2022 midterm elections

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The 2022 midterms were a series of local, state, and federal elections in the United States on November 8, 2022. These included elections for all 435 members of the US House of Representatives, 35 US senators, 39 state and territorial governorships, and the majority of state legislative seats. Tensions were high between Republicans and Democrats for a wide variety of reasons. President Joe Biden was unpopular with many Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, and because of this and the general historical trend of the president's party suffering major losses during midterms, many people predicted that this would be a "red wave" year comparable to 2014, and while polling wasn't quite as bullish as what many pundits were saying, it still suggested that Democrats were in for a bad time. However, for various reasons, this red wave didn't quite pan out, and this became the first midterm since 2002 in which the incumbent president's party didn't suffer major losses.^{[note 1]} Republicans won the House, but barely, while Democrats slightly expanded their Senate majority, governorships, and control of state legislatures.

Background[edit]

After Biden won the 2020 U.S. presidential election and Democrats Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff flipped both of Georgia's Senate seats, Democrats held a federal trifecta for the first time in a decade. However, their narrow 50–50 majority combined with having two obstructive senators on top of an unfriendly Supreme Court limited what the Democrats could accomplish. That, rampant inflation, and the general historical trend of a president's party underperforming in the midterms, meant that many people thought the Republicans were poised for huge gains.

Virginia gubernatorial election[edit]

Results of the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election by county and city.

Virginia's gubernatorial race was the most watched U.S. election of 2021. This is because Virginia uniquely holds its statewide elections on the off-years,^{[note 2]} and Ralph Northam's better-than-expected victory in 2017 was seen as an early bellwether of Democrats' success in the 2018 midterm elections. The Democrats nominated former governor Terry McAuliffe; the GOP, businessman Glenn Youngkin.^{[note 3]} The election was very divisive, with Youngkin focusing on the then-popular moral panic of critical race theory and also his opposition to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions;^[2] however, Youngkin wisely tried to distance himself from the unpopular former president Donald Trump.^[3] Ultimately, Youngkin won by two points in a state that Biden had won by ten points,^[4] and Republicans flipped seven seats in the state House, flipping the chamber.^{[5][note 4]} Perhaps even more surprising was the concurrent governors' election in New Jersey, where incumbent Phil Murphy was against election denier^[6] Jack Ciattarelli, and while Murphy still won, it was only by a narrow margin of around three points.^[7] This was seen as a sign that the Democrats were losing suburban support and a bad omen for their chances in the midterms.

Redistricting battles[edit]

With the results of the 2020 census in, every state was required to change its legislative map to account for changes in population. While some states like Colorado and Michigan were trying out independent commissions of map drawers for the first time and ended up with relatively fair maps, in other states it quickly turned into a race to see who could gerrymander the hardest. Lowlights include Tennessee breaking apart Nashville into multiple pieces to get rid of the Democrat-leaning fifth district,^[8] Texas eliminating as many remotely competitive districts as possible,^[9] and Ron DeSantis forcing a map which was too extreme a gerrymander for even the Republican-dominated Florida state legislature.^[10] North Carolina's map was so bad that it was struck down by the state Supreme Court,^[11] and Ohio saw a protracted battle where the state legislature repeatedly tried to pass a map that the state Supreme Court had repeatedly found unconstitutional.^[12]

Even some of the Democratic gerrymanders were aggressive, such as Illinois's map, which had only three Republican-leaning seats,^[13] and New York's map, which left only four Republican-leaning seats (this one was struck down).^[14] Nevada also had an interesting gerrymander, where Democrats split the safely blue 1st district to make it easier for them to win the 3rd and 4th, even if all three districts only become narrowly blue in the process.^[15] Federal courts tried to strike down notorious racial gerrymanders in states like Alabama and Louisiana, but the Supreme Court stayed the orders until after the midterms, when it will take up the cases;^[16][17] depending upon the ruling, this could end up further weakening the Voting Rights Act by removing the ability for minorities to fight for more representative districts in federal courts.^[18] Despite all the chaos, the results of the redistricting may have actually benefitted Democrats, at least relatively to the previous maps that were in use. That is because six of the seven districts that were eliminated in reapportionment were in rural, overwhelmingly Republican regions, while Democrats were able to win four of the seven new districts. Additionally, the general trend of populations moving away from rural regions and towards urban centers made it easier to draw compact urban districts, which benefit Democrats.^[19]

Dobbs v. Jackson[edit]

Abortion rights protestors in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania after the Dobbs decision.

