2022 Midterm Election MEGATHREAD

[alfred russel]

The reality is that 51 doesn't give the Democrats opportunity to do much, with the House in GOP hands.

The main benefit is blocking GOP control of the Senate with a cushion if someone has to retire or passes away.

A cushion if someone leaves but also breathing room is needed for 2024.

A super interesting thing is that the house vote is likely to end up about GOP +4. But the house will be approximately 50-50. There are a ton of factors why things are this way, but it seems at least for this cycle the house will be something like gerrymandered in the democrats favor.

[some factors are that there were some uncontested republican seats, competitive races tended to go the democrats way, democrats lost a ton of ground in blue states - but not enough to cost them a ton of seats]

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think Joe Manchin is very unlikely to win in 2024, and I would wager there are better than even odds he does not run again. I've followed Manchin's career somewhat closely since he was Governor of WV. When he finally got his "dream job" as Senator after Byrd died (he resigned the Governorship to run for the vacant seat), he very quickly was making comments to friends and colleagues that the Senate...sucks ass. He found it frustrating how little you can actually do or get done as an individual Senator. He found it contrasted very negatively with his experiences as a Governor in which he felt like he had the power to get lots of things done (he enjoyed a friendly legislature his entire time in the Governor's mansion.)

While in the subsequent years Manchin was able to carve out a bit of a "dealmaker" niche for himself, and hosted prominent Senators from both parties on his private yacht he keeps docked in the Potomac, rumors are he still largely has never "fallen in love" with the actual job of Senator. It's always hard to sort the BS around this out because a large number of politicians dissemble on whether they plan to run again, but at least in Manchin's case there has been decent "insider" chatter for years and years that he doesn't actually like being a Senator that much. He is a 75 year old rich guy from WV who has won two full Senate terms and served as Governor for a number of years, it could be possible he just isn't interested especially if it proves to be a uphill battle campaign wise--which I think it would be, few States have moved as far red as West Virginia in the last 6 years.

[DGuller]

If he's not even planning on running again, then it makes it even more baffling why he wouldn't spend the rest of his political capital on protecting democracy.

[OttoVonBismarck]

There's always been a fundamental misread of Manchin--he doesn't do what he does for political reasons in the way most assume. He is a genuine conservative Democrat from the old tradition, and actually believes the positions he holds, which put him at odds with much of his own party. He doesn't believe in quashing the filibuster and he probably doesn't agree with too much Federal "intrusion" into State management of elections. It's as simple as that.

[garbon]

There's always been a fundamental misread of Manchin--he doesn't do what he does for political reasons in the way most assume. He is a genuine conservative Democrat from the old tradition, and actually believes the positions he holds, which put him at odds with much of his own party. He doesn't believe in quashing the filibuster and he probably doesn't agree with too much Federal "intrusion" into State management of elections. It's as simple as that.

Feels at best...short sighted to cling to principles as the country burns.

[Sheilbh]

There's always been a fundamental misread of Manchin--he doesn't do what he does for political reasons in the way most assume. He is a genuine conservative Democrat from the old tradition, and actually believes the positions he holds, which put him at odds with much of his own party. He doesn't believe in quashing the filibuster and he probably doesn't agree with too much Federal "intrusion" into State management of elections. It's as simple as that.

I agree and I think it makes Manchin understandable and someone you can work with, but is a constraint.

I find Sinema far more baffling.

[Admiral Yi]

AZ governor called for Hobbs (D).

[Razgovory]

And Kari Lake is safely defeated.

[Eddie Teach]

There's always been a fundamental misread of Manchin--he doesn't do what he does for political reasons in the way most assume. He is a genuine conservative Democrat from the old tradition, and actually believes the positions he holds, which put him at odds with much of his own party. He doesn't believe in quashing the filibuster and he probably doesn't agree with too much Federal "intrusion" into State management of elections. It's as simple as that.

Feels at best...short sighted to cling to principles as the country burns.

