What did Democrats do this year to get such unexpectedly good results? Before we all get too attached to our favorite theories, let's take a look at just how well they actually did:
The Democratic share of the two-party House popular vote in 2022 was one of the worst of the past two decades. This is going to change as more votes are counted, but California is the only state with a lot of outstanding votes and they're split fairly evenly between D and R districts. So don't expect the national popular vote percentage to change much.
My point here is that although Democrats managed to eke out a decent result in terms of seats won, they didn't do well when it comes to the expressed preferences of the American public. They somehow managed to win by razor-thin margins in a key set of swing districts, and it's worth asking how that happened. But taken as a whole, America voted for Republicans by a 5% margin, the GOP's third-biggest win of the century.
So, the Red Wave occurred only in Red states?
And blue states.
Yeah, it could mean very high turnout in very red districts, couldn't it?
It could also reflect a lot of ticket-splitting in states with high-profile MAGAts who lost but whose congressional candidates weren't so extremist. Here in PA, for example, Oz ran well ahead of Mastriano and my R congresscritter wasn't opposed, which I think is the case for several districts that run something like +20 R. He's nutty, but cautious about Jan 6. BTW, one of the voting-law changes Rs introduced a few years ago eliminated straight-ticket voting, which encouraged this kind of differentiation. (It was, iirc, part of the package that allowed no-excuse mail voting but forbade pre-canvassing of mail ballots before election day, the loophole trump's people pushed so hard on in 2020.)
Overall I think this is going to turn out to be complicated, so it's a little early to draw serious conclusions. This kind of info needs to be correlated with whether redistricting was focused on concentrating one party's vote or spreading it thin, for one thing.
And I'm not as sanguine as Kevin about ignoring CA totals. What's CA, about 10% of the national total? And the last I saw, it was about half tallied. So about 5% of the national vote is still uncounted. Could make a big difference.
From what I understand there were a fair number of seats in hard right states that faced only token opposition (or unopposed in a few cases). There's just not much reason to go out on a chilly November morning to vote in such cases if you're a liberal.
To push GOP talking points back at them: if a special prize were awarded for winning the House popular vote, Democrats would have run a different campaign, and plowed more ad dollars into states like Wyoming and Idaho.
There were 23 seats where Republicans ran unopposed. There were 10 seats where Democrats ran unopposed. Probably best to remove both sets.
So a net 13 in favor of Republican popular vote margin. Not sure why you would want to throw that out.
For sure it depresses a party's overall House vote total if there's a lot of races where they have no candidate. D's aren't getting 40% of the votes in those R districts, or even 30%. They're getting 0% there.
CA is about 12.5% of the nations population. Kevin is flat out wrong on his claim that the very preliminary number he is using is going to be similar (Relative to it's use here) to the real number.
Right, I think California can make a big difference. And it doesn't matter at all if a lot of the still-uncounted votes are in Republican-leaning districts. The last counted votes could be relatively heavy on Democrats in every California county.
I wondered this as well - the Republican base seemed extremely energized, but they were wasted votes. So I did a quick check on some random races:
Alabama gubernatorial - turnout was down overall, but 67% voted for Ivey instead of just 57% in 2018 (currently ~80K fewer votes for the Republican but 280K fewer for the Democrat)
Louisiana House races - comparable vote totals for most districts from 2018 to 2022, but the decrease in the Democratic vote was bigger than the Republican vote. Basically the same results.
Kentucky House races - +16K total Republican votes, -122K Democratic votes. No seat change.
So uh, welcome to polarization?
Nice, but irrelevant.
Winning by lots of votes in Florida and Texas means about the same for the GOP in 2022 as winning California and New York did for Hilary Clinton in 2016.
Something is wrong with these numbers - the 2010 numbers at least are wildly wrong. There’s no way Democrats got ~53% of the two party vote in 2010, if anything it should be their worst showing on the entire chart.
Yeah. Look, for instance, at the Wikipedia article on the 2010 election; Republicans won the majority of votes cast, by several percentage points. Something is very wrong with this chart.