Despite the Democrats' trifecta in the elected branches, they didn't have full control of the American government. The Supreme Court of the United States is nonpartisan on paper, but in the last forty years or so it became increasingly partisan. A low point came in 2016, when Antonin Scalia died and Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings for a potential successor to be appointed by Barack Obama, saying that it was too close to an election to appoint a successor (never mind that this wasn't a rule before), gambling that he could allow a GOP president (who became Trump) to appoint a judge instead. Naturally, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, McConnell didn't give the same luxury to Trump's successor, which resulted in conservative justices having a 6–3 majority on the Supreme Court over liberal ones. These justices spent years trying to overturn Roe v. Wade,^{[note 5]} which they finally accomplished in 2022 with the ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a 5–4 decision^{[note 6]} that overturned Roe v. Wade, putting the question of abortion up to the states.^[20] The problem was, the right to an abortion is broadly popular throughout the U.S.,^[21] and the bans that multiple states began to implement were very unpopular.^[22] Shortly after the decision, voters in Kansas voted decisively to protect abortion rights during a referendum despite Kansas being a pretty red state.^[23] This gave Democrats a winning issue on which to campaign during a time when many prominent concerns like inflation didn't seem to be in their favor.

Special elections[edit]

In addition to the elections in Virginia, there were numerous other special elections that were watched as potential indicators of the midterms. Initially, most of them had the results you'd expect, with seven House elections in early-mid 2021 that all had results roughly in line with their Cook Partisan Voting Index. There was additionally a failed attempt to recall California governor (and former husband of Kimberly Guilfoyle) Gavin Newsom, spearheaded by Larry Elder, which miserably failed because Elder is a complete crank. However, after the Virginia elections, the results of these elections started to look bad for Democrats, notably when Texas Republican Maya Flores won by over seven points in a Democrat-leaning district.^[24] However, after the Dobbs decision, things began to look better for Democrats; while they still lost in Nebraska's 1st district and Minnesota's 1st district, the results were much narrower than what you would expect in these deep-red districts.^[25][26] Additionally, Democrat Mary Peltola flipped Alaska's only House seat in a major upset,^[27] while Democrat Pat Ryan also won in a Republican-leaning district in New York.^[28] While Democrats' momentum had seemingly slowed down in the weeks before the midterms, the preceding special elections already showed a mixed bag for both parties.

U.S. House results[edit]

US House results by party: dark colors are gains, light colors are holds.

Ultimately, the House was a mixed bag for both parties. It took over a week to determine which party was the winner^[29] because the results in many districts were so close, with 11 seats being decided by less than a 1% margin. Ultimately, Republicans flipped twenty-one Democratic-held districts, while Democrats flipped nine Republican districts. Of the seven new districts created due to reapportionment, Republicans won three of them while Democrats won the other four, and of the seven districts eliminated due to reapportionment, Republicans lost six while Democrats lost only one. This added up to a net +9 gain for Republicans, and when all was said and done Republicans had a 222–213 majority. Notable results include:

