Results Summary And Analysis
The Democratic Party won control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections. The Democrats gained a net total of 41 seats from the total number of seats they had won in the 2016 elections. This was their largest gain of House seats in an election since the 1974 elections, when the Democrats gained 49 House seats. Democrats won the popular vote by more than 9.7Â;million votes or 8.6%, the largest midterm margin for any party and the largest margin on record for a minority party.
According to the Associated Press‘ statistical analysis, gerrymandering cost the Democrats an additional sixteen House seats from Republicans.
Voter turnout in this election was 50.3%, the highest turnout in a U.S. midterm election since 1914.
Note that the results summary does not include blank and over/under votes which were included in the official results or votes cast in the voided election in North Carolina’s 9th congressional district.
| Source: Election Statistics â Office of the Clerk |
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Meg Whitman’s $142million Loss
Former eBay boss Meg Whitman paid a heavy price for her losing bid to become California’s governor -; $142million.
That’s how much billionaire Whitman, pictured below in tears after her loss last night, spent on her unsuccessful bid to succeed Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor’s mansion in; Sacramento.
It was the moist any self-funded candidate has even spent on a U.S. election campaign.
But it counted for nothing as she was beaten by Democrat former California Governor Jerry Brown, who succeeded in his attempt to take charge of the cash-challenged state again.
Whitman’s big budget bid was hampered by a scandal over her hiring of an illegal immigrant housekeeper and her admission that she didn’t vote for 28 years.
Brown, 72, will now be returning to the office he last held 28 years ago. The state attorney general was California’s 34th governor during his previous tenure between 1975 to 1983 and now becomes its 39th.
Asked by Mr Seacrest if he was getting much sleep, President Obama admitted: Not much lately.
IN DELAWARE:
Democrat Chris Coons easily won Delaware’s Senate race over Republican Christine O’Donnell, a Tea Party backed candidate who struggled to shake old television footage in which she spoke out against masturbation and talked about dabbling in witchcraft.
Last night O’Donnell vowed she will not stop fighting.
‘The outcome isn’t what we worked so hard for but our voice was heard,’ she told a party of supporters.
IN KENTUCKY:
IN CALIFORNIA:
Why Did House Democrats Underperform Compared To Joe Biden
The results of the 2020 elections pose several puzzles, one of which is the gap between Joe Bidens handsome victory in the presidential race and the Democrats disappointing performance in the House of Representatives. Biden enjoyed an edge of 7.1 million votes over President Trump, while the Democrats suffered a loss of 13 seats in the House, reducing their margin from 36 to just 10.
Turnout in the 2018 mid-term election reached its highest level in more than a century. Democrats were fervently opposed to the Trump administration and turned out in droves. Compared to its performance in 2016, the partys total House vote fell by only 2%. Without Donald Trump at the head of the ticket, Republican voters were much less enthusiastic, and the total House vote for Republican candidates fell by nearly 20% from 2016. Democratic candidates received almost 10 million more votes than Republican candidates, a margin of 8.6%, the highest ever for a party that was previously in the minority. It was, in short, a spectacular year for House Democrats.
To understand the difference this Democratic disadvantage can make, compare the 2020 presidential and House results in five critical swing states.
Table 1: Presidential versus House results
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New Redistricting Commissions In Several States Add To Uncertainty
The announcement that California and six other states, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast, will lose House seats in the next Congress set off a wave of fundraising appeals from incumbent Democrats concerned about their efforts to hold on to their chamber majority in 2022.;
Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost 2-to-1 in the congressional delegations that will be reduced because of census data released Monday.;
But the lost seats do not automatically mean that fewer Democrats will come to Washington from the Rust Belt and Northeast.;
The bottom line is, of these seven states that are losing seats, it is entirely possible that will all be self-canceling, and there will be no net change, said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.;
Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, California and West Virginia are each slated to lose a seat because their populations did not grow as fast as states in the South and Mountain West.
Democrats control the redistricting process in several of the states losing seats, and independent or bipartisan commissions will draw new boundaries in some of the others.;
But its hard to predict with certainty which party will come out ahead, partly because the details about where the population grew within the states will not be released until late summer or early fall. Also, efforts to redraw lines for a partisan advantage in one district could inadvertently make a neighboring district more competitive.;
Republicans Score Big Gains In House Pelosi Barely Hanging On
Democrats expected and eagerly anticipated a blue wave that would sweep them into power in the White House, House, Senate, and state legislatures.; It didnt happen, not by a long shot.
In fact, not only did they do poorly across the board, but, as a Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee spokeswoman astutely noted, President Trump acted not as the Democrat-expected anchor but as a buoy for Republican legislative candidates.
That Democrats vastly misjudged the appeal of their radical agenda is crystal clear , and perhaps nowhere is that more evident than in the House races.; Nancy Pelosi truly expected her party to pick up seats, yet it appears its the Republicans who are on track to accomplish the 10-15 seat gains the Democrats expected in their column.
