Washington is ready to zoom ahead to the 2024 elections, with a presidential election and control of Congress up for grabs.

But there are matters to settle in 2023 first.

The off-year cycle will feature several major election storylines worth keeping a close eye on.

That includes several big elections — three gubernatorial contests and major American cities electing their mayors — along with the fight around the congressional maps used for 2024 playing out in courts across the country in the upcoming year.

Here are the four big election storylines to follow in 2023:

Kentucky’s wild governor’s race, and two other chief executive contests

The Kentucky gubernatorial contest has already gotten off to a chaotic start, with a slew of prominent Republicans in the state lining up to challenge Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, who is seeking a second term.

The crowded Republican field already includes state Attorney General Daniel Cameron — long rumored to be a successor-in-waiting to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — and Kelly Craft, who was then-President Donald Trump’s second and final permanent ambassador to the United Nations. Other notable candidates include state Auditor Mike Harmon and Agricultural Commissioner Ryan Quarles. There are persistent rumblings that former Gov. Matt Bevin might get into the race and even rumors that former pizza magnate “Papa John” Schnatter himself could launch a bid.

Trump has already made an early endorsement in the race, backing Cameron in June.

The GOP senses a real pickup opportunity. Beshear only narrowly defeated Bevin in 2019, and Republicans have been champing at the bit for the opportunity to challenge him since. But Democrats will rally to his defense, with new Democratic Governors Association Chair Phil Murphy saying in an interview with POLITICO late last year that defending Beshear would be “priority number one.”

Two other states will be holding gubernatorial elections this year as well. In Louisiana, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards is term-limited in the otherwise red-leaning seat. Only one notable candidate — Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry — has declared their candidacy thus far.

But that is expected to change in 2023. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), among others, has expressed interest in running.

And in Mississippi, GOP Gov. Tate Reeves is expected to seek another term, although at least some other Republicans in the state have been kicking the tires on runs of their own.

All three states will also be holding down-ballot statewide contests as well.

The redistricting battles continue

After a much-delayed redistricting process, states scrambled to lock in their congressional maps ahead of the 2022 election. But those maps are anything but set-in-stone for 2024.

The Supreme Court is poised to issue opinions on a pair of cases about redistricting by the end of June that could dramatically change the landscape. The first, Merrill v. Milligan, concerns Alabama’s map, where challengers sought to have it tossed by alleging it weakened the power of Black voters in the state.

The court — although seemingly chilly to the state’s argument that a key civil rights law needs to be read in a “race neutral” manner — seems likely to rewrite the test used to determine if a minority group’s voting power is being “diluted.” That will likely result in less voting power for minority groups in Congress. Outside of Alabama, ongoing cases in states like Georgia and Louisiana likely hinge on the court’s decision.

The second major Supreme Court case, Moore v. Harper, originated in North Carolina. There, the state Supreme Court tossed out the map drawn by Republicans as an illegal partisan gerrymander, with a court-drawn map eventually being used in 2022. Republican legislators sought to have the nation’s highest court negate the state court’s map, advancing a once-fringe legal theory called the “independent state legislature” doctrine that argues that state courts have little to no role in checking state legislatures’ power to set the rules around federal elections.

The Supreme Court seems unlikely to adopt the most muscular version of the theory. But depending on where the justices land, it could reopen the redistricting process both in the Tarheel State and elsewhere where state courts waded into the mapmaking process.

The 2022 elections in a handful of states will also likely have an impact on congressional lines in 2023. Republican-aligned justices won a majority on the North Carolina state Supreme Court — making the court much more likely in the future to back the party’s legislatively drawn lines. And in Ohio, a Republican justice who had repeatedly ruled that the lines there were illegal partisan gerrymanders favoring her party retired and was replaced, also giving GOP mapmakers there more of a free hand in those fights that are expected to continue this year.

A big 2023 election that could have ramifications over future redistricting fights is a Wisconsin state Supreme Court contest in early April. That court currently has a narrow 4-3 conservative majority, with Justice Patience Roggensack’s seat up next year after she opted to not seek another term. She is part of the court’s conservative majority, so a win by a liberal-leaning jurist would flip the balance of the court in a state where Democrats have challenged maps as illegal gerrymanders in the past.

But there is significant uncertainty around the race. Two liberal judges — Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Janet Claire Protasiewicz — are running alongside two conservative judges, Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorow and former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. All four are competing in a primary (the office is technically nonpartisan) in February, with the top two advancing to the general election.

Pennsylvania will also host a state Supreme Court election in November to fill the seat of the late state Chief Justice Max Baer, a Democrat who died in September.

Temperature check in Virginia

A handful of states will also hold state legislative races in 2023, with the contests in Virginia as the likely headliners in November.

Both chambers are up in the commonwealth, which will be the only state that has a split Legislature in 2023. Republicans narrowly control the state House, while Democrats have a slim majority in the state Senate. Democrats took control of both chambers during the 2019 elections, only for Republicans — on the coattails of now-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win — to flip back the state House in 2021.

Republicans — on the coattails of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win — flipped back the state House in 2021.