What Really Happened in the 2022 Midterms
Choose your own adventure!
Republicans were widely expected to gain a massive majority in the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterms. The Senate was also supposed to go to the GOP, although that seemed less certain. Republicans failed to gain control of the Senate and they barely have a House Majority. (The GOP has 222 seats, 218 is a majority.)
What happened?
Quick summary of the 2022 Midterms:
Trump is out.
Reliving the 2020 Election like it’s Woodstock = fatal to Republicans.
Zeldin and DeSantis are in.
Ballot harvesting was obviously going to happen (see my tweets from 2018 and more at the end).
Now let’s look at what others think and why they are wrong outright.
“Trump’s primary picks were the cause of the losses!”
Trump was blamed for Blake Master’s loss in Arizona and Dr Oz in Pennsylvania. But McConnell’s hand-picked McSally lost both times she ran. Jon O’Dea got smoked in Colorado.
Blaming Trump is simplistic considering that Mitch didn’t outperform Trump.
The logical among you will recognize the false dilemma. Why is Orange Man Bad or Ditch Mitch the model for an explanation?
(Spoiler alert: Keep reading for a third way.)
“Trump’s endorsement record was 99% (or some made-up number).”
Here’s how Trump is tracking “endorsements.” He claimed to endorse people who were going to win. Rand Paul was in peril before Trump? Marco Rubio in Florida? Chuck Grassley in Iowa? Jumping ahead of winners and taking credit for their success is the oldest trick in the book.
Trump also took credit for Rep Tomas Massie’s win. This is hilarious because Trump backed a primary challenge against Massie in 2020. Massie won.
Trump wanted him ousted from GOP, but Massie coasts in primary
Rep. Thomas Massie was declared the winner of the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th District on Tuesday, coasting to a comfortable win after President Donald Trump had called for him to be ousted from the GOP.
Trump called Massie a “third rate Grandstander” on Twitter and said he should be thrown out of the party.
Imagine trying to take someone out, losing, and then later taking credit for that person’s success. That’s downright Trumpian.
Anyone telling you that Trump has some huge endorsement record success isn’t offering you legitimate political analysis. They are telling you what you want to hear, which is really your issue. You demand to have your biases confirmed because you lack the emotional strength to wrestling with the fact that you might be wrong sometimes.
Trump’s Hand-Picked Election 2020 Skeptics all lost winnable races.
Trump backed a number of primary challenges who campaigned largely on the 2020 election. Democrats put money into the campaigns of several of these Trump-backed primary candidates, on the theory that they’d be easier to beat in the election.
ELECTION DENIERS HAD A BIG NIGHT. AS DID DEMOCRATS WHO THINK THEY'LL BE EASIER TO BEAT
It was a good night for election deniers Tuesday — and perhaps for Democrats who believe that these far-right candidates will be easier to beat come November. GOP candidates backed by Donald Trump — and one sort of backed by the former president — notched primary victories in several states Tuesday, dispatching rivals through a process they’ve claimed is rank with corruption. One such 2020 election conspiracy theorist was former Trump administration official John Gibbs, who won over Michigan Congressman Peter Meijer, one of just ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol insurrection last year.
This even created an ethics question. If “election denial” is bad, why would you fund it? How naive.
Democrats picked up every seat in those so-called “election denial” primaries.
Anyway, I personally like some of the people Trump backed. I would also rather lose with someone like Joe Kent than win with someone who is going to betray their voters.
Not throwing shade at these candidates. Just being objective. I write what I would want to read. No one else is doing the kinds of stuff you find here at the Other Side of Fear.
Trump’s real endorsement record in the 2022 mid-terms is close to zero.
“But JD Vance etc!”
JD Vance is a great statesman. Trump did win the primary for him. In the general. Vance won Ohio by a lower margin than other Republicans.
Lauren Boebert (good person, no hate from me) won her House election by a few-hundred votes. Her District tilted Republican. She underperformed a “generic” Republican.
Cross-reference areas where Republicans won with the way their districts have been gerrymandered. Underperform.
Trump’s “Let’s Relive 2020 Tour” failed bigly.
Mitch McConnell didn’t do any better.
