What are the Biggest Threats to American Democracy? A Tale of Two Sides of the Same Party: Biden vs. Biden

That finding doesn’t mean Democrats are favored to hold the House, because Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 percentage points — a better showing than seems likely for Democrats this year. Recent polls show that there is a dead heat between the two main parties in the popular vote. But Democrats do seem to have a legitimate chance to retain the House. Times subscribers can sign up to receiveNate’s newsletter, which will be laying out that case next week.

Jane Mayer of The New Yorker recently reported on the importance of germandering for American democracy. The Supreme Court case related to the power of state courts may lead to North Carolina and other states changing their congressional maps. Still, if you were going to rank the biggest current threats to American democracy, gerrymandering would not be at the top of the list.

The movement inside the Republican Party to refuse to accept defeat in an election would be No. 1. After that, in some order, would be the outsize and growing influence that the Senate gives to residents of small states; the winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College; the lack of congressional representation for residents of Washington, D.C., and of Puerto Rico, many of whom are Black or Latino; and the existence of an ambitious Republican-appointed majority on the Supreme Court even though Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections.

Down to the finish line, people. Elections just about a month away. Some of the Senate campaigns are very unusual if you’re looking for diversion.

This matches the dynamic we saw in the special House elections following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June. Democrats started doing considerably better than before the Supreme Court ruling.

The high court decision and the legislative victories of Biden brought some optimism to Democrats but it was counterbalanced by the tightening of some key races as political advertising ramps up on TV and voters watch after Labor Day.

Voters might have been unhappy with the Democrats and Biden’s record on inflation. But they did not want to give control to Republican radicals in Trump’s image.

The Poll of Polls: Ranking Pennsylvania’s Sen. Pat Toomey with CNN’s Next-to-Leading Rankings

Attacks on the Democrats by the GOP have been on a steady rise, portraying them as weak on public safety. Law enforcement officers have appeared in a lot of the TV ads this cycle, with candidates from both parties finding them to be pro- police. Democratic ads also feature women talking about the threat of a national abortion ban should the Senate fall into GOP hands, while Republicans have spent comparatively less trying to portray Democrats as the extremists on the topic.

Over the past several years, CNN has consistently ranked Pennsylvania in first place. But the race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Pat Toomey has tightened since the primaries in May, when Republican Mehmet Oz emerged badly bruised from a nasty intraparty contest. John Fetterman the lieutenant governor of the state had the support of 50% of likely voters in recent surveys. An average of the four most recent nonpartisan surveys of likely voters that meet CNN’s standards is contained in the Poll of Polls. Fetterman is doing better than Biden, who carried Pennsylvania in 2020. Fetterman’s favorability ratings are also consistently higher than Oz’s.

These rankings are based on CNN’s reporting, fundraising and advertising data, and polling, as well as historical data about how states and candidates have performed. It will be updated again before Election Day.

The Trouble Spot for the Democrat: Resolving Oz’s Inflationary Misfortunes Five Months After the Primary

One potential trouble spot for the Democrat: More voters in a late September Franklin and Marshall College Poll viewed Oz has having policies that would improve voters’ economic circumstances, with the economy and inflation remaining the top concern for voters across a range of surveys. But nearly five months after the primary, the celebrity surgeon still seems to have residual issues with his base. Fetterman had a higher percentage of Democrats backing him than did Oz in a recent Fox News survey, and much of that was due to lower support from GOP women than men. Fetterman supporters were more enthusiastic about their candidate than Oz supporters were.

“Because the American people turned out to elect Democrats in the Senate, there’s now a firewall against a nationwide abortion ban threat that so many Republicans have talked about,” he said.

The Senate’s final numbers won’t be known until after the Georgia Republican vs. Democratic runoff on December 6. If Warnock, who’s running for a full six-year term, hangs on, Democrats will have a 51-49 majority.

This seat is up one spot on the rankings because of a narrowed edge from earlier this cycle. The good news for Warnock is that he’s still overperforming Biden’s approval numbers in a state that the President flipped in 2020 by less than 12,000 votes. He is keeping the Senate race close to the Governor’s contest, for which several polls have shown a lead for Brian Kemp. Warnock’s trying to project a bipartisan image that he thinks will help him hold on in what had until recently been a reliably red state. Standing waist-deep in peanuts in one recent ad, he touts his work with Alabama GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville to “eliminate the regulations,” never mentioning his own party. The senator has continued to be tied to the senator’s party by Republicans for his votes on measures in Washington that they claim caused inflation.

If they vote for Kemp, Democrats hope enough Georgians don’t see voting for Walker as an option. Democrats have amped up their attacks on domestic violence allegations against the former football star and unflattering headlines about his business record. And all eyes will be on the mid-October debate to see how Walker, who has a history of making controversial and illogical comments, handles himself onstage against the more polished incumbent.

A Marquette University Law School poll from early September showed no clear leader, with Johnson at 49% and Barnes at 48% among likely voters, which is a tightening from the 7-point edge Barnes enjoyed in the same poll’s August survey. Notably, independents were breaking slightly for Johnson after significantly favoring Barnes in the August survey. A late September Fox News survey shows that a large proportion of registered voters viewBarnes as too extreme to win the election, and thus putting him on par with Johnson on that question. Johnson supporters are more positive about their candidate.

After his opponents withdrew from the race, Barnes faced an onslaught of attacks, especially on crime, using against him his past words of ending cash bail and redirecting police funds to social services. Barnes has attempted to answer those attacks in his ads, like this one featuring a retired police sergeant who says he knows “Mandela doesn’t want to defund the police.”

Do conservatives really care about abortion? The case against Democrat Cheri Beasley in a state senator challenged by conservatives and Republicans

The conservative groups are spending for Masters, but they have a long way to go to hurt Kelly, a well-funded incumbent with a strong personal brand. Kelly led Masters by a significant margin among registered voters in a September poll, but that was narrowed by those who said they would definitely vote. A Fox survey from a little later in the month showed Kelly with a 5-point edge over the other candidates, just within the margin of error.

Masters has attempted to moderate his abortion position since winning his August primary, buoyed by a Trump endorsement, but Kelly has continued to attack him on the issue. Democrats have reason to argue that Republicans are threatening women’s reproductive rights as a result of a recent court decision allowing the enforcement of a 1901 state ban on nearly all abortions.

North Carolina slides up one spot on the rankings, trading places with New Hampshire. The open-seat race to replace retiring GOP Sen. Richard Burr hasn’t generated as much national buzz as other states given that Democrats haven’t won a Senate seat in the state since 2008.