Without principles, what is the country worth?

[OttoVonBismarck]

Good piece in the NYT that has some of the first collected data on the midterms:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/opinion/midterms-republicans-democrats.html?unlocked_article_code=JYMOsNr-21eUg5ZsSL70FMefYdnH22f4TllUTIP0aUq0d7Rg_gdObIqWlKXT6Fj1deZIYBj055uIlUCqnEetUzmLnQaMG1sYS2gmH_mHat4htd0hGC2HDYXOo6I_jNVjI7GiQpppc3MLDRchtqhl94vojTAXG0RjIoYuNpXhZRSl3MGCxU2wORc5ozu18Wr3IX94aCd3bEXKOizi8FnrtMN-giwOCsWvW4iUzTXtNFSXpXw_MEjRxJu3w7QVZoPOzmV5ap6As6n9EmGNhnVDTEUgkqKtiJmkWSsd2tYNxfEfKj8CwNTOEUblOjBq9bhRudlzoHBwvsVoEgbevriPJ12BpBTeygcg&smid=share-url

The Red Wave Didn't Just Vanish
Nov. 16, 2022

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

On Election Day, a small but crucial percentage of Republican voters deserted their party, casting ballots for Democratic nominees in several elections that featured Trump-backed candidates at the top of the ticket. These Trump-driven defections wrought havoc on Republican ranks. At the extreme, a once-strong Republican Party in Michigan was shut out at every level of state government.

Look at key battleground states that were critical to continued Democratic control of the Senate. In Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, party-line voting among Republicans consistently fell below the party's national average, according to exit poll data.

In New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the Republican vote for the Republican Senate candidate was seven percentage points below the national average, and the Republican vote for the Democratic Senate candidate increased by the same amount; in Arizona, support for the Republican Senate nominee fell among Republicans by six points and support for the Democratic candidate rose by the same amount, again; in Nevada, the drop in support for the Republican candidate was two percentage points, and the increase for the Democratic nominee was once again the same.

Each of these states had a Republican Senate nominee closely tied to Donald Trump, suggesting that Republican voters jumping ship are far more wary of anti-democratic initiatives than many of their elected leaders, Trump included. The same pattern of Republican defection emerged in contests for the governor's mansion in states where the Republican nominee was closely identified with Trump, including Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Three political scientists — Sean Westwood of Dartmouth, Yphtach Lelkes of the University of Pennsylvania and Shanto Iyengar of Stanford — created the Polarization Research Lab, which conducted weekly surveys with YouGov of a total of 13,000 voters during the final seven weeks of the campaign.

Westwood observed in an email that the major finding of the survey "is that democratic norm violations of the sort many Republicans ran on are an electoral loser."

Republican candidates, Westwood added, "running on platforms that supported democratic norm violations were standing behind a policy that seems to only resonate with Trump and a small minority of Republican voters."

While only small percentages of the voters of both parties support violations of election norms, according to Westwood, they "have incredibly distorted views of the other side."

Both Democrats and Republicans, Westwood said,

overestimate the extent to which the other side supports democratic norm violations by up to 5 times. There is a real risk that damage to our country could occur not because of support for norm violations, but as a pre-emptive strike based on the faulty assumption that the other side has abandoned democracy.

Independent voters, in the polarization lab surveys, were equally hostile to democratic backsliding.

One clear conclusion to be drawn from the 2022 elections is that candidates who supported Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen were soundly defeated in competitive states. In close elections, the importance of seemingly small shifts became magnified, and pro-Democratic gains among independent voters in key states reinforced the effect of Republican defections.

Nationally, independent voters were split 49-47 in favor of Democrats, according to exit polls, which are still adjusting their data. In Arizona, they supported Mark Kelly, the Democratic Senate candidate, 55-39; in New Hampshire, it was Maggie Hassan at 54-43; and in Pennsylvania, independents, who make up a quarter of the state's electorate, supported John Fetterman over Mehmet Oz 58-38, a striking 20-point difference.

