Well.
With the caveat that it's not over yet, because the count is still ongoing in some states with close races!
I thank everyone in Minnesota who worked like hell on this election to get out the vote for Democrats, which got us narrow or better victories for all of the statewide candidates, congressional candidates who had a chance to win, and saw the DFL retake the Minnesota Senate and hold the state House, so Democrats now will have what's called a "trifecta" for the next two years. May they do something good with it for climate, rights, schools, and all the issues that matter.
Similar things happened in Michigan and may be happening in Pennsylvania in terms of their state legislature. A couple other states got trifectas, too. Terrible, fascist candidates were defeated in multiple places around the country, especially secretaries of states. Democrats may still hold the U.S. Senate, depending on what happens in Nevada and the result of the Georgia runoff in December. Two options instead of one, and maybe they'll get both. (Please, please, Georgia — keep Herschel Walker out of the Senate.)
Plus making losers of Lauren Boebert and — it looks like — Kari Lake and Sarah Palin. (I sure hope those two losses hold up as their counts goes forward!)
Specific Democratic losses that hurt me, though, are:
- Stacey Abrams, who has made Georgia a winnable state for Democrats by building the organizational base. Yet her percentage of votes vs. her opponent, compared to Warnock's on the same ballot, was net around –10%. And that deficit was more from white women voters than it was from Black men, as has been bandied about. According to Georgia exit polls, Abrams had more support from Black men than Democrats had nationwide. If every Black man who voted for Kemp had voted for Abrams, she still would have lost. White women in Georgia were barely more likely to vote for Abrams than white men (27% vs. 23%). (Abrams vs. Kemp results; Warnock vs. Walker results)
- Mandela Barnes losing by 1% to the execrable, talentless Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, after an overtly racist, fear-mongering campaign. As with the Georgia campaign, the gap was visible when compared to another Democratic candidate, in this case Governor Tony Evers, who finished ahead of the Republican by 3%. (Barnes vs. Johnson results; Evers vs. Michels results)
The only innocuous explanation for voter behavior in these two cases is that Warnock and Evers were incumbents, while Abrams and Barnes were challenging incumbents. And that may be part of it. The smaller gap for Barnes makes more sense in that thinking, though it's outweighed by Johnson's election denialism, support for the January 6 insurrection, plans to kill Social Security and Medicare, and so on. The larger gap between Abrams and Brian Kemp is less easily explained away without bias against her.
The House of Representatives' outcome is both great and disappointing. It was great compared to what it was predicted to be by polls and pundits and what the history of first-term midterm elections said it would be. (Lauren Underwood from Illinois won! Summer Lee in Pennsylvania! And I hope Katie Porter from California wins, as it looks in the early count.) It's still possible Democrats may yet maintain the majority. The fact that gerrymandering played so clear a part in some of the Republican pickups, as in Florida, shows that the narrow margin in their favor is fake, even without considering voter suppression.
If the Republicans do take the House, it's clear they will only obstruct and prevent any progress from occurring. They will try to impeach Biden and make up investigations of spurious topics. They will waste two years of time we don't have in order to make things worse (which works better for the Republican Party, the only thing they care about) before the 2024 elections.
Finally, it's clear that when ballots contain important issues that voters care about, like bodily autonomy and voting rights, people come out to vote on them and the results turn out in a good direction.
I'll close with a few election comments from Twitter:
Before the next election, you might want to find a better way to poll anyone under the age of 30 since they would rather pick up a pinless grenade than a call from an unknown number.
Ben Collins
If this were a fair fight and gerrymandering were illegal, Democrats would be steamrolling Republicans tonight. Republicans can't win without rigging elections in their favor. THAT'S the story.
Brandon Friedman
I hope people followed this election cycle closely enough to notice the role of mass media and polling in creating a false narrative of what voters were feeling
@BreeNewsome
If Republicans win control of the House of Representatives by current projections, their victory can be attributed to the Supreme Court's 5–4 order in February suspending the Voting Rights Act's ban on racial gerrymandering.
Mark Joseph Stern
If polls keep being wrong or misleading, maybe journalists should stop lavishing 90% of their political coverage on polls and instead do something like, I don't know, talk about the candidates' policy preferences and what effects they would be likely to have if implemented.
Adam Kotsko
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