The race to become the state’s first black senator has been tight, with Democrat Cheri Beasley facing off against Republican Ted Budd, who was campaigning for Trump. Beasley lost reelection as state Supreme Court chief justice by only about 400 votes in 2020 when Trump narrowly carried the Tar Heel state. But Democrats hope that she’ll be able to boost turnout among rural Black voters who might not otherwise vote during a midterm election and that more moderate Republicans and independents will see Budd as too extreme. A series of mostly White, gray-haired retired judges in suits are endorsing and attacking Budd as being a normal politician out for himself in one of Beasley’s recent spots.

Budd is targeting Biden in some ads with half-empty shopping carts, and not even mentioning the name of the person. Senate leadership fund tries to make the democrat look like the incumbent in the race by putting her photo over an image of the US Capitol and displaying her face next to Biden. Both SLF and Budd are also targeting Beasley over her support for Democrats’ recently enacted health care, tax and climate bill. A narrator in an SLF ad said that a Liberal politician would knock on your door with an army of new IRS agents. (The new law increases funding for the IRS, including for audits. But Democrats and the Trump-appointed IRS commissioner have said the intention is to go after wealthy tax cheats, not the middle class.)

Hassan led Bolduc 49% to 41% among likely voters in a Granite State Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. According to the survey, only a small percentage of Republicans were with the incumbent. Some of the Republicans who are undecided could vote for the Republican nominee in the general election, which means that Bolduc has room to grow. He will need more than just Republicans in order to break his way, which is why he pivoted on the issue of election fraud days after he won the primary.

The polls shows a tight race with no clear leader. Ryan had an edge with independents in a recent Siena College/Spectrum News poll, which also showed that Vance – Trump’s pick for the nomination – has more work to do to consolidate GOP support after an ugly May primary. Assuming he makes up that support and late undecided voters break his way, Vance will likely hold the advantage in the end given the Buckeye State’s solidifying red lean.

Trump carried the state by about 3 points in 2020, which would make it difficult for Democrats to win the race.

The strong candidate that defeated the incumbent and won the Democratic Party nomination is Val Demings, who outraised him but did not have enough money to jeopardize his advantage. In her advertising, she prominently features her background as the former police chief of Orlando, in which she persistently rejects the idea of defunding the police. Rubio tried to undermine her law enforcement background by linking her to the radical left in Washington.

In the race for a third full term, Bennet will face a stronger challenger in Joe O’Dea who told CNN he disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights. His wife and daughter star in his ads as he tries to cut a more moderate profile and vows not to vote the party line in Washington.

Bennet thinks O’Dea supports abortion rights but would give McConnell the majority he needs to pass a national abortion ban, despite the fact that O’Dea voted for a failed 2020 state ballot measure to ban abortion after 22 weeks of pregnancy.

There haven’t been any things like that in a normal year. But if normal years existed in American politics and this was one of them, we could reasonably assume the Republicans were going to be big winners. You know, two years after one party takes control in Washington, voters have a tendency to rise up in remorse and throw out whoever’s been in.

The Republicans have a lot of terrible candidates. You’d almost think the party honchos met in secret and decided that running the Senate was too much of a pain, and that they needed to gather some nominees who would guarantee they could keep lazing around in the minority.

Georgia looked like it would be a good location for a turnover a few days ago. It tilts strongly toward the G.O.P., and Walker seemed like your normal Republican candidate by 2022 standards — terrible, yeah, but with some political pluses. His autobiography vividly described a spectacular rise to sports, school and business success after a childhood in which “I was an outcast, a stuttering-stumpy-fat-poor-other-side-of-the-railroad-tracks-living-stupid-country boy.”

Tom Malinowski, a second-term Democrat in New Jersey, was seen as a political goner when the congressional map was changed last year.

President Biden’s popularity had plummeted, gas prices were soaring and Mr. Malinowski’s Seventh Congressional District — in which he barely eked out a re-election victory in 2020 — had been redrawn to include nearly 27,000 more registered Republicans. When Mr. Malinowski announced he would run for a third term, he did so in a terse statement, quoting an ominous Shakespearean battle cry: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

In Pennsylvania, where the state Supreme Court made a mid-year decision to redraw the state’s congressional district lines, Democrats look likely to pick up four seats – the open 5th, 6th and 7th districts around Philadelphia, and the 17th District, where Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb and Republican Rep. Keith Rothfus were drawn together into the same suburban Pittsburgh race. One to watch as a sign of a Democratic wave: Whether Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents Philadelphia’s northern suburbs, holds on. If Republican Reps. Scott Perry (10th District) or Mike Kelly (16th District) start to sweat, it’s a disaster for the GOP.

Also in the first half of 2019, House Republicans easily retained control of a very red district in Pennsylvania in the first special federal election of that cycle. The result was similar to how House Democrats did in Virginia last week – easily winning a very Democratic seat in the first congressional special election of 2023.

The party of the incumbent president will usually suffer in the midterms when public opinion of the economy is negative and the performance of the president is not good. Past elections portended big losses for the Democrats in 2022.

Most voters still think that President Joe Biden has mishandled the economy and his handling of crime, while they still feel the same about his handling of the border. Traditionally the president’s party has suffered significant losses in midterm elections when voters hold such negative views about conditions in the country and his response to them.

Some operatives in both parties see signs that the ability of Democrats to shift voters around issues of abortion and rights may have peaked. The majority of voters said they were more worried about kitchen table economic issues than about fundamental rights and protecting democracy when they were asked. According to the results, two-thirds of the voters preferred Republicans for Congress because they were the most concerned about the economy.

The shocking thing about this year (assuming the current trends hold) is that Biden is quite unpopular. He had an approval rating of 44% in the exit polls. His favorable rating was 41%.

The 2016 Democratic Campaign: How Does Inflation and the Implications for Families and Civil Liberties in the United States? An Analysis by Marist

According to detailed results provided by Marist, voters who focused primarily on inflation gave Republicans about two-thirds of their votes for Congress, as did almost three-fifths of those who prioritized immigration. The majority of those who preferred Democrats were interested in preserving democracy and emphasizing abortion or health care.

Democrats throughout the world are focusing on issues relating to rights and values, particularly abortion, in order to remind people of the dangers ofTrump and his movement. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.

The argument about the incentives for domestic production that is embedded in the Biden legislative accomplishments will help to create a boom in US employment.

But those plant openings are mostly still in the future and only a few Democrats (such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona Sen. Kelly, and Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan) are emphasizing those possibilities this year.

