Midterm elections typically see the incumbent president's party lose a substantial number of seats,[6][7] but Democrats outperformed the historical trend and a widely anticipated red wave did not materialize.[8][9][10][11][12] Republicans narrowly won the House due to their overperformance in the nation's four largest states: Texas, Florida, New York and California. Democrats increased their seats in the Senate by one, as they won races in critical battleground states, where voters rejected Donald Trump-aligned Republican candidates. This was the fifth election cycle in history in which the president's party gained Senate seats and simultaneously lost House seats in a midterm, along with 1914, 1962, 1970, and 2018.[13]
The Democratic Party's strength in state-level and senatorial elections was unexpected,[13] as well as historic.[14][15][16] They won a net gain of two seats in the gubernatorial elections, flipping the governorships in Arizona,[17]Maryland, and Massachusetts;[18] conversely, Republicans flipped Nevada's governorship.[19] In the state legislative elections, Democrats flipped both chambers of the Michigan Legislature, the Minnesota Senate, and the Pennsylvania House,[20] and achieved a coalition government in the Alaska Senate. As a result of these legislative and gubernatorial results, Democrats gained government trifectas in Michigan for the first time since 1985,[21] and in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minnesota for the first time since 2015.[22] 2022 is the first midterm since 1934 in which the president's party did not lose any state legislative chambers or incumbent senators. It was also the first midterm since 1986 in which either party achieved a net gain of governorships while holding the presidency,[23][15][24] and the first since 1934 in which the Democrats did so under a Democratic president.[25] Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida—previously considered one of the nation's most contested swing states—won reelection in a landslide, as did Senator Marco Rubio. More generally, Florida was one of the only states where some evidence of the predicted 'red wave' materialized.[26][27][28]
Issues that favored Democrats included significant concern over perceived extremism and threats to democracy among many Trump-endorsed Republican candidates, the unpopularity of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion that reversed Roe v. Wade, the weariness of a potential Trump 2024 campaign, and backlash over the January 6 United States Capitol attack.[38][39][40][41][42] Candidate quality played a major role, particularly in the Senate, as many Republican candidates became embroiled in scandals during the campaign that led to underperformances in key races.[43] General turnout and turnout among voters aged 18–29, who are a strongly Democratic constituency,[44] were the second-highest (after 2018) of any midterm since the 1970 U.S. elections.[45][46] The elections maintained demographic trends that began in 2012, in which Republicans made gains among the working class,[26] especially White people. Republicans continued their trend since 2016 of making gains among minorities, including Latinos. Democrats continued their trend of improved performance among White college-educated voters.[47][48][49] Democratic overperformance in these elections are considered to have played a factor in the party's defeat in 2024, with its results misinterpreted as support for President Joe Biden's initial bid for re-election.[50][51]
^Teixeira, Ruy (November 6, 2022). "Democrats' Long Goodbye to the Working Class". The Atlantic. Retrieved November 9, 2022. As we move into the endgame of the 2022 election, the Democrats face a familiar problem. America's historical party of the working class keeps losing working-class support. And not just among white voters. Not only has the emerging Democratic majority I once predicted failed to materialize, but many of the nonwhite voters who were supposed to deliver it are instead voting for Republicans. ... From 2012 to 2020, the Democrats not only saw their support among white working-class voters — those without college degrees — crater, they also saw their advantage among nonwhite working-class voters fall by 18 points. And between 2016 and 2020 alone, the Democratic advantage among Hispanic voters declined by 16 points, overwhelmingly driven by the defection of working-class voters. In contrast, Democrats' advantage among white college-educated voters improved by 16 points from 2012 to 2020, an edge that delivered Joe Biden the White House.
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