The same pattern among independent voters obtained in governors' races in Wisconsin, Arizona, Michigan and especially Pennsylvania, where independent voters backed Josh Shapiro over Doug Mastriano 64-33. Trump endorsed the Republican nominee in each of these states.

Lelkes noted in an email that

in a 49/51 election, a small percentage of people switching sides combined with independents moving in favor of Democrats is enough. It's hard to say if this was because the candidates were the ones moving toward the extreme right, or if it was because voters shifted closer to the left.

Political parties, Lelkes continued,

constantly try to expand their pool of voters. The process involves a balancing act between tacking to the extremes to pick up additional voters, without turning off those marginal voters on the other side of the distribution. Apparently, Republicans tacked too hard to the right.

Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, wrote by email that she "was very surprised at the extent to which Democrats overperformed the 'fundamentals' that normally predict midterm election outcomes, meaning presidential approval, state of the economy, and perceptions of the direction of the country," before adding:

Polarization cannot adequately explain Republicans' near total failure to make gains in 2022. Undoubtedly, polarization puts a ceiling on the seat swings one could reasonably expect in the current environment, but Republicans held 246 House seats and 54 Senate seats just a couple of election cycles ago. Even in a polarized environment, Republicans had significant room to grow their ranks of officeholders.

Instead, Lee argued:

The election outcomes are consistent with the interpretation that the candidates most closely associated with Trump suffered a penalty. Voters rejected all the Trump-endorsed secretary of state nominees in important swing states. Republicans unexpectedly lost seats in districts where Republican incumbents who supported Trump's impeachment had been denied renomination. Republicans closely linked to Trump lost elections in winnable swing states, suffering decisive defeats in the gubernatorial elections in Michigan and Pennsylvania and narrow defeats in the Senate elections in Arizona, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Republicans less closely associated with Trump won their elections without difficulty: Sununu in New Hampshire, DeWine in Ohio, Kemp in Georgia, DeSantis in Florida, among others.

In a Nov. 10 postelection email to leaders and donors in his party leaked to the press, Paul Cordes, chief of staff of the Michigan Republican Party, described the devastating defections, among both voters and donors, that followed the nomination of Trump-backed Tudor Dixon to run against Gretchen Whitmer for governor, along with other Trump-endorsed candidates for secretary of state and attorney general.

"Tudor Dixon did nearly eight points worse than the base Republican vote," Cordes wrote, arguing that her poor showing at the top of the ticket pushed down support for Republican state legislative candidates, noting that in defeat, "House G.O.P. candidates received 161,000 more votes than Tudor statewide and were on average just 1.3 percent behind Democrats" and "Senate G.O.P. candidates received 150,000 more votes than Tudor, losing by an average of 1.6 percent to Democrats."

The effect on donors was equally damaging.

"It seems nearly impossible to imagine drawing up a more challenging position for ourselves coming out of the August primary," Cordes wrote. "Donors for the most part decided against supporting Trump's handpicked AG and SOS candidates from the April convention, and also withheld millions in traditional investment into the state party."

Cordes added:

In what many of them saw as sending a message to Donald Trump and his supporters, longtime donors to the party remained on the sidelines despite constant warnings of the possibility of the outcome we saw coming to fruition on Election Day: A statewide sweep and one-party Democratic rule in Lansing something that has not been seen in nearly 40 years in Michigan.

Before the election, Cordes wrote, the state party calculated that

if Tudor Dixon could keep the race with 3-4 percent, our state House and Senate majorities would be safe. If she lost by 7-8 percent, we were going to be in danger of losing one or both chambers. It looks as though Tudor will end up losing by 11 points and Republicans find themselves shut out of every level of power.

