Republicans fought back, unlike many of the GOP candidates who dealt with abortion in 2022. Led by GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his campaign war chest, Republicans went on offense to reframe the debate, pushing for a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

Republicans are “try[ing] to do verbal gymnastics,” but “people are smarter than that,” said Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.), who serves on Biden’s national advisory council.

“It is clear where a majority of the people are: they want health care decisions to be left between patients and their providers, and not politicians in Washington or Richmond,” McClellan said. “The Biden campaign sees that in its own communications, sees that with what’s happening here in Washington, sees that with what’s happening in Virginia and across the country.”

But one national Democratic strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly, expressed fear that “if we lose” in Virginia and Ohio, “then I’m going to panic about abortion messaging in 2024.”

Others working on Virginia races stressed that while “abortion is still the number one issue,” it is “far more resonate among white suburban voters than it is for people of color,” said one Democratic operative working in Virginia.

“We should’ve done more cost-of-living messaging, which might explain some of the concerns around people of color not showing up,” the person continued. “I see that as a warning sign for 2024.”

But Schriock, who led EMILY’s List for a decade, said a loss in Virginia could set off “a set of consultants who love saying that ‘we talk about abortion too much.”

“But it’s enough of an issue that Youngkin felt like he had to do something on abortion,” Schriock continued. “[Abortion access] is mobilizing, motivating and persuading and you’re going to see it in every election.”