The Democrats stress the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act which allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices as a means of providing some relief to families. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says that highlighting such specific initiatives can allow individual candidates to overcome the negative overall judgment on Biden’s economic management. He is worried that too many Democrats are focused on abortion instead of the economic message.

Democrats are trying to build a sea wall against the currents of economic discontent, but piece by piece with the coming manufacturing boom, cost-saving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, and the case that they are giving struggling families opportunities to better their condition. But the campaign’s final weeks will measure whether that current reaches a level that breaches all of the party’s defenses.

Why does it have a wide range of possibilities? The Republicans have a lead of two or three points, which is in line with the Democrats hold of the Senate. It’s a tough environment for battleground-state Democrats, but it’s probably survivable for strong Democratic candidates against weak Republicans.

The person says that The lead of John Fetterman over Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania has narrowed due to concerns about the lieutenant governor’s health. President Joe Biden appeared with Fetterman during a visit to Pennsylvania on Thursday.

• In Arizona, GOP nominee Blake Masters appears to be making up some ground on Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly. The incumbent remains the favorite in the race, but there’s no question there has been some tightening.

• A CBS News/YouGov poll out in Nevada shows the Senate race is in a dead heat, with Republican nominee Adam Laxalt at 49% and Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto at 48%.

• Democrats are beginning to point fingers in Wisconsin, Where? Lt. is a lieutenant. Gov Barnes has had his lead over Ron Johnson eroded over the last couple of months. People are hitting their heads. Tom Nelson was a Democrat who ran for the Senate nomination earlier in the year.

• Allegations regarding Republican Herschel Walker’s past relationships with women don’t appear to have doomed his chances against Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, with most polling showing the incumbent with a low-single digit lead.

What Do We Expect to Learn About the State of the Electoral System from the November 1st Quarter-Fifth Voting Season?

Democrats had a golden summer. A surge in voter registrations is a result of the Dobbs decision. Voters handed Democrats a string of sweet victories in unlikely places — Alaska and Kansas, and good news in upstate New York.

Over the past month or so, there’s been a rumbling across the land, and the news is not good for Team Blue. Fifty percent of likely voters said they would vote for a Republican for Congress, and forty five percent said they would vote for a Democrat. Democrats led by one point in the month of June.

The voters will have the final say on all of these questions. As such, we spend a lot of time going through the risks of polling error in this newsletter. Let’s suppose the polls are correct about the national political environment. The race is in a delicate spot if that is the case. Everything from a Senate Democratic hold to a House GOP wipe out becomes possible.

On the other hand, a lead of two or three points would also open the door to a Republican rout. To start with the simple stuff: It would be easy for Republicans to squeak out a win in one of Pennsylvania, Arizona or Georgia, and take the Senate. But it would also be easy for the Republicans to make large gains in the House — a lot easier than people might think.

We can see if the Democrats will achieve a net gain of 23 seats in the House and whether the GOP’s two-seat Senate majority will grow or shrink.

Polls close at 6 p.m. ET in most of Indiana and Kentucky. Parts of both states are in the Central time zone, so it’ll take time to see whether Indiana Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly survives a challenge from Republican businessman Mike Braun.

The Belated Night: Resolving the National Environment With a Supermassive Data-Driven Republican-Governor Scenario: Insights from the 5th and 27th Districts

It might not be a great national bellwether. The race has shifted from a referendum on Trump or the incumbent congressman to something about the progressiveness of someone like Alison Lundergane, because of Barr’s brutal ads. A Barr loss would cause Republicans to worry, as it will be an early indicator of the environment.

A building wave? Virginia is a crucial sign of where the House is going. The 10th District is where strategists in both parties think Barbara Comstock won’t hold onto her seat in the DC suburbs. Republican Rep. Scott Taylor’s race in the Norfolk-area 2nd District, though, is a much better bellwether for the national environment. And if the GOP Rep. Dave Brat loses in the 7th District outside Richmond – or even if he’s in a tight race – it could be an early sign of a building Democratic wave.

Democrats saw one more district in Virginia emerge as competitive late in the cycle: the 5th District, where former journalist Leslie Cockburn takes on Republican Denver Riggleman, an Air Force veteran and distillery owner. A Democratic win here would be a sign of a tidal wave threatening to wipe out Republicans whose races weren’t even on the national radar.

The Atlanta suburbs feature two wave-maker districts – if Democrats win either, it’d mean they’re in for a big night. In Georgia’s 6th District, Republican Rep. Karen Handel – who won a ballyhooed special election against Jon Ossoff last year – faces Lucy McBath, a challenger whose unarmed son was shot and killed over a dispute about loud music. Republicans in the 7th District are upset that Rep. Rob Woodall didn’t take his race seriously. “If you don’t think it behooves you to put paid media on air, we’re not going to come help you. A Republican official said that they are not a welfare organization.

Miami is a house battleground. South Florida is the site of two House battlegrounds. In the 26th District, GOP Rep. Carlos Curbelo has run well to his party’s left on issues like climate change and immigration, and Republicans need him to survive. In the 27th District, what should be an easy Democratic pick-up has become daunting, as former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala – the non-Spanish-speaking Democratic candidate in a majority Hispanic district – faces former Spanish-language broadcast journalist Maria Elvira Salazar.

History-makers. The governor of Georgia is up for grabs, with a chance for the nation’s first female black governor and a progressive platform appealing to black voters. If neither candidate tops 50%, the race will head to a runoff.

In Florida, a small portion of the panhandle is in Central time, so we’ll need to wait an extra hour for full results to come in for the governor’s race between Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, a progressive favorite, and DeSantis, who has aligned himself so closely with Trump that this is a potential preview of 2020.

Are we seeing a Midwestern state-level resurgence? Democrats are trying to win the governor’s office in Ohio, a state that Donald Trump won 9 percentage points in the 2016 election. He is up against the Republican state Attorney General. The first of several such tests was performed by Democrats, who are hoping to reverse GOP gains in several states.

Tennessee is one of the best pick-up opportunities for Democrats. Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen has repeatedly pledged to work with Trump in a bid to court moderate Republicans away from GOP Rep. Marsha Blackburn.

North Dakota and Indiana are two of the three or so best pick-upopportunities for the GOP.

The most important hour is the middle of the night. The next House could start to take shape at this time. New Jersey and Pennsylvania are two major battlegrounds.

In New Jersey, Democrats need to win at least two open seats with two of their strongest recruits of the cycle: the open 2nd district and the 11th district.

Democratic candidates would see Leonard Lance and Tom MacArthur, Republican congressmen who worked on the health care repeal bill, in the fight of their political lives if they were to win the next two races. It would show how important health care is to the Democrats.