Jenna Bednar, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, wrote by email to say that the Michigan Republican Party is emblematic of the problems that emerged in the 2022 election. "The Michigan Republican Party is in disarray," she wrote, noting that Tudor Dixon got "just 44 percent of the vote when state House and Senate candidates took 49 percent statewide. Dixon campaigned on Republican 'red meat' issues like critical race theory, parental review of curriculum, transgender athletes, and book bans."

Trump's allure, Bednar argued,

has faded in many states. Even before the election, we saw signs of voter exhaustion with all things Trump. Here in Michigan, in the final weeks of the campaign many Republican candidates noticeably walked back from touting their Trump endorsements. They were responding to centrist voters who are fed up with the cultural wars, election denials, and general antics.

In a separate email, Matt Grossmann, a political scientist at Michigan State, cited the Supreme Court's abortion ruling as a key factor in the election outcome. The Dobbs decision, he wrote

changed the usual dynamics of movement against the party of the presidency by giving voters an extremely salient conservative policy shift to react against. There is also some evidence that voters recoiled at the most extreme election-denying Republican candidates, but that might be more attributable to the typical advantages of moderation and experience than to explicit swing voter concern with democratic backsliding.

There were, Grossmann wrote, Republican defections from the party of Donald Trump: "Parts of the Republican electorate certainly want to move on from Trump, if only because he is a continuing electoral drag on the party, but that does not mean the anti-Trump faction will be able to accumulate a primary majority."

Republican defections at the margins are one of many explanations of the party's dismal performance on Election Day.

A publicly released postelection analysis by Neil Newhouse and Jim Hobart, partners at the Republican polling firm Public Opinion Strategies, found, for example, that a far higher percentage of Democrats, 81 percent, believe "Republicans represent a threat to democracy that, if not stopped, will destroy America as we know it," than Republicans (69 percent) believe the same thing about Democrats.

In addition, Newhouse and Hobart reported, abortion, which worked to the advantage of Democrats, "was more of a factor than the pre-election polls indicated," with almost as many voters, 31 percent, saying it was a high-priority issue as the 32 percent who identified rising prices and inflation, an issue that benefited Republicans. Almost identical percentages identified concern over democratic backsliding, at 25 percent, a pro-Democratic issue, as the 26 percent who identified jobs and the economy, a pro-Republican concern.

The two Republican pollsters asserted, "This election was NOT good news for former President Trump." Not only did many of his handpicked candidates lose, they continued, but "there is clear evidence that GOPers may be falling out of love with President Trump."

Independent voters, Newhouse and Hobart wrote, "particularly late deciders who opted for Democratic candidates, could very well have been in reaction to President Trump more aggressively inserting himself into the midterm dialogue."

Significantly, Newhouse and Hobart provided data showing that through 2020, a larger percentage of Republicans considered themselves "to be more a supporter of Donald Trump" than "a supporter of the Republican Party." That came to an end in January 2021, and by this month, 67 percent said they were "more a supporter of the Republican Party," more than double the 30 percent who said they were "more a supporter of Donald Trump."

Two political scientists, Ariel Malka of Yeshiva University and Paul Frymer of Princeton, each cautioned by email against overinterpreting the results of the election.

"I am skeptical that concerns about democracy are a great part of the explanation for Republicans' weak performance," Malka wrote:

It is heartening that election deniers lost races for key offices in competitive states, but many Republican election deniers won their elections for House seats and state offices. It would be too optimistic to conclude that anti-democratic behavior will itself be a liability for candidates moving forward.

Malka noted that "abortion strikes me as potentially more relevant for explaining the break from historical midterm patterns." Although it may have energized some Democrats, he added, the key is that "it might have been a decisive factor for a chunk of independents and even some moderate Republicans who oppose strict bans."

Trump, Malka argued, remains the favorite to win the 2024 nomination: "A strong majority of Republicans are favorable toward Trump, and this favorability has proven robust in the face of scandals, negative coverage and so on." Some members of the Republican elite, Malka wrote, "would like their voters to form a stable belief that the midterms showed Trump is a liability for the party. But these elites will have their work cut out for them."