The chart I'm looking at has the democrats getting 45% of the vote in 2010, there worst performance of this millennia plus the last election of the last millennia.
It's almost like we should have a non-unilateral redistricting agreement so that degerrymandering wouldn't cost one party the House but we could still get closer to the popular vote matching the actual results in all of these elections.
This is how the Rs wanted it. We of course knew they would freak out when the shoe is on the other foot. And it's tempting to let them stew in it, but if they are now chastened on this, let it be.
To me a key question is: can Democrats redistrict between now and the next election, and, if they can, will they have the stones to do so? I recall Texas allows this, but I'm not sure about other states. But if permissible they ought to. Unilateral disarmament on gerrymandering is jaw-droppingly idiotic, and it's something you won't catch Republicans doing. If Democrats end up losing the House, we call all thank Dem stupidity.
**CAN all thank Dem stupidity.
As we were told endlessly in the run-up to Election Day, the party that holds the White House has with very few exceptions lost 15 or more House seats in the off-year. So 2014 and 2010 are really the only valid comparisons in the chart. In 2010, Republicans gained 63 House seats. This sourcereports figures which yield a two-party share for Democrats of 46.6%. This year’s outcome was very nearly the same as the last two off-year elections for a Democratic President. It just happened that the Democrats distributed their votes more efficiently.
My guess is that Republican gerrymandering overreached - by trying to capture the largest possible number of seats, the GOP spread its voters too thinly; they left too many districts competitive. That, and nominating unqualified nutjobs.
Sorry, that 46.6% share is for 2010. Kevin’s chart shows a nearly 53% share???
He's fixed the chart. I agree with your observation about GOP redistricting. They likely got too greedy in a few places and spread themselves too thin.
You know what they say about Karma...
OK, the link didn’t work. It is:
https://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/2010election.pdf
Why don’t HTML ‘a’ tags work here?
This is a little misleading. The chart shows all elections, not just mid-terms, and if you look at just mid-terms with a Democratic president, there are only 3 to compare: 2010, 2014, and 2022. They did better than 2014, but worse than 2010 (interestingly, the year of the "shellacking"). So it's impossible to really conclude anything with such a small sample size and all the confounding factors happening (i.e., first Black president in 2010 and 2014, pandemic and inflation in 2022).
Drum makes an odd mistake in his comment about California. While it is true that the undeclared races are split between Democratic and Republican leaning districts (that they are close is what makes them undeclared) there are still votes to be counted across California. And the safe districts are overwhelmingly democratic. (Democrats have 37-6 advantage in the declared races, and that includes at least two districts in which a democrat is running against a democrat. Which is to say the California vote should be expected to overwhelmingly favor the democrats.
It doesn't make sense to give totals until the California votes come in.
So, a whole lot of really close elections.
Republicans were more likely than Democrats to skip masking and getting COVID vaccinations because of their inherent freedoms and Jesus-created immune systems, etc.
Thanks, Q-Anon and Trump?
For a writer who oft complains about sloppy journalism, maybe you should rein in your cheeky talk about centuries and just say “in the past 22 years.”
Please. You know as well as anyone, the only “preferences” these Let’s Go Brandon brainless fucks have is whatever agitprop Tucker is spoon feeding into their empty tin foil hat wearing heads on any given night.
The Republican Party has pushed polarization, voting restrictions, and gerrymandering to 11.5. They had a public disgruntled with high inflation and the history of the midterm rebound at their backs, and a week out, they’ve lost the senate and still have yet to secure the house.
Mind you, the treasonous mf’rs deserve less, but if that’s their second best performance in a “century”, I’ll take it.
Look at turnout too.
Gerrymandering means there are a lot of wasted votes. People still come out to vote in Presidential elections even though it only "counts" in a few states. This year's talk of a red wave probably suppressed votes from Democrats, especially in bright red areas. In more competitive areas, Democrats showed up.