Illinois has a lot of Democrats and they could pick up some seats. The best bet is that Sean Casten beats Peterrosam in the suburbs. Lauren Underwood, who was campaigning for former President Barack Obama over the weekend, is facing a stiff challenge from Rep. Randy Haltgren, who is also near Chicago. GOP incumbents Mike Boswell and Rodney Davis are wave-makers in the 12th and 13th districts.

– Mississippi Senate: Does Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith hold off conservative Chris McDaniel and advance to a one-on-one runoff against Democratic former Rep. Mike Espy?

An 8:30 p.m. ET House race: In Arkansas, Democrats got their strongest possible challenger in state lawmaker Clarke Tucker to take on Republican Rep. French Hill. It would be a huge Democratic night if it was part of the wave-maker category.

Republicans largely written off the two races in Minnesota’s 2nd and 3rd Districts, but Democrats are confident they’ll win them. But Republican Jim Hagedorn in southern Minnesota and Pete Stauber in the northern reaches of the state are both on offense and party operatives are hopeful they can be two bright stops in what could otherwise be a tough night.

The poll closing at 9 p.m. ET could also cement 2018 as the year of the suburban revolt against Republicans. If Democrats win suburban seats in Dallas, Houston, and Detroit, they will have a majority in the House. Republicans still hold suburban seats in Colorado and Kansas, but they are mostly written off.

But the night could become a truly exceptional night for Democrats with wins in deep red districts without sizable population centers that Trump won two years ago. Two examples of that are upstate New York and Kansas City, where Democrats are challenging Republican incumbents.

History in Texas? Texas hasn’t elected a state-wide Democrat since 1988. But Rep. Beto O’Rourke, fueled by Democratic enthusiasm and a Brinks Truck worth of cash, has given Sen. Ted Cruz a real race. Polls have the upstart Democrat down and Republicans believe the state’s Republican tendencies will be evident on Election Day, but staggeringly high early voting numbers and national attention on the race have given O’Rourke a chance. This would be a huge win for the Democrats.

Democrats could lose a major election at the 9 PM poll closing. The polls indicate Sen. Heitkamp is more likely to lose on Tuesday because of a few campaign gaffes. She has had a number of campaign gaffes, including the mistake of wrongly identifying victims of sexual assault.

Democrats hope they can flip the Senate seat in North Dakota, which has been held by republicans since 1948, and keep control of the House with a win in Arizona.

Is Scott Walker done? In Kansas, Michigan, and New Mexico, Democrats are on attack while Tony Evers is challenging Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who Democrats have lost to three times before.

It is no longer a race about whether or not Scott Walker will win a third term in the state, it is more about whether or not he will be re-elected.

The dark horse gubernatorial race of the 9 p.m. ET hour is in South Dakota, where Republican Rep. Kristi Noem is in a surprisingly tough fight against Democrat Billie Sutton, an anti-abortion, pro-gun Democrat who is running to oversee a state that backed Trump by 30 percentage points in 2016.

An important note: If Democratic control of the House comes down to California, the country is in for a long ordeal. California is slow in counting votes and it could take a while to make a decision.

California’s 13th District – Republican business owner John Duarte and Democratic state Assemblyman Adam Gray are in a close race for this open Central Valley seat that Biden would have carried by 11 points in 2020.

Governors’ races wrap with a late night in Alaska. Democrats are aiming to flip governorships in Nevada where Steve Sisolak is the Democrat, and Iowa where Fred Hubbell is the Republican, where Kim Reynolds is the incumbent.

Independent Governor Bill Walker ended his reelection campaign in order to support the Democrats in the race against Republican Mike Dunleavy. The Republicans don’t think the race will be difficult for them, but a late night surprise can be delivered because of the lack of reliable polling and the withdrawal of the current governor.

Democrats win over Biden skeptics because of the strength of individual candidates. In New Hampshire, for instance, Democratic incumbent Maggie Hassan kept her seat by winning nearly all voters who approved of Biden, as well as roughly one-fifth of those who disapproved.

State by state, there were obvious differences to the abortion and democracy issues. In Pennsylvania, Republicans nominated a candidate for governor, Doug Mastriano, who was central to efforts to overturn the states’s 2020 presidential election results. A Mastriano win could cause aconstitutional crisis and make a democratic government less stable. Mr. Mastriano is a strident opponent of abortion and the Republicans controlled the state Legislature.

The issues were not as critical in New York. There was no danger that abortion rights would be turned off by the Legislature. In 2020, there was no movement to overturn the victory of Mr. Biden in New York. As a result, Republicans focused the campaign on crime. And it paid off.

There are exceptions like Democratic strength in Colorado and Republican strength in Texas. The showings that fit well were from each party.

There’s the Republican landslide in Florida, where the stop-the-steal movement never sought to overturn an election result and where Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to go further than a 15-week abortion ban. In Kansas and Michigan, where referendums on abortion were on the ballot at different points, Democrats swept most competitive House districts.

Joe Biden and His First Midterm Congressional Campaign: The Case For a Great Day in the Life Of A President, Not a Bad Day for Democracy

Liberty Zelizer is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of 24 books, including the “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” He can be reached on the social networking site,@julianzelizer. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. There are more opinions on CNN.

Joe Biden has been underestimated many times. Democrats performed exceptionally well by historical standards on Tuesday and Biden walks away having fared better than any other President in his first midterm since George W. Bush in 2002. “It was a good day for democracy,” the president declared on Wednesday.

All of them – 1934, 1962 and 2002 – are thought to be monumental achievements for the president’s party and major exceptions to rule, which suggests the party controlling the White House usually loses seats in a midterm.

Things didn’t get better for Biden when he got to the White House. Covid continued to wreak havoc on the country and the economy. Despite a 50-50 split in the Senate and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema pitting themselves against the administration at various points, Biden was still able to move a formidable legislative agenda through Congress, overcoming fierce Republican opposition and even winning a few GOP votes along the way. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act were all tracks that are more significant than any that we have seen before. Besides the three major pieces of legislation, Biden also appointed more federal judges by August than any president at that point in the term since John F. Kennedy, according to the Pew Research Center. Biden has used his power to make progress on issues like fighting climate change, bolstering US economic competitiveness, and forgiving student debt.

The Senate has sole authority to confirm judicial nominations, even if the Republicans in the House block other Biden initiatives.

The Changing Face of State Government: The Case for a Democratic Governor in the 2023 Republican Reionization Era (Autmosphere)

It is not realistic to think that Trump is close to done. When he fires up his anger in service of his campaign, he can be very effective. He still has the support of the party, and still has a good feeling of operating in the modern media environment. It looks like when George W. Bush won his reelection bid in 1998 he looked like he would go on to win the presidency. He could be a serious threat to Democrats if he is able to pull off a more polished version of Trumpism because of his ability to appeal to the core of the Republican Party.

