The battle for control of the House and the Senate is still undecided, but the «red wave» for Republicans never came.
Democrats outperformed history and expectations with a surprisingly strong midterm elections performance Tuesday, with the promised red wave nowhere to be found.
The best news for the GOP is that they appear to be the favorites to narrowly retake the House of Representatives, though the outcomes of key races have not yet been called. Apart from that, the results so far are a litany of disappointments for Republicans.
In the Senate, the contests that will determine control — Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona — have not yet been called. But Democrats have a path to hold on, helped by John Fetterman’s victory in a GOP-held open seat contest in Pennsylvania. If Democratic incumbent Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Mark Kelly triumph in Nevada and Arizona, the party would keep its majority (Cortez Masto is currently trailing, but the outstanding mail vote will likely benefit her, while Kelly is ahead in Arizona). And if one of them loses, Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is now headed to a runoff in December that could determine the majority.
Democratic candidates also performed strongly in contested governor’s races, holding on to governorships in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Maine, New Mexico, and New York.
Though it’s still too early to make definitive conclusions about why the promised red wave didn’t appear, there are a couple of emerging trends that could help explain what happened last night.
One broader story is that incumbents of both parties proved to be quite resilient — making this the first midterm election cycle since 2002 in which there was no “wave” washing out the president’s party. Instead, where there was turnover in House or state legislature contests, it was often because of redistricting, with new maps helping Republicans in US House races in New York and Florida and positioning Democrats for gains in Michigan’s state legislative contests.
Another broader story is that the country remains quite polarized, with statewide results tracking 2020’s outcomes pretty closely rather than swinging in the out-party’s favor (as in typical midterm years).
And there seem to be two likely culprits for Republicans’ relatively weak performance: the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ending federal abortion rights protections — and former President Donald Trump.
What happened? Dobbs and Trump.
