This may be the most misunderstood election in modern American political history, even given that it came immediately after another misunderstood result in 2022. It was, if anything, a bifurcated election. As horrific as the presidential outcome was for Democrats, those claiming that it was a wipeout haven’t looked very closely at what happened below the top of the ballot, where the extraordinary thing is how ordinary the results were.
In the House, which is a far better barometer of where the country is than the Senate, after zillions of dollars were spent, the net change will be minimal—within a couple seats of the 221-214 majority Republicans held going into the election. Virtually nothing happened (unless you are or work for someone who lost). Republicans will almost certainly have a majority, though a tiny one—probably the tightest margins for the House since the 72nd Congress (1931-33), when they had 218 seats to Democrats' 216 (although Democrats did get to organize the House because of deaths of several Republican members after the election but before the swearing-in took place). The kind of change in the House may well be little more than a rounding error.
Senate races are more representative of the map and calendar than the national mood. With only a third of the seats facing the voters every two years, it matters which third, which states, and which members are up. To a large degree, what happened six, 12, or even 18 years ago when the seats were previously up for reelection are as relevant as the political environment at the time of the election. For the last quarter century, the political gods had been good for the Democrats in this class of Senate seats. Trump’s midterm election year in 2018 wasn't a bad year to be a Democrat. In 2012, Barack Obama was getting reelected. In 2006, Democrats had a great year in George W. Bush’s second-term, midterm election. The last time this group of seats were up in a bad year for Democrats was 30 years ago, in 1994.
With Republicans scoring a net gain of four seats, control of the Senate did change hands, but it hardly was the product of anything particularly unusual. Defending 23 seats to only 11 for the GOP, Democrats had twice the exposure. More importantly, three of those 23 seats were in very red states—Montana (Jon Tester), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), and West Virginia. Donald Trump easily carried all three in both 2016 and 2020. In an era of minimal ticket-splitting, an extraordinary result would have been if Democrats had saved one.
More telling, Democrats were defending five seats in purple states, four of which Trump carried in 2016, lost in 2020, and regained in 2024. Another Democrat, Sen. Jacky Rosen, was seeking reelection in Nevada, a state that Democrats won narrowly in 2016 and 2020 but would not in 2024. Of the five Democratic seats in purple states, Republicans picked off Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, but Sens. Rosen and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin won, and the open seats in Arizona and Michigan stayed in the blue column.
In something of a reprise of 2022, better Republican candidates might have won in Arizona, Nevada, or Wisconsin, and more party resources behind former Rep. Mike Rogers’s campaign in Michigan might well have changed that result. Nominating less-than-optimal candidates in purple states seems to be developing into a chronic problem for Republicans, as stronger candidates tend either to lose primaries or not run at all.
On the gubernatorial level, Democrats were defending three seats to Republicans' eight. None changed hands, including in the only three remotely competitive states, the open-seat contests in New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Washington. Republicans made small gains in state legislatures, but less than the normal churn in presidential years.
Abortion and safeguarding democracy turned out to be nonstarters for Democrats in terms of providing them air cover. Voters' targeted their anger at the Biden-Harris administration, particularly on the cost of living and the border.
Two years ago, many mistakenly laid Republicans' underperformance at the feet of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade. The Court motivated voters who support abortion rights, the theory goes, and juiced turnout for Democrats. In reality, however, Democrats won 10 million fewer votes for the House than in the previous midterm election, while Republicans won 3.7 million more votes than in 2018. No, 2022 was not about Dobbs—it was about Republicans nominating about two dozen terrible candidates in critical races, election denialism being a fairly common thread. This time, abortion initiatives did fairly well but did not help Democrats up or down the ballot. This issue is neither a silver bullet nor a get-out-of-jail-free card for the party.
Not surprisingly given recent history, swing states and undecided voters did not split down the middle. They broke overwhelmingly in favor of Trump. In terms of the undecided vote, look at the New York Times average of presidential race polls, both national and in swing states. Kamala Harris’s poll average was almost precisely what she ended up winning, which means that Trump won practically all of the undecided votes. At this point, Trump has a majority of the votes counted, with 50.4 percent to 48 percent for Harris. Once all of the votes cast are totaled, mostly in Democratic states on the West Coast, he will likely be just above or below 50 percent.
So much for those who kept insisting that Trump had a ceiling of 48 percent.
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