Who leads your state’s government shapes daily life in the United States. These governors and legislatures make policy on guns, abortion, education and the environment.

Combined with gridlock at the federal level, “where you live now increasingly determines what policies you live under,” said Thad Kousser, professor of political science at UC San Diego.

In the close races, Democratic governors were usually the ones on the defense. Biden’s low approval ratings and inflation woes stoked fears of a “red wave.”

Many Democrats won reelection, including the governors of Maine, Michigan and New Mexico.

The party also solidified its control in two states where registered Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans: Maryland and Massachusetts. In both, the Democratic candidate won an open governorship that a Republican had vacated. Democrats now have complete control of state government. The “trifecta” is when one party has complete control of the state house, senate and governor’s office. While state legislatures in both were already able to override vetoes from the outgoing Republicans, it will now be even easier to pass Democratic agenda items with a trifecta.

There will also be a Democratic trifecta in Oregon, where Democrat Tina Kotek emerged victorious on Thursday night out of a close race with Republican Christine Drazan.

The popular vote margins in governor’s and Senate races this year were even closer. Democrats got more votes cast for governor in total than Republicans, but it was less than they deserved.

No matter what, the majority of Americans “will be living in states where Democrats are governors” in 2023, due to their wins in high-population states, said Ben Williams of the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), during a press call.

This cycle, two Democratically-aligned outside spending groups put $80 million into beginning to change that, on top of the around $50 million spent by the party itself. In 2020 GOP lawmakers voted to try and overturn the results of the presidential election, so part of the mission is to make sure they don’t do it again.

The party has not held sway in the state House or the Senate in four decades. That will give Democrats a clear path to enact their agenda items. In her victory speech, Democratic Gov. Whitmer said that would include growing the economy, improving public education, and continuing to “fight like hell” to protect fundamental rights.

In Pennsylvania, Democrats also claim to have flipped the state House of Representatives, holding a press conference to announce their victory. In that chamber, state Rep. Joanna McClinton could be the first Black woman to become speaker of the Pennsylvania House.

The Associated Press has not yet called all of these races, and the state Republican party has not conceded. The Pennsylvania House GOP believes that the majority claims by Democrats is premature and they are looking at a lot of races where votes are still being counted.

The state that voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 may still be upset by the GOP. Gov. Steve Sisolak is trailing Las Vegas area sheriff Joe Lombardo, a Republican, in his bid for reelection. The Associated Press isn’t ready to call the race.

The race for Arizona’s governorship is too close to call. As of Friday, former local Fox television anchor Kari Lake and Secretary of State Katie Hobbs are still locked into a tight race. If she lost, Lake could not say if she would accept the outcome of her race.

Republicans gained seats in Florida, the Iowa Senate and the South Carolina House. veto-proof majorities are now found in Florida and Ohio. In some states, conservative policy priorities include permitless gun carrying, limits on teaching about gender or sexuality in schools, and laws against masturbating in public places.

The GOP did not gain overwhelming majorities in some states, which means Democratic governors will be able to veto legislation. Republicans gained a supermajority in the Wisconsin Senate, but not the Wisconsin House.

That’s significant because the state’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, survived a close contest to win a second term. During his first, he vetoed more than 140 bills and will continue to be able to veto Republican-passed legislation.

Divided governments like these are becoming rarer. “Starting in 2010 and in nearly every election since then, the red states have gotten redder and the blue states have gotten more blue,” said Kousser, the political scientist.

What is unusual is that of the 18% who viewed neither Biden nor Trump favorably in the exit polls, 40% of them voted for Democrats. The backlash against one president this year may have been canceled out by the backlash against the other.

CNN’s Exit Polls are a combination of in person interviews with Election Day voters and in-person interviews with phone and online polls measuring the views of early and mail voters. They were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. Here you’ll find more about it.

The undecided race for the House of Representatives after Warnock’s loss to Walker in the Georgia GOP primary on June 28

The battle for control of the House is still unresolved after Democrats kept their majority in the Senate.

The party will enter the next decade with at least 50 Senate seats, according to CNN projections after victories in Arizona and Nevada. If Sen. Raphael Warnock defeats Herschel Walker in the Georgia Republican primary on June 28, the party will have one more seat to add.

Republicans have won 211 of the 218 seats they’d need to take the majority, according to CNN projections, while Democrats have won 204, with 20 undecided as of Saturday evening.

Democrats scored a major coup in Washington’s Republican-leaning 3rd District, where on Saturday CNN projected that Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez would defeat Republican Joe Kent, who had aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump.

Trump’s efforts to punish Republicans who voted to impeach him led to her victory. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, a moderate who was widely viewed as a lock for reelection, did not finish in one of the top two slots in the primary and therefore didn’t advance to the general election.

Many of the undecided races are in California, where counting mail-in ballots can take weeks and significant shifts can occur late in that process. Other states with large quantities of mail-in ballots, including Arizona and Oregon, also have undecided races.

The lackluster mid-term performance of Republicans has caused a backlash against their leader, Kevin McCarthy.

Trump Falsehoods, the Republican Senate, and the Causality of the U.S. Senate: What Do We Really Want to Learn?

He said the Democratic Senate candidates beat some very flawed challengers who had no faith in democracy, no fidelity to truth or honor. And even when the polls looked bleak, our candidates never gave up and never lost faith.”

He also touted Democrats’ ability to block any GOP measures that would ban abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June decision to reverse Roe v. Wade.

The Senate control being settled will take some of the national attention away from the Georgia Senate race.

Senate Republicans were confident that they would break a tie in the Senate that has given Democrats control of the Senate, due to the help of the Vice President. The vote of Harris may be irrelevant if Democrats win the race for Georgia’s 51st seat.

“It’s just simply better. The bigger the number the better,” Biden, who is in the midst of an international trip, told reporters in Cambodia shortly after CNN and other news outlets projected Democrats would keep their Senate majority.

In the spot a narrator says that it is about who can represent us, who is willing to tell the truth and who has the knowledge for the job.

In Georgia, the second election in a row, overtime is required when no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote.

Lake would be a rare Trump denier to win a competitive race this year. Other Republicans who had parroted Trump’s falsehoods about widespread election frauds lost governor’s races in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and secretary of state races in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and more.