McConnell’s candidates did no better than Trump’s. Joe O'Dea lost. David McCormick, who lose the PA GOP Senate Primary to Dr. Oz, would have fared no better in Pennsylvania. Blake lost Arizona, but so did Mitch’s anointed ones.
Either the country is changing or Republicans don’t see much reason to fight for a Senate GOP majority.
Could it be because, by now, voters know what Mitch is going to give them (good and hard).
“But abortion, etc.”
The problem with “theories” re: the 2022 Midterms are that the numbers don’t support them.
House Republicans won the popular vote.
2022 Review: How Republicans Lost Despite Winning the Popular Vote
Here’s a figure about the 2022 midterm elections that might surprise you: Republicans won the national House popular vote by three percentage points — 51 percent to 48 percent. They still won by two points after adjusting for races in which only one major party was on the ballot.
Lee Zeldin is pro-life. He pulled up New York House Republican candidates. If hundreds-of-thousands of New Yorkers hadn’t already fled to Florida, Zeldin may have been within recount distance of the Governor’s Mansion.
You can find data on either side of the abortion issue. Dobbs isn’t the explanation for the 2022 Midterms.
Lee Zeldin and Ron DeSantis, not Trump, gave the GOP a House Majority.
Lee Zeldin, who wisely avoided Trump’s called to treat the 2020 Election like Woodstock (an event that went down in history and Boomers can never forget), pulled up several House candidates.
Florida Republicans sent DeSantis a redistricting map. Heavy D threw it out, rewrote it.
Democrats are suing in federal court to undo the map.
Lawsuit over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' 14th Amendment-flouting redistricting map scheduled for September
A September trial has been scheduled in a federal-court challenge to a congressional redistricting plan that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature this spring.
U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor issued an order Friday that said the trial will start Sept. 25.
The lawsuit, filed by Common Cause Florida, Fair Districts Now, the Florida State Conference of the NAACP and individual plaintiffs, alleges that the redistricting plan violates the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment and 15th Amendment. The 14th Amendment ensures equal protection, while the 15th Amendment prohibits denying or abridging the right to vote based on race.
Conclusion. What really happened in 2022?
Do the math.
218 is a House Majority.
The GOP has 222 seats. (Unless George Santos resigns or is kicked out.)
Trump’s hand-picked Election 2020 candidates all lost. Those were winnable seats. Even if we don’t count the full 8 seats, and split them 50-50, that’s 4 more seats the GOP should have in Congress.
If Zeldin doesn’t run, then there’s no House majority.
If DeSantis doesn’t draw a proper map for Florida, which saw a record influx of Republican refugees from other states, then there’s no House majority.
Trump’s primary picks tended to underperform their district.
Everyone is sick of hearing about 2020.
The only way forward is the other side of Trump.
P.S. Is the RNC / Ronna McDaniel to Blame?
I was one of the first people explaining the importance of ballot harvesting.
See this Tweet from 2018. Mail-in voting played a role. I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m also saying that people who acted like ballot harvesting is a new issue are also not the type of people you should be relying on for insight and analysis.
If I predicted that ballot harvesting would be the issue, what’s the RNC’s excuse?
I said to my wife a few years back that Dems would have an easier time ballot harvesting because of their urban base, but the GOP didn't even try, at least not in my state. You could even make it memetic: call it a Freedom Convoy. Drive around exurbs and rural areas in pickups and 4x4s to pick up ballots. Make an event of it. Instead the GOP here rested on its laurels and while it made gains in some areas it lost some winnable ones by small margins, especially in the suburbs.
Both parties are guilty of this to an extent, complaining about the status quo at the expense of exploiting it, but in this case it was especially egregious.
I don't completely malign the local GOP here because at least they're showing up, but they all seem to think it's still the nineties. They're playing by an old rulebook. Better than not playing at all... but only just.
Thank you for mentioning that ballot harvesting in Orange County in 2018 was a dry run. I am heartened when you write that, at least, the CA GOP caught on. It's rampant, it's hear to stay, and it's not going away. Maybe, it accounts for 1% of the vote. Maybe, it accounts for 5%. But, Orange County congressional seats are all being won/lost by less than 2%. It's time to get in on the action.