There will be a lot of sophisticated analysis of Tuesday’s election results, but the most important takeaway may be the simplest:

In their totality, Tuesday’s election results suggest Democrats are suffering because they’ve lost control of two issues of gut-level importance to voters: education and public safety. That lesson blares out from the results not just in the key gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, but also in places as disparate as Minneapolis, Buffalo, Seattle and New York City.

In...

There will be a lot of sophisticated analysis of Tuesday’s election results, but the most important takeaway may be the simplest:

In their totality, Tuesday’s election results suggest Democrats are suffering because they’ve lost control of two issues of gut-level importance to voters: education and public safety. That lesson blares out from the results not just in the key gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, but also in places as disparate as Minneapolis, Buffalo, Seattle and New York City.

In an era where culture wars often best policy debates in driving voters, those topics represent a new cutting edge. Republicans are taking advantage, and the Democrats’ progressive wing is feeling the pain.

Worries about inflation also played a role in Tuesday’s outcomes, of course, and Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey were left low on ammunition by their party’s inability to put internal squabbles aside to pass legislation on infrastructure, social programs and climate change. In the vacuum, Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia chose to run against not just his Republican foe, Glenn Youngkin, but against former President Donald Trump. That didn’t turn out to be enough.

Instead, the fear and anger that often drive voters in today’s polarized environment found new and different outlets. It appears that when people are angry about what they think is happening to their kids and their own personal safety, they strike out in response.

That was most obvious in Virginia, where Mr. Youngkin pushed the race in its final weeks as far as he could toward a quintessentially local issue: whether woke culture is being pushed into school curricula against the wishes of parents.

Elsewhere, the backlash was against rising crime rates and for re-empowering police departments. As the dust settles, “defund the police” appears to be one of the more misguided political rallying cries of modern times.

That lesson emerged more in some of the contests that got less attention Tuesday night. In Minneapolis, site of both the killing of George Floyd at police hands and a resulting wave of social unrest, voters turned down a proposal to replace the city’s police department with a new Department of Public Safety, an initiative that would have ended a requirement that the city have a police department with a minimum number of officers.

In Buffalo, four-term Mayor Byron Brown appeared to be winning in an improbable, comeback, write-in campaign against democratic socialist India Walton, who beat him in the Democratic primary and who earlier made waves with strident antipolice rhetoric.

In Seattle, candidates for mayor and city attorney were leading over candidates who wanted to cut police funding. Notably, Ann Davison, a Republican, appeared in command of the city attorney’s race in an overwhelmingly Democratic city.

For Democrats, a model may have emerged as they struggle to deal with these cultural currents. Eric Adams, as expected, easily won the election to be New York City’s next mayor. The key for Mr. Adams, a former city police officer, was winning the earlier Democratic mayoral primary by running as someone who could combine calls for racial justice with support for the city’s police force. In doing so, he has staked out a center-left position other Democrats will surely seek to emulate.

In two closely watched mayoral races, Eric Adams was elected to become the second Black mayor of New York City, while Michelle Wu took home the victory as the first woman and first person of color elected to lead Massachusetts’ capital city. Photo: Justin Lane/Shutterstock, Josh Reynolds/Associated Press The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

That will leave Democrats nationally to ponder whether their progressive wing has pushed the party too far left nationally, and overreached in Washington by trying to advance its ambitious agenda on the backs on razor-thin Democratic control in Congress. That now will be the backdrop for the continuing struggle in the nation’s capital on the spending and tax issues where Democrats have been unable to resolve a split between the demands of progressives and the resistance of the party’s moderates.

But that dynamic also will play out on cultural issues. Again, Virginia may provide the guideposts. According to AP VoteCast, a broad survey of Virginia voters taken by the Associated Press, a quarter of Virginia voters said a continuing debate over whether schools are teaching critical race theory was the most important factor in their vote for governor. Among them, more than seven in 10 supported the Republican, Mr. Youngkin.

There also were noticeable divides between Youngkin and McAuliffe voters on Covid-19 mask mandates in schools.

For Republicans, the question will be how they will use such localized concerns in what will, essentially, be a nationalized midterm election next year. For Democrats, the question will be how they can reposition themselves more in the center on education and public-safety concerns—and whether they pass programs in Washington that will shift the attention to their accomplishments.

For the country, the question may well be whether renewed focus on cultural debates that emerged as key to this year’s elections will simply drive a deeper wedge between Americans.