By all accounts, the biggest races on Election Day were a total disaster for Democrats. Donald Trump won. Republicans kept Congress, holding back a Democratic attempt to retake the Senate. And down the ballot, the results weren’t much better for the party: Democrats overall lost governors’ races, although the results were more mixed in state legislatures.
But not all is doom and gloom. While Democrats lost big, liberals won some of the big initiatives that were on statewide ballots. It wasn’t a total sweep — several states, for example, affirmed the death penalty — but there were gains on some issues, including marijuana legalization, minimum wage, and gun control.
The full results paint a much more mixed picture than the top-ballot results suggest: The Democratic Party got clobbered, but some of the major policies Democrats support also won big.