Pelosi on Election Day: “Democrats are poised to further strengthen our majority.”
Pelosi today: “I never said that we were going to pick up” seats.
Kevin McCarthy
Despite AOCs declaration that Democrats lost the House, they have so far managed to win 219 seats .
Powerline notes that Republicans have flipped 12 House seats: RealClearPolitics notes that Republicans have picked up a net of 9 House seats. RCP projects that Republicans will pick up a net 10-13 seats when the counting is done.
12 FLIPS in the House for the GOP!
CA39 Young Kim
Students For Trump
Of the House races yet to be called as of Friday, Republicans are leading in 11 of the 14 races.
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United States House Of Representatives Elections
2018 United States House of Representatives electionsThe 2018 United States House of Representatives elections were held on November 6, 2018, with early voting taking place in some states in the weeks preceding that date. Voters chose representatives from all 435 congressional districts across each of the 50 U.S. states. Non-voting delegates from the District of Columbia and four of the five inhabited U.S. territories were also elected. These midterm elections took place halfway through the term of Republican President Donald Trump. On Election Day, Republicans had held a House majority since .
In the 2018 elections, the Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, won control of the House. The Democrats gained a net total of 41 seats from the total number of seats they had won in the 2016 elections. The 41-seat gain was the Democrats largest gain of House seats since the post-Watergate 1974 elections, when they picked up 49 seats.
Upon the opening of the 116th United States Congress, Pelosi was elected as Speaker of the House. Incumbent Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan chose not to run for another term. In November 2018, House Republicans elected Kevin McCarthy as House Minority Leader.
Gop Women Made Big Gains
While the majority of the Republican caucus will still be men come 2021, there will be far more Republican women in Congress than there were this year. So far, it looks like at least 26 GOP women will be in the House next year, surpassing the record of 25 from the 109th Congress. Thats thanks in part to the record number of non-incumbent Republican women 15 whove won House contests. And its also because of how well Republican women did in tight races. The table below shows the Republican women who ran in Democratic-held House districts that were at least potentially competitive,1 according to FiveThirtyEights forecast. As of this writing, seven of them have won.
GOP women have flipped several Democratic seats
Republican women running for potentially competitive Democratic-held House seats and the status of their race as of 4:30 p.m Eastern on Nov. 11
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Results are unofficial. Races are counted as projected only if the projection comes from ABC News. Excludes races in which the Republican candidate has either a less than 1 in 100 chance or greater than 99 in 100 chance of winning.
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Rep. Ami Bera of California, the fundraising chair for the moderate NewDem Action Fund, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News that he was disappointed by the election results.
I described the election a little bit different than Speaker Pelosi, Bera said. I think our goal for many of us as Democrats is not to have any of our colleagues lose. So by that metric, you know, we lost some really valuable members of Congress, and for that I’m sad, and that bothers me.
Still, Bera said he didnt see what Democrats could have done differently in several races they lost, pointing to Rep. Joe Cunninghams loss in South Carolina.
There’s nothing about his campaign that we could have improved on raised resources to get his message out and at the end of the day, he lost by one percentage point in a district that I bet Trump is gonna win by 10 to 13 points, Bera said. So, you know, that’s just tough terrain.
But the party clearly needs to better understand some voters of color, Bera said, who broke in higher numbers for Trump this cycle than they did four years ago.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also been open about discussing Democrats communication failures this cycle.
In the weeks since Election Day, she has argued that moderates were not digitally strategic enough during their campaigns.
And Bera said he and his caucus members arent just brushing off Ocasio-Cortezs advice.
There may not be an answer. It may be that theyre screwed.
Its Not All Bad News For Democrats
While it was unquestionably a good night for Republicans, Democrats still held onto most of the seats they won in 2018 and will continue to be the majority party in the House. Thats in part because they retained most of the suburban districts they picked up in 2018.
Of the 233 seats that Democrats held coming into the election,2 186 of them were in districts that were predominantly or partly suburban in nature, according to density categorizations by Bloombergs CityLab. Thus far, Democrats have lost seven of those seats, but they captured one GOP-held suburban seat around Atlanta. And thanks to redistricting, theyve also won two formerly Republican seats around Greensboro and Raleigh in North Carolina, which reflect the partys strength in more populous areas.
Because of their relative success in the suburbs, Democrats kept many seats in places President Trump won in 2016. Coming into the election, Democrats held 30 seats in districts Trump carried in 2016, and they wouldve lost their majority if theyd lost more than half of them . But theyve won 18 of them so far and picked up one from the GOP . In fact, more than half of Republicans gains have come in seats representing places that Trump won by a pretty sizable margin in 2016. Well have to wait a bit before data can tell us how congressional districts voted in 2020,3 but for now it seems many Republican gains were made by picking off the lowest-hanging fruit.