Counting Maricopa County Votes with Postmarked Ballot Drop in Clark County, Nevada, a Democratic Challenge to the Murkowski Electoral Campaign

According to Bill Gates, the chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, about 190,000 votes remain to be counted.

He was certain that close to 99% of votes would be recorded by Tuesday. He said the county will continue to report about 85,000 votes per night until they are done.

In Alaska, the state’s at-large House seat and one of its Senate seats will hinge on ranked-choice results. In the special election this summer, Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola won and is now in a strong position to surpass 50%. But Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski faces a stiffer challenge from Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who is backed by Trump as part of his bid for retribution against Murkowski and others who for his impeachment after the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

During a news conference on Saturday, Joe Gloria, Clark County’s top electoral official, rejected Trump’s claim. In Nevada, ballots postmarked on Election Day could be counted as long as they arrived by Saturday.

“We’re taking ballots in that we’re required to take in according to the law, there’s no way that we can find ballots,” Gloria said. The United States Postal Service brought them here. We process those ballots if they are postmarked by Election Day, and put them in the count.

Laxalt struck a different tone than Trump Saturday. Shortly before the Saturday evening ballot drop from Clark County, Laxalt was leading Cortez Masto by a mere 862 votes.

Underscoring the closeness of the race, Laxalt put out a series of tweets Saturday evening encouraging voters to “cure” their ballots to ensure that any ballots with technical errors with signature or other issues could be fixed to ensure they are counted. Monday is the deadline to cure ballots.

“For my people who knocked doors in 115 degree heat, and for the million+ Arizonans who put their faith in me, we are going to make sure that every legal vote is counted,” Masters tweeted. “If, at the end, Senator Kelly has more of them than I do, then I will congratulate him on a hard-fought victory. But voters decide, not the media; let’s count the votes.”

Masters had claimed that there was a vote count that was moving too slowly in Arizona’s most populous county.

Gates told Jim that he was unfortunate some candidates and activists were spreading misinformation. “We have spent weeks at Maricopa County, getting that word out that people should not anticipate results on election night or even the next day. That it does take this long.”

What Happened to the Opposition Party in 2016? The Dems and the Phenomenology of the U.S. Midterm

Midterms are supposed to be the time for the opposition party to shine. This should be the case when there is inflation and the vast majority of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

So just what happened? It’s pretty clear that general election voters punished Republican candidates they saw as too extreme – on issues such as abortion and/or for being too closely tied to former President Donald Trump.

Senate control is huge for multiple reasons, not least because by pulling it off in deeply unpromising political conditions, Democrats cemented the most stunning showing for an incumbent president’s party in a first-term midterm election since George W. Bush in 2002.

We don’t have any polling from 1934, though considering Franklin Roosevelt won two landslide victories on either end of that midterm, he was likely quite popular.

The ability for Democrats to defy expectations this year starts simply with whom Republicans nominated for statewide elections. Analysts, myself included, noted that Republicans seemed to have a candidate likability problem. Pre-election polling showed that Republicans in all the key races had negative net favorability ratings. Democrats in pretty much all the key races were better liked than their opponents.

Some 60 percent of voters believe Biden was elected even though the GOP candidates did not do well in the election.

We see this in the races for governor. Republicans nominated 2020 election deniers for governor in a number of blue or swing states. None have been projected a winner, and only the Republican candidate in Arizona has a chance of winning.

It isn’t unusual for a current president and a former president to be unpopular. Both Obama and George W. Bush were unpopular before the 2010 midterm.

The reason for the difference between 2010 and 2022 is pretty obvious. I had pointed out before the election that Biden was not in the mind of voters and that Trump was getting more search traffic. Bush wasn’t receiving anywhere near the search traffic as Obama in 2010, though.

Joe Biden & the Axe Files: How Senator McConnell and the GOP blocked Merrick Garland’s confirmation in 2016

This was the first time that abortion was something that truly made this midterm unique. Despite high inflation, only 31% of voters in the exit poll said it was the most important issue to their vote. A nearly identical percentage (27%) said abortion, and these voters overwhelmingly chose Democratic candidates for Congress.

Even though Republicans regained some ground in national polls in the last weeks of the election season, they never made it back to where they were during the spring.

When you put it all together, Biden and the Democrats appear to have done something others have tried – and failed – in previous midterms: They turned the election into a choice between two parties instead of the usual referendum on the president’s party.

Editor’s Note: David Axelrod, a senior CNN political commentator and host of “The Axe Files,” was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama and chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.

That politician was Joe Biden, who whispered that salty line (in fuller form) to then-President Barack Obama a dozen years ago at the signing of the Affordable Care Act, only to have it captured on a hot mic.

Biden would be forgiven if he had shouted it again from the rooftops of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he’s attending an Asian summit, when he learned that Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto was projected to win reelection in the Silver State, guaranteeing Democrats’ continued control of the US Senate.

It was the latest turn in an astonishing midterm election week during which Democrats defied history and a raft of downbeat metrics to score unexpected victories across the country.

Democrats will continue to control the agenda on the Senate floor and in committees, which is no small thing — particularly if Republicans take the House.

Anyone who doubts this should consider how GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority blocked Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, for eight months in 2016, denying Garland a hearing, much less a vote. Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney was expedited by McConnell and the same majority in weeks before the election.

The decision to overturn abortion rights in the case of the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade is one of the changes made by the two other conservative justices named by Trump. The court decision to overturn the abortion law caused a backlash that may have been a part of Democratic victories this year.

The aftermath of the 1948 London Referendum on the First Lady, Donald J. Biden, and the next-door presidential nominee, Catherine Cortez Masto

The Prime Minister lost his majority in the 1945 parliamentary elections, which were supposedly promised to him by his wife.

Trump, meanwhile, hasn’t won an election since 2016. Logically, and as Republicans try to woo a national electorate in 2024, there are better choices than Trump. The former president has an emotional hold over the party grassroots that will decide the nominee. And Tuesday’s launch, and the immediate aftermath, will offer early clues over whether the staggering resilience to scandals that would have doomed ordinary political careers is beginning to fade.

But this year, the typical referendum on the ruling party and President became equally a judgment of the opposition and its putative leader, Trump. It was a repudiation of election denialism, extremism and coarseness.

Some Republican politicians have stuck with Trump even though they knew better. Watching their quick post-primary exodus from his camp, led by Rupert Murdoch and his right-wing media empire, has been something to behold. They don’t want to be seen as being against democracy or decency, but they do want to be able to lose.

While Biden was overseas, he met with his peers and was about to have a sidebar meeting with China’s president.

Going into these discussions the President might not have been in a position to make a difference. It would have made other allies and adversaries even more suspicious of American democracy and about Biden’s political viability.

