WIPING AWAY tears, Lauren Brenzel, who led Florida’s campaign to enshrine a constitutional right to an abortion, claimed one victory: “A majority of Floridians…just voted to end Florida’s abortion ban.” Though 57% of Floridians supported the amendment, it fell short of the 60% threshold required in the state. Florida’s current law banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, will stand. The proposed amendment would have made abortion accessible until about 24 weeks from conception. The loss will affect 4m women in Florida and millions more across America’s south-east, where the procedure is highly restricted.

Nine other states voted on abortion measures on November 5th. South Dakotans rejected even a limited loosening of their strict ban. Nebraskans enshrined a 12-week ban into their constitution. Some states voted the other way: a slim majority of Missourians threw out the state’s complete prohibition. In Arizona, Montana and Nevada amendments passed easily. At an election-night party in Phoenix, Laura Dent, campaign manager of the pro-abortion-rights side, lamented the fragmented policy landscape that resulted in victory in Arizona and defeat in Florida. The failures mark the first times abortion-rights supporters have lost a state ballot campaign since the Supreme Court overturned a national right to the procedure in 2022.

Abortion amendments were among the most prominent of nearly 150 initiatives on America’s ballots on November 5th. Such measures allow voters to decide their own policies on everything from criminal justice to climate policy. About $1.2bn was spent campaigning for and against them. Some states have yet to finish counting votes. Abortion aside, the results so far suggest that Americans were aligned on several issues. For the most part, voters repudiated ranked-choice voting (RCV), barred non-citizens from voting and strengthened criminal penalties.

Seven states and Washington, DC, voted on whether to adopt RCV or open primaries, in which all candidates are listed on one ballot regardless of party affiliation. Campaigners hoped such constitutional amendments could help boost moderate candidates over more extreme ones, despite emerging evidence that RCV’s effects on partisanship are minimal. The nation’s capital was the only place that chose to adopt such a system, while Missourians voted to pre-emptively reject the practice. At the time of writing, a measure to repeal Alaska’s relatively new RCV-and-open primaries combo was narrowly leading.

Each of the eight (Republican-leaning) states that weighed whether to bar non-citizens from voting endorsed the idea. These results are a political signal, not a policy change. Before the poll, Donald Trump and Republicans began to question the results of the election by arguing, incorrectly, that illegal immigrants were voting en masse. In reality, the practice is already unlawful except in very few local jurisdictions. A more consequential vote came from Ohioans, who decided not to create an independent redistricting commission for congressional and legislative races. It is the third time in a decade that voters there have tried and failed to stamp out rampant partisan gerrymandering.

Californians will be counting votes for some time, but a controversial measure to strengthen penalties for some thefts and drug crimes seems to have passed with widespread support. In Colorado voters opted to increase funding for police, deny bail for people facing first-degree murder charges and delay parole for violent offenders. These results are part of a broader shift away from milder criminal-justice policies in Democratic states. Arizonans voted to allow police to arrest people for crossing the border illegally. The measure was modelled on a similar law in Texas which is tied up in the courts.

All these votes together offer a mishmash of policies in states that can differ greatly from one another. But the results still provide lessons. The biggest? Americans fed up with what is happening in Washington should look to the states: that’s where a lot of the action is.■

In February Democrats in Wisconsin celebrated when Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, signed into law new maps for the state legislature and Senate. The maps were the result of Democrat-aligned judges becoming the majority on the state Supreme Court, and the signing undid 13 years in which Republicans won lopsided majorities on thin vote margins. It constituted a “sea change”, said Ben Wikler, the state’s Democratic Party chairman, and on November 5th voters would have a real chance to throw out their Republican legislative leaders for the first time.

They didn’t. With several seats still undetermined, Republicans controlled 52 of the 99 seats in the state legislature—a big drop from their previous 64, but still a solid majority. They lost their supermajority in the state Senate, but retained control. Wisconsin reflected dashed hopes for Democrats down-ballot across America. Whereas in 2022 four state legislatures flipped to Democratic control, this time Republicans clawed some back. Overall, the result was a slight increase in divided government.

In Michigan Democrats lost their narrow trifecta, and that seemed likely in Minnesota as well, where two races are heading for recounts. In Pennsylvania, where the governor is a Democrat and his party controlled the House but not the Senate, they were on track to lose it. In New Hampshire, in one of the few competitive governor’s races, Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, beat her Democratic opponent comfortably, which means the party should retain its trifecta. Democrats also seemed unlikely to make good on hopes of taking the Arizona House of Representatives for the first time since the 1960s.

The news for Democrats was not universally bleak. They won the governorship of North Carolina, where Josh Stein defeated Mark Robinson, who was revealed to have described himself as a “black Nazi”. They also won the offices of the lieutenant-governor, attorney-general and superintendent of public schools and broke the Republican Party’s supermajority there, meaning that the state’s Republicans will have to negotiate with Mr Stein if they want to get legislation passed over his veto. Democrats also held onto their supermajorities in the state legislatures in New York and Illinois, despite the surges for Donald Trump in the presidential races there. Republicans did not add any states to the 22 they already completely control.

What does it mean? State governments are powerful. In Minnesota and Michigan, for example, taking control of governments in 2022 allowed the Democratic governors to pass swathes of legislation—legalising cannabis, introducing free school meals, expanding abortion rights, tightening gun-control laws and giving more power to trade unions. Had Democrats held or increased the number they controlled, they might have been able to mitigate some of Mr Trump’s national policies. Instead, the governors of those two states, Gretchen Whitmer and the losing vice-presidential candidate, Tim Walz, will probably finish their terms with fewer bills to sign.

Elsewhere, expanded Republican majorities may lead to more aggressive legislating. In Texas Greg Abbott, the governor, said he now has “more than enough votes” to pass a school-voucher programme, which he has tried and failed to get through the legislature, stymied by rural Republican holdouts. But Democratic strategists in several Republican-dominated states say the losses could have been far worse: with Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, some expected a “tidal wave” of new supermajorities. Chaz Nuttycombe, the president of State Navigate, which crunches data on state races, reckons that this year there may well have been more ticket-splitting, where voters chose Mr Trump and their local Democrat, than in 2020.

Polling from Pew published in May showed that voters consider the inability of Republicans and Democrats to work together to be the second-worst problem facing America, behind only inflation (which is now easing). In recent decades divided government had in fact been receding. The bounceback is modest, but division is going to be more entrenched. ■

This is the introduction to The Economist this week, a free weekly newsletter that includes a note from our editor-in-chief, Zanny Minton Beddoes.

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