Frymer wrote:

In general, I think it's too early to cast broad interpretations of this election. So far, the indications are that these electoral results are not national and likely defy any unifying message as a result. Florida and New York and perhaps Oregon offer notable Republican gains, while California has narrowly avoided the same with a lot of close elections going the Democrats' way. This was not the red wave that Republicans were hoping for, but they still will likely win the House for the first time since the 2016 elections.

Will Republican voters turn against Trump?

"Maybe a bit," Frymer wrote,

and maybe some of that will gain momentum with the success of DeSantis and the blaming, in at least some quarters, of Trump for the electoral failures. But it is important to remember that Trump has never been popular outside of his base, never achieved majority support in an election or even a meaningful approval poll." Trump remains "what he has always been — widely disapproved by majorities of urban and many suburban areas, and notably independent voters. This is hardly the first time it seemed like leading Republicans were ready to abandon Trump.

While "Dobbs appears to have been important," Frymer stressed his belief that

the story of this election is good local candidates campaigning on popular politics in their areas and contesting national issues within local contexts. Local situations, whether the quality of the candidates, the money targeted, or the importance of gerrymandering and/or the ability to ignore the Voting Rights Act, tipped the balance in a multitude of extremely close races. Trump's popularity (or more importantly, his lack of popularity) seems, at least as of the early indicators, pretty unchanged.

From Nov. 6 through Nov. 8, Stanley Greenberg conducted a survey of 2,520 registered voters for Democracy Corps, including a 1,130 oversampling of voters of color, the results of which were released on Nov. 15. The conclusions Greenberg drew from the survey and earlier polling this year are a mixed bag for both parties.

"Two-thirds rate the economy negatively," according to Greenberg, "yet Democrats did not prioritize the economy in this election and the president is still trying to convince people this is a good economy. This may be the toughest to make progress on." In addition, the "failure of national Democrats to address the economy meant rural areas and white working-class communities were a political wasteland."

The Democratic Party, according to Greenberg, "got respectable support with Hispanics, as well as young people, but women across the whole spectrum played the biggest role. Unmarried women, white college women and under-50, white working-class women all raised their vote level since October, no doubt motivated by the abortion issue." But, Greenberg warned, Democrats remain "at risk with Hispanics and Asian voters if they do not rethink what they prioritize, what their policies offer, consciously battling for all in our coalition, and acknowledging past mistakes, and having an inclusive vision where all make progress in America," noting that the Biden administration's 2021 expansion of the child tax credit is "uniquely popular among Hispanics."

Crime, Greenberg wrote,

was a top issue for many Democratic base voters. A quarter of Blacks and half of Hispanics and Asians voters trusted Republicans more than Democrats to address the issue. With Democrats trailing Republicans by 10 points on crime, Democrats have a lot of work to do.

There is another word of caution for Democrats. The party's single most important achievement in 2022 was to maintain control of the Senate, preventing Republicans from blocking Biden's judicial and executive branch appointments.

The Senate seats up for election on Nov. 8 gave Democrats many more opportunities, with 21 seats held by Republicans and 14 held by Democrats. In 2024, however, 23 Democratic seats will be up for grabs — including two independent seats (Angus King in Maine and Bernie Sanders in Vermont) — making it that much harder for Democrats to keep their thin majority. Eight of these Democratic seats are in purple or red states (Montana and West Virginia, for example) offering multiple opportunities to the Republican Party.

In contrast, all 10 of the Republican-held seats up for election in 2024 are in solidly red states.

There is ample evidence of widespread support among Republican voters for Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, a claim designed to foster not just democratic norm violation but the violence that burst into view during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

An overwhelming majority of Republican elected officials have either endorsed the lie or remained acquiescent in the face of crumbling adherence to basic democratic norms. Republican legislators in red states across the nation have enacted legislation to restrict voting that leans Democratic and to transfer power to decide election outcomes from election officials to politicians in state legislatures.

