By Henry Hoglund, Jason Ganz, Sean McElwee, Colin McAuliffe, and Ryan O’Donnell

Andy Beshear defeated Matt Bevin in the Kentucky Governor’s race on Tuesday, November 5th by a razor-thin margin – merely 5,000 votes separate the two candidates. Beshear’s victory relied on a strong confluence of events that overcame a substantial overall Republican lean: Donald Trump won the Commonwealth of Kentucky by 30 percent in 2016. Three factors loomed large in Beshear’s victory: a strong showing in rural and ancestrally democratic Eastern Kentucky, where coal miners reign supreme, a massive over-performance in the three northernmost Kentucky counties that comprise the Cincinnati suburbs and strong turnout in Lexington and Louisville, all helped by running on a relatively progressive platform that contrasted with Bevin’s Trump-like manner. Progressive policies such as Medicaid expansion, a just transition for fossil fuel workers, and support for the teachers’ strikes ran ahead of Beshear and presaged his victory. Beshear winning in a ruby-red state like Kentucky shows progressive policies can win anywhere in the US.

Health care remains a powerful voting concern for voters, and Beshear’s campaign emphasized both maintaining KYNect, the state exchange created under his father as well as expanding Medicaid without preconditions or work requirements.

These issues are very popular with the voting population of Kentucky, with Medicaid expansion support commanding 63 percent approval. However, other progressive health care agenda items are even more popular, such as Medicare drug price negotiation (69 percent support, 14 percent oppose) and ending the patents on insulin (81 percent support, 11 percent oppose). Kentucky is in the bottom five states for median annual household income, so programs designed to lower one of the central household costs being popular is not surprising, but an explicit commitment to those issues could drive more support for the Democratic candidate in the next election.