Off-year elections aren't as consequential as presidential or midterm elections. But governors' races and ballot measures still matter plenty.

"They allow us to get a sense of where voter attitudes and energy are moving," said Carolyn Ryan, a managing editor of The New York Times who used to run its Politics desk.

We were talking in her office in the center of the newsroom, with editors and reporters lined up outside to get her counsel. "They'll deliver the best view yet of how voters are feeling and reacting to the first year of the second Trump administration," she said.

There are two possibilities for that view, and they could both end up being true.

-- Republicans want to see whether the gains President Donald Trump picked up among both young and nonwhite voters have cemented. That

See Full Page