In other words, 2022 produced a significant election that Democrats can legitimately celebrate, but it may have a short half-life.

Lot to unpack here, and I think the article did a good job representing a balance of ways you could analyze the results:

- Quick takeaway is that voters seem to have broadly rejected anti-democracy candidates in most important swing states. However the meat of the data makes it hard to really tell if that is what happened, or was it more related to Dobbs, was it more related to just general Trump fatigue in those states, or other issues.
- Regardless of the correct read, none of it suggests that nominating Trump in 2024 will help the GOP's chances of winning the White House, and there's at least some evidence to suggest it will significantly hurt those chances
- That doesn't mean Trump cannot win in 2024--and it certainly doesn't mean he cannot win the nomination. He won the nomination in 2016 while opposed by most traditional donors and party powerbrokers and most significant Republican elected leaders. He also won the general in 2016 while being opposed by a majority of the country and having worse likeability numbers than HRC (who was otherwise historically unlikeable in such polling.) No one should come away from this feeling amazingly comfortable that Trump will get creamed in a walk in 2024.
- Some of the State by State independent voter spreads look genuinely bad for Republican prospects in 2 years, the percentage of independents who broke for Dems vs Republicans in Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania look to be dramatic (20 points in Pennsylvania and almost that much in the other two), and there is no realistic Trump map where he can get to 270 whilst losing MI / AZ / PA.

One of the important things not mentioned in the article is while battle state performance for the GOP looked really bad, red state performance was super strong. Obviously just winning red states doesn't win you the electoral college, but it largely means the current Republican coalition is entrenching itself very strongly in a way that it can't just be pushed out of politics any time in this generation. States like Florida and Ohio which as recently as Barack Obama were genuine battlegrounds are now extreme Republican states, to a degree that even a state traditionally very red like Kansas or Nebraska could not have dreamed of even 30 years (in fact, oddly KS/NE may be more nuanced politically now than OH and FL.)

The article calls out signs of Republican strength based on House elections in New York state and California but they left out a salient detail--both States used to be gerrymandered firmly in the Democrats favor, and both States banned partisan gerrymandering since the last election. I don't think there is any serious growth of Republicanism in either State, but ungerrymandering a bunch of Democrat gerrymanders is, shockingly, going to improve Republican competitiveness in those ungerrymandered districts.

The article also didn't mention North Carolina, which IMO is not a good piece of news for the Democrats. NC had seemed to be moving in the same direction as Georgia and Virginia (which both appear to be trying to become blue states in fits and starts, but both--moreso Georgia, have a good ways to go before that is the case); NC appears to have drifted back red. The demographic argument for expecting NC to move more along the lines of VA / GA are still valid, but there's I believe more rural and suburban evangelical whites in NC, as a percentage of the population, than in VA and GA, which mean the Democrats likely won't flip the state easily or particularly soon.

The article also didn't dwell much on demographics which I think are a consistently undervalued political metric. Between 2020 and 2022 several million people aged 65+ died, and several million people under age 21 became new voters. This will happen again from 2022 to 2024, and there is nothing but extremely strong evidence that is a bad demographic trend (and one that is truly unstoppable) for the GOP.

[11B4V]

Frisch has cut Bobo's lead by half. Don't know if there's enough b left to push him over the top.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAPMCcOKqJ0

Pelosi announces stepping down.  Will keep seat.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIqXzp9JlaQ

The Republican members of the election board in Maricopa County AZ are refusing to certify results.  The reporter says this might mean those votes aren't counted.  (If I heard it correctly) there's a similar situation in northeastern Pennsylvania. 

Both areas are heavily Republican.  So my first thought was what a wonderful way to shoot themselves in the foot.  My second thought was what if they wise up and pack election boards in deep blue counties with Trumpists?

[Berkut]

I suspect the idea is to just gum up the process, right?

You can't say the Dem won if one of the counties isn't counted!

[Admiral Yi]

Woops, Cochise County.