• Colorado—Democrat Yadira Caraveo narrowly won Colorado's new 8th district, which is very competitive and has a large Latino population.^[30] The closest House race of the cycle was in Colorado's 3rd district, which is pretty red but is represented by the extreme Lauren Boebert, who was thrown into a surprisingly competitive race. While she was reelected, it was by only 546 votes.^[31]
• Florida—This state is one of the major reasons why Democrats lost the House, as Republicans won four additional seats here while Democrats lost three.^{[note 7]} The horrific gerrymander here didn't even turn out to be necessary; Republicans would have performed just as well under the previous map, although the racial gerrymander definitely did cost Al Lawson his seat.^[32] On the bright side, Maxwell Frost, who was endorsed by Bernie Sanders and is the first Gen Z House member, did win the Orlando-based 10th district,^[33] but on the other hand Anna Paulina Luna won the Tampa-area 13th district.^[34]
• New York—This state is the other big reason that Democrats didn't win the House. Republicans flipped four seats^{[note 8]} and Democrats lost a few other seats that could have been competitive. This has been attributed to a few factors, such as dissatisfaction with former governor Andrew Cuomo and just plain incompetence from the state's Democratic Party. Particularly embarrassing was the case of Sean Patrick Maloney, who was the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; formerly representing the 18th district, he decided to run for reelection in the neighboring 17th district because he thought it would be easier to win in, forcing out the Democratic incumbent Mondaire Jones, who then had to run in the 10th district where he lost in the primary.^[35] Despite being (let us remind you) the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he paid almost no attention to his own reelection, and ended up losing in an upset to Republican Mike Lawler.^[36] And to add irony to the story, Pat Ryan, the Democrat who ended up running in the 18th district, actually won his reelection.^[37] Another notable election was in the wealthy Long Island-based 3rd district, where Republican George Santos beat Democrat Robert Zimmerman by seven points in a district that Biden won by ten points. However, Santos would soon come under scrutiny when it turned out that he falsified most of his résumé.^[38] Later, this spiraled into reports that he also lied about his high school, his college, his job, his source of campaign funds, his charity donations, his marriage, his sexuality, his religion, the reason for his mother's death, the reason for his grandmother's death, and much more.^[39] From allegedly stealing from a fundraiser intended to help save the life of a military veteran's dog, to making false claims that he lost four employees to the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, no lie, scam, or scheme seemed too egregious for Mr. Santos.^[40]
• North Carolina—North Carolina ended up being a surprising ace in the hole for Democrats despite disappointing results in statewide races, as the state's Supreme Court drew a fair map to replace an attempted Republican gerrymander. Jeff Jackson easily won the newly-created Charlotte-based 14th district,^[41] while State Senator Wiley Nickel beat football player and election denier Bo Hines in an upset, flipping the 13th district.^[42]
• Ohio—This was another state where Democrats did surprisingly well, but unlike in North Carolina where they were aided by a fair map, in Ohio they were dealing with a gerrymander that the state's Supreme Court would rule unconstitutional. Marcy Kaptur easily won reelection in the 9th district despite it being redrawn to being Republican-leaning, making her the longest-serving woman in the House.^[43] Emilia Sykes won an upset victory against Trump fan and former Miss Ohio Madison Gesiotto Gilbert in the Akron-based 13th district,^[44] while Greg Landsman defeated thirteen-term incumbent Steve Chabot in another upset in the Cincinnati-based 1st district.^[45] This exposed Ohio's congressional map as being a Tullymander, as despite Republicans drawing the map to favor them as much as possible, Ohio's House delegation went from being 12–4 Republican before the midterms to 10–5 Republican after.
• Washington—Washington's 3rd district had perhaps the most amusing election of the cycle. Jaime Herrera Beutler was the original incumbent of this red district, but after she had voted to impeach Donald Trump following the 2021 U.S. coup attempt, far-right challenger Joe Kent primaried her. Kent, having ties to White nationalism and militia groups.^[46] was understandably too extreme for even this red district, so Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won in an upset.^[47] With this victory, it also means that Democrats won every single district that borders the Pacific Ocean. Interestingly, Dan Newhouse, another Republican who voted to impeach Trump, won reelection in Washington's 4th district.^{[48][note 9]}

U.S. Senate results[edit]

US Senate results by party: dark colors are gains, light colors are holds.

The results in the Senate were a bit more decisive, with Democrats slightly expanding their majority. Only one seat was flipped, which was in Pennsylvania, where Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz in order to succeed Pat Toomey. This was the first election cycle in American history to date in which every incumbent senator who sought reelection won reelection.^[50] Some other notable races include:

• Alaska—This actually ended up being a competitive race between two Republicans, as many Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans backed Lisa Murkowski so that the Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka wouldn't win. Murkowski actually pulled a similar thing off in 2010, when she defeated Tea Partier Joe Miller as a write-in candidate.^[51]
• Arizona—Mark Kelly won his first full term in the Senate and defeated pro-Trump venture capitalist Blake Masters,^[52] who became notorious for his creepy campaign ads.^[53]
• Georgia—Reverend Raphael Warnock won his first full term by defeating football player and deadbeat dad^[54] Herschel Walker. Like the last Georgia Senate election, this one also went to a runoff, although Warnock did receive more votes than Walker on election day as well.^[55]
• Nevada—Incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto won reelection against Republican Adam Laxalt, who was considered one of the more normal Republican Senate nominees (which isn't really much of an accomplishment considering his competition) in the closest Senate election of the cycle, being decided by around 8,000 votes. When this race was called four days after election day, it was clear that Democrats kept their majority.^[56]
• New Hampshire—While there was speculation that New Hampshire's popular governor Chris Sununu would run, he pointedly decided to take a pass (if not have the balls to subsequently denounce what came next) and run for re-election as governor (since New Hampshire has two-year terms), so the actual nominee ended up being the election denier and conspiracy theorist Don Bolduc.^[57] Naturally, incumbent Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan won this one, while Sununu cruised to a fourth term as governor.^[58]
• North Carolina—Democrats tend to come very close in statewide races here, but always narrowly losing to Republicans, with Roy Cooper being the only recent exception. The same thing happened when former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court Cheri Beasley lost to Representative Ted Budd to succeed the retiring Richard Burr.^[59]
• Ohio—While the state has become much redder in recent years, Democrats had a strong nominee in Representative Tim Ryan while the Republicans nominated the politically inexperienced J. D. Vance. While Ryan lost, he is credited with inspiring turnout among Democratic-leaning voters to the point that they were able to win multiple competitive House races.^[60]
• Utah—Right-leaning independent Evan McMullin, who is famous for getting over 20% of Utah's vote during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, challenged Republican incumbent Mike Lee, who is considered one of the most conservative Senators. McMullin convinced the Democratic Party in Utah to not run a candidate so he could take on Lee himself, and pledged that if elected he would not caucus with either party (while unusual, this has some precedent in the Senate). While Lee won by a little over ten points, McMullin had the best performance of any non-Republican in Utah since 1976.^[61]
• Wisconsin—When he was reelected in 2016, Ron Johnson said he wouldn't run for another term, but of course he broke that promise. However, it was the closest race of his career, as he only managed to eke out a 1% win against Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes.^[62]