The people were able to say what they thought and dealt a blow to the Republicans and Trump who have been campaigning against them.

It was a disappointing weekend for Republicans and ex-President Donald Trump as Democrats kept the Senate for two more years after holding off a red wave in the House, which remains uncalled six days after the election.

And even with the GOP appearing to slowly march toward House control – promising to make Biden’s life deeply uncomfortable for the rest of his term with investigations into his administration and even his son, Hunter – the probable Republican majority will be smaller, and therefore more fractious, with the most radical lawmakers having more leverage.

Political parties aren’t worth anything unless they win power. It is clear why the Democrats are celebrating the come-from-behind victory of Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada Saturday night that gave them their 50th seat and control of the Senate.

Schumer told reporters on Saturday night that people knew Democrats were getting things done for them when they saw the ads they saw on the air.

Tease me off, or Why I won’t go to the House (after all, I can’t pretend to be the Speaker of the House)

If a two-seat margin is used, it makes sense that Democrats would use the tie-breaking vote wielded by the Vice President. If one of their members gets sick, they have a small cushion to protect them from losing the majority in the new Congress.

The moderate Democratic senator from West Virginia might not enjoy the veto he has held the past two years over Schumer, if a 51-47 margin is used as a majority. If Manchin decides to run for reelection in a state where Trump won a lot, he will likely become a harder vote for Democrats. The senator from coal lashed out at the president over his policies on climate change.

A clear majority for Democrats means that Schumer would not have to negotiate with McConnell on committee assignments, as the former senator Biden noted in commenting on the weekend win in Cambodia.

Hard-liners in the House Freedom Caucus want large concessions in order to support him for the top job. Those who are extreme in their beliefs will be able to use the thin Majority in the GOP to their advantage. CNN reported that Arizona Rep Andy Biggs is considering a challenge to McCarthy in the House leadership elections on Tuesday, a move that would weaken the current minority leader and expose anger over the GOP’s performance if his team insists he will have the votes to be speaker.

The current uncertainty around the leadership of the Republican House means that an expected Democratic fight to succeed Nancy Pelosi won’t happen. The speaker of the House stated on CNN on Sunday that she was not making any decisions because of the undecided fate of the House. The speaker said that family and political considerations could affect her future after the attack on her husband. She hasn’t tipped her hand.

“I’m not asking anybody for everything. People are campaigning. And that’s a beautiful thing,” the California Democrat quixotically told CNN’s Dana Bash when asked whether she might feel motivated to stay on as leader. “I’m not asking anyone for anything. My members are asking me to do things they want me to do. Let’s just get through the election.

Donald Trump has cost us the election in the past and I think this time will be different. And it’s like, three strikes, you’re out,” Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan said on “State of the Union” on Sunday.

After the blue wave in the House, his 2020 election loss and the Capitol insurrection, Trump hasn’t struck out with the fervent grassroots Republican base that gave him the White House.

Trump had expected to ride out of this weekend on a wave of Republican euphoria after a bumper election he’d hoped to claim as his doing and enlist it to power his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nod.

Trump is going ahead and doing things his way. His adviser Jason Miller confirmed on Steve Bannon’s podcast that the ex-president’s planned big announcement on Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago will be the launch of a new presidential campaign – even before the 2022 midterm election will be finalized. According to his recent rallies, Trump is doubling down on his election fraud lies even though voters did not like them.

There are alternatives to Donald Trump that may be found in the GOP. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for instance, showed he knows how to build a strong majority with his thumping reelection victory. In 2021, Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin won the governorship in a state that Biden took by 10 points the year before.

Mary Peltola was the surprise winner of a special election to succeed the late GOP Rep. Don Young. She is in a rematch with former Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, and Republican businessman Nick Begich in her bid for a full term.

The 2nd District is now more Democratic than its Republican predecessor due to the creation of a new area that includes parts of southern and western New Mexico. It would have been carried by Biden by 6 points. CNN hasn’t yet projected the race despite Herrell acknowledging the race.

California’s 21st District – Democratic Rep. Jim Costa is vying for a 10th term against Republican Navy veteran Mike Maher. Biden would have carried this Central Valley seat by 20 points in 2020.

– Republican Rep. Michelle Steel and Democrat Jay Chen, a Navy reservist, are competing for this Orange County seat , which was drawn to maximize the power of Asian American voters. Biden would’ve won the seat by 6 points in 2020.

Colorado’s 8th District – Democratic state Rep. Yadira Caraveo and Republican state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer were competing for this newly drawn seat north of Denver. Biden would carry it by less than 5 points in 2020. Kirkmeyer conceded to Caraveo but CNN did not make a projection.

Maine is another state that uses ranked-choice voting to decide its winners in federal elections. Results reflect voters first-place choices. Under ranked-choice voting, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are allocated to their voters’ second-place choices. The process continues until a candidate clears 50%. The ranked choice tabulation is scheduled for Tuesday, November 15.

There is a competition for the 6th District of Oregon, which includes Salem. It would have been carried by Biden in 2020.

Republican Brandon Williams and Democrat Francis Conole are competing for the redrawn 22nd District in New York. It’s an open seat that Biden would have carried by under 8 points.

Do Democratic Senators Really Want to Win the White House? Defending President Biden in the 5th District of Oregon, Where Republicans are Wanted

Oregon conducts its elections entirely by mail. Ballots must be postmarked by Election Day and can be received up to seven days later. The state gained a new House seat in redistricting. One of the six House races in Oregon remains uncalled as of Sunday night after a CNN projection in the 5th District.

CNN is projecting that the Republican is going to beat the Democrat in the redrawn 5th District, which spans from the Portland suburbs to Bend. Biden would have won the seat by 8 points. Chavez-DeRemer will replace Republican Rep. Kurt Busch, who lost in the primary.

Begala had three reasons for his opposition. First, “it undermines President Biden’s powerful message that Trump leads a mega-MAGA fanatical fringe that is a clear and present danger to our democracy.” Second, “Trump is still a massive, major force in American politics — especially in the Republican Party. I don’t want Trump anywhere near the White House.” Third, “while I respect the political success of governors like DeSantis, Youngkin, Hogan and Christie, if the Democrats can’t beat them, we don’t deserve the White House.”

If Democrats truly worry about the fragility of American democracy, they should not take any steps that would facilitate Trump’s return to office, even if that means a higher chance that they lose the presidency. The risks to democracy should Trump win the election outweigh the higher chance of him holding the presidency.