Bbbut: “ We won! Hooray!”
https://jabberwocking.com/democrats-keep-control-of-the-senate/
Once we can find where the USPS has been dropping them anyway: https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiXmh0dHBzOi8vYWJjN25ld3MuY29tL3NhbnRhLWNsYXJhLWNvdW50eS1lbGVjdGlvbnMtMjAyMi1taXNzaW5nLWVsZWN0aW9uLWJhbGxvdHMtY3J1ei8xMjQ0ODQxNC_SAWJodHRwczovL2FiYzduZXdzLmNvbS9hbXAvc2FudGEtY2xhcmEtY291bnR5LWVsZWN0aW9ucy0yMDIyLW1pc3NpbmctZWxlY3Rpb24tYmFsbG90cy1jcnV6LzEyNDQ4NDE0Lw?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
I am intrigued by the 50/50 'thermostat' and the exquisitely precise feedback loops that make it possible. Any thoughts on how that works? Targeted spending by both parties on potentially close races? Increased voter intensity in tossup elections?
On the Federal level, Republicans blame gov't for everyone's problems. People buy into that, especially if things are not going well for them. Once in office, the Republicans break everything, the economy blows up, and they get thrown out. Now out of office, the Republicans blame the Democrats for not cleaning up their mess fast enough.
Rinse and Repeat.
Surprisingly sloppy post from Kevin. The final totals will be pretty close to 50/50 and even that will include quite a few Congressional Districts where the Dems did not field a candidate. There are some where the Repubs didn't field a candidate and several more where two candidates are from the same party. The computation is being made before California is done and certainly won't include the rank choice voting from Alaska and Maine. Trying to be a contrarian can be difficult but it probably makes sense to wait until the actual data exists.
The number and composition of unopposed seats appears to vary wildly from election to election. Given that, I don't know that this is a useful statistic. Even if it's put into a nice chart.....
We won. I'm happy. These numbers are too fresh to interpret. Like exit polls.
I just hope the Democrats do not take any lessons from the liberal twitterati as to why they won. Personally, I think it's because enough people understand that Donald Trump is a psychopath and those who follow him are either psychopaths, or morons by tribe or temperament. Just enough people realized this to keep the republic trundling forward. If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024, we either lose it all as a country or the Democrats sweep. The Trumplican true believers are 35-38% of this country. That's the lesson.
If you were looking for a three-sentence summary of American politics in recent years, I think you could do worse than this: The parties are so different that even seismic events don’t change many Americans minds. The parties are so closely matched that even minuscule shifts in the electoral winds can blow the country onto a wildly different course. And even in a time of profound economic dislocation, American politics has become less about which party is good for your wallet and more about whether the cultural changes of the past 50 years delight or dismay you. - Ezra Klein.
America is still a shit show.
Hey Kevin
How much was the COST per vote for each party?
total raised minus remaining cash on hand/number of votes cast
I would think republican votes were a lot more expensive
But both parties love money, that's for sure
I think this is a bit misleading, but will prove true as far as it goes. In places that felt secure about the right to abortion and fair administration of elections (i.e., blue states like NY), Republicans did well because of inflation, crime, and the standard midterm falloff of voters for the president's party. In thoroughly red states, I wouldn't be surprised if Dem turnout was depressed relative to Republicans as well. Neither of those affect Senate and gubernatorial elections, although they can affect House elections (hello, New York). But in states where the big issues were on the line, Democrats surged above expectations.
This post may be a bit off-topic, but we are discussing midterms. I do not remember the source, but I recently heard that Jimmy Carter retained control of both the House and the Senate in 1978.
I was searching the interwebs to confirm this and found this interesting article:
https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/jimmy-carter-the-great-deregulator/.
The democrat party in 1978 still contained it's klan wing and congress was pretty much guaranteed to be run by democrats (especialy the house) but many of those democrats would become repubicans in the next decade and now go by the name base of the republican party.