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House Democrats May Well Have To Contend With A Republican Senate
House Democrats have spent the past two years passing bills at a rapid clip, on everything from sweeping anti-corruption reforms to lowering the cost of prescription drugs to a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill. But the vast majority of these bills were dead on arrival in the US Senate. It seems likely this ambitious agenda could continue to be on ice, unless Democrats flip two Georgia Senate runoff races that will be decided in January.
One of the few bipartisan pieces of legislation Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and President Trump were able to agree on was the $2.2 trillion CARES Act at the beginning of the pandemic; a second stimulus package has been held up by partisan bickering. McConnell recently signaled willingness to pass another stimulus package before the end of the year. He for the Senates lame-duck session but was vague on concrete details.
Even on infrastructure one of the few places where there seemed to be bipartisan agreement getting a bill through could be elusive. Should Democrats flip the Senate, Pelosi has provided them a road map.
But its too early to say if they will get to use it.
Update: This piece was updated with recent Decision Desk calls in several key House races.
A White House In Disorder
The tweet came without warning, on the day of the South Carolina primary. Watching television aboard Air Force One, on a flight back from his summit in Singapore with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean despot, Mr. Trump decreed that Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina must be defeated.
Mr. Sanford, an idiosyncratic conservative who routinely criticized the president, was in a tough primary battle with Katie Arrington, a state legislator running as a Trump loyalist. Hours after Mr. Trumps message, Mr. Sanford conceded defeat.
If Mr. Sanford suffered in June for his apostasy, Mr. Trumps party paid another price Tuesday: Ms. Arrington lost the general election in a heavily Republican district to Joe Cunningham, a Democrat.
Mr. Trumps capricious approach to politics was destabilizing for Republicans up and down the ballot, leaving candidates exposed to the presidents whims and grievances and the machinations of White House advisers. Rather than approaching the midterm campaign as a task of holding together a political coalition and steering it to victory, Mr. Trump focused chiefly on rewarding perceived friends and punishing those who crossed him.
The endorsement was off. The day after Idahos primary, Mr. Trump phoned the triumphant Mr. Little and, unaware of the tapes genesis, asked: Did you see that video?
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How Did State Populations Change From 2010 To 2020
The U.S. population has increased by 7.4% since the last Census, to a total of;331,449,281 people.
California is the most populous state with 39,538,223 people, while Wyoming is the smallest state at 576,851 people.
Utah was the state with the fastest growing population over the last decade, increasing by 18.4%, while West Virginia had the most population loss, dipping 3.2%.;
What Was The Outlook Prior To The Election
Republicans needed to get to 218 seats to win back the majority they lost in 2018. The National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, in early 2019 identified dozens of Democratic-held districts to target. They included;30 Democrats;who were elected or re-elected in 2018 in districts that voted for President Donald Trump in 2016. All but one Dave Loebsack of Iowa sought re-election. Most were first-term members who defeated or succeeded Republicans in the 2018 election. Republicans won some of these Trump Democrat districts but needed to unseat most to win back control of the House.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign arm of House Democrats, identified more than 40 Frontline Democrats it expected to have very competitive re-election campaigns. Many of these members represented;suburban districts;that have diversified their populations in recent years. In most of these districts, Democrats were running for re-election for the first time. The Frontline Democrats amassed large campaign funds.
Democrats also identified more than three dozen Republican-held districts they intended to target, including seven in Texas.
Democrats also made a play for the suburban Texas districts of retiring Republican Reps.;Pete Olson;of the 22nd District and Kenny Marchant of the 24th District. They lost the 22nd District, but the 24th is currently too close to call, with Republican Beth Van Duyne leading.
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New Yorks Congressional Seats Over Time
Gained seats
W.Va.
Calif.
And several key states with changes coming to their maps California, Colorado, Michigan and Montana have independent commissions tasked with determining new legislative boundaries on a nonpartisan or bipartisan basis.
The parties have this natural inclination to go for broke, say, Weve got a new seat, lets grab it and take the opportunity we have, said Bernard Grofman, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine, who has served as a special master for court-ordered redistricting in multiple states. For Republicans, he said, picking up new seats and stopping Joe Biden is going to have a high, high priority, even though they may pay a big political price down the road.
The 2021 redistricting process will also be the first time since 1961 that a raft of mostly Southern states will not have their maps subject to a preclearance process from the Justice Department, following the Supreme Courts 2013 decision to strike down Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. The court last month heard arguments that could undo more elements of the act that would impede the ability to sue to block new maps.
Without having to seek preclearance, Republicans in states where they control all levers of government Florida, Georgia and Texas, to name three will have far more influence on the new maps than they have had in past reapportionment cycles.
12 FLIPS in the House for the GOP!
CA39 Young Kim
Students For Trump