The Case for a Democratic Democrat Candidate: What Will Happen If We Were Trump Nominated in 2020? An Observation from New Hampshire

There is no single narrative that can come out of this election. While we usually think about nationalization, in this election, we saw quite significant differences across states. Pennsylvania and Michigan — and even Wisconsin and Arizona — ended up somewhat better than the pre-election polls suggested (in some cases, quite a bit better). Democrats should be happy, from this perspective. But they did much worse than expected in Florida and New York. Which lesson is the right one?

In rural areas, Republicans may be suffering a representational penalty akin to that suffered by Democrats in urban districts.

If Republicans wanted to win, they should appeal to Trump voters without him on the ballot. The types of voters who are enthusiastic for Trump do not seem equally enthusiastic for his endorsees.”

While moderates and independents were scared off by extremists, they were not fully animated by their own candidates. The candidate they want is Trump, not a Don Bolduc or a Kari Lake or a Mehmet Oz.

should take comfort in their prospects or feel in good shape nationally. There is a lack of trust in the national electorate. Ultimately, I believe turnout is going to matter more than persuasion.

The parties, Tausanovitch continued, “are very evenly matched and this doesn’t look like it is on a path to change quickly. This election was close. I think the next presidential election is going to be close. Trump-endorsed candidates, he acknowledged,

This doesn’t mean that the Republican Party cannot win, or that Trump can’t win. He had a chance to do it in 2020. The election will be very close if he is the nominee.

Republican Party elites are, in turn, increasingly voicing their concerns over the prospect of a 2024 Trump bid. I asked Ed Goeas what would happen if Trump were the nominee, and he replied by email: “I think a Trump nomination would be devastating.”

In a clear slap at Trump, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire — the Republican who handily won re-election while Maggie Hassan, the Democratic senator, beat the Trump protégé Don Bolduc, her Republican challenger — told a Nov. 18 meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition: “I have a great policy for the Republican Party. Let’s stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates in our primaries and start getting behind winners that can close the deal in November.”

The truth of American democracy is that a political party can win more votes than the other if they do not win a lot of power.

The Republicans got more votes than the Democrats, but they don’t have as much to show for it.

Votes at that time were still trickling in from California and Washington, and the margins have thinned, but Cook argued that Republicans’ edge should have gained them 20-30 seats and a larger majority than the 222-212 margin they’re going to have in the House in January. There will be one House vacancy.

Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000 both won the White House with fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. Democrats won substantially more votes than Republicans in 2012, when they reelected then-President Barack Obama, but Republicans kept the House majority.

Georgia, which had a closely fought Senate race and Governor races, set a record for turnout in the midterm elections, according to the Secretary of State.

The overall US turnout rate for the 2022 midterm was 46.8% of the voting eligible population, according to the US Elections Project, which is run by the political scientist Michael McDonald at the University of Florida.

On the one hand, it’s a historic failure by Republicans – the first midterm election since 1900 when the party out of power nationally did not gain control of at least one state chamber, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Controversial voting laws in states like Texas and Georgia may have kept some people from voting. Read more on that from CNN’s Fredreka Schouten, who covers voting rights.

In a report, Edward-Isaac Dovere mentioned that Black voter turnout was down in the year 2022, which caused Democratic operatives to be concerned for the upcoming election.

The American voters have become more tribal in recent years, but the split ticket voting is an important feature of the system.

Maryland and Massachusetts went the other direction in 2022, replacing Republican governors with Democrats to match their senators. Both Wisconsin and Kansas chose Republican governors.

It’s not unusual for any one of these (governorships, House seats or Senate seats) to be narrowly split. After all, we’ve just had two years in which each party has held 50 Senate seats.

The margin in Senate races was still tighter. Republican candidates for Senate won more votes than Democratic candidates – by 0.1 points. If the Democrats ran a candidate in Utah instead of endorsing McMullin, they would have gotten more votes.

We have not had a presidential election in which the popular vote was decided by double-digits since 1984. This streak of single-digit elections is the longest since most states began electing presidents in the 1820s.

Political scientists have debated the reasons for the recent elections. Arguably, the best explanation is political polarization. The era of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats is mostly gone now. The pool of swing voters has, accordingly, shrunk.

But that hasn’t made swing voters any less valuable today. Democrats and Republicans need these voters who go back and forth between parties to make a difference. Several purple states have elected different candidates this year for governor and senator.

Neither party has the majority from the public. That was true in the historically close election of 2022 and in the historically divided era of the last 35 years. In the next presidential election, it could also be true.

At Il Bacco, an Italian restaurant on the boulevard where Queens bleeds into Nassau County, the failure of the Democratic Party on election night was easy to see. The soon-to-be famous politician walked out to a crowd of Republicans and declared victory in one of America’s most important House contests. “Only in this country can the kid who came from the basement in Jackson Heights … ,” George Santos began, before he was momentarily overwhelmed. The American dream is worth fighting for, I want you to know it. I jumped into this race because it is worth defending.

The peculiar void of the state’s Democratic organization, as well as the fact that the party splits into two, has been relieved by these disappointing results. Few New Yorkers cared, until late 2022, that the statewide Democratic apparatus operated, for the most part, as a hollowed-out appendage of the governor, a second campaign account that did little, if any, work in terms of messaging and turnout. New Hampshire, a state with roughly half the population of Queens, has a Democratic Party with 16 full-time paid staff members. The state chairman of New York is Jay Jacobs. One help keeps social media accounts up to date. Most state committee members are unaware of where the party headquarters are or if it has one. It does, at 50 Broadway in Manhattan.

McClellan beat Biden’s 2020 margin by 13 points, that’s notable. It is part of a pattern in special elections this year that suggest the national environment may be friendlier to Democrats than it would be to Biden.

Still, a sample size of 12 isn’t nothing, especially considering these elections have taken place in areas ranging from red to blue and across six states, from New Hampshire all the way down to Louisiana.

The change in special elections reminds me of what happened in early 2019. The Democrats were still riding a wave from the November elections in which they won a number of special elections to win back control of congress.

If you want an idea of how the current political environment could affect a state in a swing state, look no further than Wisconsin.

A critical state Supreme Court seat was up for grabs during the nonpartisan primary last week. This race – to succeed a retiring conservative – will determine whether liberals or conservatives hold the majority on the bench and could affect rulings on abortion and gerrymandering, among other issues.

There were four candidates for the primary, two liberals and two conservatives. A liberal and a conservative have both advanced to the general election, but the two liberals beat the two conservatives by 8 points, which was much closer to the 2020 election victory of Joe Biden.

We will have to wait and see if this blue tint continues in a few elections across the nation as the year goes on.