President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are a growing concern among Democrats, many of whom fear a rematch with former President Donald Trump will end with a loss. Some want him to drop his reelection bid entirely.

But after Tuesday’s off-year Election Day, there was plenty to celebrate for the president and Democrats across the country, particularly over the success of their abortion positions in key battleground states.

"I think that if you look at from the midterms to last night, from California to Kansas, Ohio to Virginia, the voters said, look, the government should not be telling a woman what to do with her body," Vice President Kamala Harris said outside the Whtie House on Wednesday afternoon. "I think voters have been clear, regardless of whether they're in a so-called red or blue state, that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling them what to do."

"So it was a good night," Harris added. "The president and I obviously have a lot of work to do to earn our reelection, but I'm confident we're going to win." 

The results across the country — a successful ballot measure enshrining abortion in the Ohio state Constitution, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear winning reelection in deep-red Kentucky, Virginia’s General Assembly being wrenched from Republican control in the purple, bellwether state — are a sign of voters siding with Democrats’ agendas and policies despite Biden’s approval rating remaining at an all-time low at a few points below 40%, Biden's campaign argued.

In a call with reporters on Thursday morning, Biden campaign officials stressed that Tuesday's results were a repudiation of former President Trump and Republicans in Congress – while making the case that recent disappointing poll results for Biden were not reflective of the actual results at the polls.

“Tuesday evening before polls closed, we were hearing voice after voice from the pundit class drawing conclusions from a select number of polls that are taking place over a year out from the presidential election," Michael Tyler, communications director for the Biden-Harris campaign, said Thursday. "They're claiming that ‘if the governor of Kentucky wasn't reelected and if the constitutional amendment protecting a woman's right to choose in Ohio failed and if Gov. [Glenn] Youngkin in Virginia succeeded in taking both houses in the Virginia legislature, it would mean that Joe Biden was in big trouble.

"When the polls closed, we got real data," Tyler continued, adding: "Time and again, Biden beats expectations ... the bottom line is that polls a year out don't matter, results do – putting in the work matters."

Voters "soundly rejected soundly rejected the MAGA extremism that has come to define today's Republican Party,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Biden's campaign manager. “Voters in every corner of the country from Virginia to Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio rejected Republicans' extreme anti-abortion agenda. Voters soundly rejected Republicans' dangerous anti-democracy agenda.” 

“Any Republican who’s overconfident about beating Joe Biden next year is a foolish Republican,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2024 GOP hopeful, on CNN on Tuesday night. “This has been a disastrous run for the Republican Party with Trump picking these candidates and embracing them and independent voters all across this country rejecting them.”

Beshear beat Kentucky’s Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, backed by both Trump and fellow Kentuckian Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, by more than 5% in a state that Trump beat Biden by nearly 30% in 2020.

But Beshear cautioned the path to Democratic victories was not about Biden himself, but about appealing to voters locally and focusing on their priorities, not the horse race between Biden and the eventual Republican nominee.

“Our blueprint was as simple as show up, work hard, get results, and care about everybody. And don't get distracted by whatever the issue of the day is in Washington, D.C.,” Beshear said on CNN on Wednesday morning. “When people wake up in the morning, they don’t think about President Biden or President Trump.”

Trump had a different explanation.

“Daniel Cameron lost because he couldn’t alleviate the stench of Mitch McConnell,” Trump wrote on social media. “I told him early that’s a big burden to overcome. McConnell and Romney are Kryptonite for Republican Candidates. I moved him up 25 Points, but the McConnell relationship was ‘too much to bear.’”

Ohio in particular was seen as a major victory in a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2012 (Biden lost by 8% in 2020). Two ballot measures — one protecting reproductive rights, the other legalizing recreational marijuana — won by double-digit margins against the wishes of Republican Gov. Mike Dewine and leaders in the GOP-controlled state legislature.

“You put very sexy things like abortion and marijuana on the ballot and a lot of young people come out and vote. It was a secret sauce for disaster in Ohio. I don’t know what they were thinking,” said former GOP presidential candidate and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican, on Newsmax. “Thank goodness that most of the states in this country don’t allow you to put everything on the ballot because pure democracies are not the way to run a country.”

DNC chair Jamie Harrison and Biden himself previewed a 2024 election message on abortion, used to much success in the 2022 midterms, as they seek to keep the White House, win back the House and preserve their majority in the Senate. CNN exit polling in 2022 found 60% of voters believed abortion be illegal, with 27% of voters — including 76% of Democrats — listed the issue as their most important reason for voting.

“Ohioans and voters across the country rejected attempts by MAGA Republican elected officials to impose extreme abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors and nurses for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide,” Biden said in a statement. “This extreme and dangerous agenda is out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans.”

Harrison said the win “only further cements how deeply unpopular Republicans’ extreme anti-abortion agenda is nationwide – which every single GOP candidate is running on in 2024.”

In a post-Roe United States, GOP legislatures have passed increasingly severe abortion bans, some as little as six weeks and Republican presidential candidates have proposed or supported strict bans of their own. But when given the choice at the ballot box, voters across the country — even in redder states like Ohio and Kansas — have consistently voted to preserve or expand abortion rights, or at least vote for candidates who support such policies.

NBC News exit polling in Ohio showed the abortion ballot measure was supported by majorities of men and women; white, Black and Hispanic voters; every age bracket other than those 65 and older; voters with and without college degrees; self-identified moderates and independents; and even voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden’s handling of the presidency.

“I think there are deep reflections in the Republican Party and the pro-life movement about how to improve from here, but abandoning the pro-life cause I don’t think is the right answer,” 2024 presidential hopeful Vivek Ramswamy, an Ohioan, said on CNN on Tuesday night.

And in Virginia, voters rebuked Gov. Youngkin, often discussed as a future presidential candidate, by giving a majority to Democrats in the General Assembly. Democrats, who ran on protecting abortion rights, now have control of both houses of the state legislature and have sworn to block any abortion restriction bills.

“It’s official: there will be absolutely no abortion ban legislation sent to Glenn Youngkin’s desk for the duration of his term in office, period, as we have thwarted MAGA Republicans’ attempt to take total control of our government and our bodies,” said Virginia Senate Democratic Caucus Chair Mamie Locke in a statement.

Youngkin, who indicated that he will not run for president this cycle at a Wednesday press conference, said he was disappointed by the results, but expressed hope for a middle ground on abortion despite Democrats’ opposition to even marginal Republican proposals. Virginia, he argued, was representative of the U.S. as a whole.

“I think the message that everyone should recognize on abortion is that this is a very difficult topic across Virginia and across the nation,” Youngkin said. “This is just another statement of where Virginia is and why it's such a bellwether for what's going on across the nation.”

Chávez Rodríguez made the case that attempts to tie Democrats to Biden backfired for Republicans, suggesting that the president's agenda is more popular than polling might suggest.

"Republican attempts to use President Biden and his agenda as an attack on Democrats really failed," she said. "In Kentucky Republicans, spent $30 million attacking Joe Biden in a field attempt in a failed attempt sorry to defeat Gov. Beshear. [Republican] Daniel Cameron actually closed his campaign running on Donald Trump's endorsement, and we saw it failed. Meanwhile, in Virginia, where President Biden and Vice President Harris endorsed 23 Democratic state legislator candidates, Democrats held the Senate and flipped the House of Delegates. In fact, Democratic candidates ran on President Biden's historically popular agenda."

"We've seen voters' resounding rejection of the MAGA agenda time and time again," she added. "And it just continues to prove our theory of the case when it comes to our eventual opponent that MAGA extremism is toxic at the ballot box and restricts Republicans' path to 270 [Electoral College votes]."