Democratic Share of House Two-Party House Popular Vote is a terrible way to identify your chart if you are trying to be accurate. It should read Democratic share of House Popular vote, because your chart implies the Democrats lost 46% to 54% to the Republicans, when your text, which is incorrect as well, states they lost by 5%. They currently are a shade less than 5m million votes behind the Republicans which is 4.9%. You state it won’t change, but the number was 6.4% five days ago.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1590472652233539584?cxt=HHwWgIDU1eqcv5IsAAAA
https://www.cookpolitical.com/charts/house-charts/national-house-vote-tracker/2022
In addition, there were 24 uncontested Republican races compared to 12 Democratic ones. However, in 6 of those contests the Republicans were unable to get a candidate in the top two, so the Democrat is running against another Democrat. So, in reality in only 6 of those races did Republicans choose not to field an opponent. If you don’t include those non competitive races for both parties, the Democrats did much better nationwide.
In conclusion, you post a misleading chart, don’t understand the remaining outstanding vote, and don’t adjust for races with no major party opponent. In addition, you don’t take into account gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the historical pattern of the party not in control of the White House doing better in the midterms. Other than that smashing job!
I forgot to post the link for the 36 uncontested House races.
https://www.270towin.com/news/2022/09/15/uncontested-the-36-house-districts-with-only-one-major-party-ballot_1419.html
Assuming KD's analysis is correct, this is a good thing, no?
I recall the worry that, post-Obama/since Trump, the party's vote was poorly distributed geographically. Essentially, we were increasingly popular with a populace clustered in a small number of states where we could run up the score (so consistently winning the popular vote), while failing to win either the Senate or Electoral College.
We'd have to win nationally by some impossible-to-consistently-maintain margin -- 6 or 9 points, I seem to recall? -- to win those, to control the Senate and/or win the presidency. Meanwhile, the Republicans could lose decisively - by 3 or 5 points consistently - and still control those institutions. This led to (justified, had it come true) handwringing about permanent minority rule by the GOP, ultimately a rural, mostly white minority ruling permanently over our more productive, more populace, and more diverse coastal states and cities.
Since that time, we've seen a concerted effort to stop the campaigning and messaging which exacerbates that situation -- to be less woke (or at least less scoldy-school marm/vigilante Internet mob about it), to not actively express our disdain for those hicks who don't deserve to rule us (I say lovingly, about myself), to admit maybe it's not morally repugnant for an Hispanic or white guy to want to work in fossil fuels or an energy intensive energy - enabling him to earn enough to support his family, and if things break right to start his own company and maybe make real dough - rather than be content being the gardener, servant, or fetching things through an app for some rich coastal a-hole, etc.
Is that effort bearing fruit? Or, is a naturally thermostatic process of correction occurring (as each party gets its act together and fights back in the places they had been letting slip away, while the ruling parties there overreach)?
Either way this would be a welcome development - assuming again the analysis actually is sound and the comments of others above questioning it are not right, or at least do not show it is decisively undermined.
I know you are being facetious, but I still want to note, as one who spent most of his working life in a coastal state, that there are plenty of opportunities to make real dough in blue states. We didn’t get to be more productive and better-paid delivering burritos for Door Dash.
More republicans showed up at the polls. How they voted is a different matter.
"The Democratic share of the two-party House popular vote in 2022 was one of the worst of the past two decades. " The most important point about this discussion is that the actual ppular vote is going to be significanlty different (> 48%) then this very partial number.
The 2nd (Texas) and 3rd (Florida) most populace states voted GOP with significant margins. If anything, those two were outliers and can hardly be indicative of a the vote as a whole. If we're going to only include the half of California votes that have been counted so far, maybe we'll get a better representation of the national trend by just leaving the top most populace states off. (Or maybe just wait until CA is done counting before pronouncing opinions.)
FWIW
Sam Wang calculates Dem share of 2-party vote and comes up with different numbers than Kevin, a shade under 50%. That seems more likely, in light of how seats were divided.
https://samwang.substack.com/p/the-level-national-playing-field
After all the votes are counted, I'll be interested in seeing the final tally.
Cook Political Report has it at 4% gap, now. Wait until all the ballots are counted. The late numbers are mail-in ballots.