AP News Guide: Key results from state, local elections

Though the big elections are still to come next year in most places, voters in several states Tuesday elected governors, legislators and mayors and settled a variety of significant ballot issues.

Nonetheless, they provided a test of public opinion on such topics as marijuana, gay rights and the emerging "sharing economy," which includes services that allow individuals to rent out rooms in their homes via the Internet.

Businessman Matt Bevin became only the second Republican in four decades to win the governor's seat in Kentucky, defeating the Democratic attorney general in a race that acted as something of a referendum on health care and gay marriage.

In Tuesday's only other gubernatorial race, Republican Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant won was elected to a second term after spending $2.7 million in his campaign against Democrat Robert Gray, a truck driver who spent just $3,000.

The Senate races were expected to be among the most expensive in Virginia's history, with candidates and outside groups spending more than $10 million and running more than 20,000 TV ads.

In Philadelphia, where Democrats hold a 7-to-1 voter registration edge over Republicans, Democrat Jim Kenney, a former city councilman, defeated a Republican business executive to succeed term-limited Mayor Michael Nutter.

Colorado voters, who approved the recreational use of marijuana in 2012, decided to let the state keep $66 million in marijuana tax revenue to be spent on schools and other projects.

The ballot measure would have capped short-term housing rentals at 75 days a year and required Internet hosting companies such as San Francisco-based Airbnb to pull listings that violate the limit.

Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment that is expected to raise about $2.5 billion a year for highway improvements starting in 2017.

The passage comes just one year after Texas voters approved an amendment diverting $1.7 billion of oil and gas tax revenue from the state rainy day fund to highways.

In Mississippi, voters rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have required "an adequate and efficient" public school system and granted the courts power to enforce it.

Washington voters overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and various animal-rights groups that will make it a state crime to buy, sell or trade products coming from certain wild animals.

Voters in southwest Oregon, where a man killed nine people last month at a community college, overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure that seeks to prohibit enforcement of new gun laws.