Governors' results[edit]

Gubernatorial results by party: dark colors are gains, light colors are holds.

The Democrats did relatively well in the 2022 gubernatorial elections, netting two seats and holding on to most of their competitive incumbencies, however, a few incumbent Republicans performed well too. The following governorships flipped in 2022:

• Arizona—Despite being a MAGA lunatic in a state that tends to reject such extremists, Kari Lake was heavily favored to win the governorship, since Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs didn't campaign that much. However, Hobbs pulled off an upset, breaking a Republican trifecta in the state, while Lake followed in the footsteps of her idol and claimed election fraud (without evidence). A major source of conspiracy theories was that in Maricopa County, which contains 62% of the population, a bit more than a quarter of their voting tabulation machines malfunctioned; this despite the chairman of the electoral commission, himself a Republican, getting out in front of the problem as soon as it became evident and carefully explaining how the machines also had a backup method built in, which enabled voters to cast a ballot that would then be hand-counted. Unsurprisingly, the underlying issue was not actually a conspiracy against Republicans and turned out to be utterly mundane; some older printers weren't hot enough to make dark enough lines on ballots, which prevented the machines from properly reading them, and by early afternoon the voting machine technicians turned up the heat and got them to work.^[63][64]
• Maryland—Popular moderate Republican governor Larry Hogan was term-limited, and when election denier Dan Cox defeated Hogan's chosen successor in the primaries, everyone knew that this governorship would flip regardless of whether there was a red wave.^[65] Unsurprisingly, the Democratic nominee Wes Moore won, and he became the state's first Black governor.^[66]
• Massachusetts—This was also not a surprise, as the incumbent Charlie Baker chose to retire after two terms and the Republican who tried to succeed him was the far more conservative Geoff Diehl. Democrat Maura Healey won, becoming Massachusetts' first female governor^{[note 10]} as well as the first lesbian governor in the country.^[67]
• Nevada—Ultimately, Democrats' only major setback in terms of state governments this cycle was here, as Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo narrowly defeated Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak, breaking a Democratic trifecta.^[68] However, Democrats kept control of both houses of the state legislature.^[69]
• Northern Mariana Islands—While it's a territorial race that received considerably less attention than the ones in the states, their incumbent governor Ralph Torres is incredibly corrupt even by Saipan's dispiriting standards.^[70] The Lieutenant Governor Arnold Palacios ran against Torres as an independent and defeated him after a runoff.^[71]

Ron DeSantis, Kari Lake, and a terrifying-looking Charlie Kirk.

Some other notable races occurred in:

• Florida—Ron DeSantis defeated the Democratic nominee, former Republican governor and Democratic representative Charlie Crist, by over 19 points, even winning in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, and Tampa, which are all typically considered Democratic strongholds. This election was a grim sign of just how scarily far Florida had moved to the right in only four years.^[72]
• Georgia—Despite Stacey Abrams coming very close to defeating Brian Kemp in 2018, this time it was not so close, with Abrams losing by 7.5 points. The fact that Kemp rejected Trump's election denialism probably saved him when Republicans who embraced it, like Herschel Walker on the same ballot, fell to Democrats in these swing states.^[73] Abrams also had some issues that came from making herself a national figure, which raised questions as to how much she was focusing on the state she was campaigning to run as governor, plus her campaign was generally a complete mess with its spending (they set records for fundraising and still ended up over a million dollars in debt) and got caught making some fairly shady financial dealings with non-profits her campaign manager personally ran.^[74][75]
• Kansas—While this is a red state, memories of their former Republican governor Sam Brownback were bad enough that it allowed incumbent Democrat Laura Kelly to defeat Derek Schmidt and win another term.^[76]
• Oregon—While this is a blue state that normally wouldn't even be competitive, billionaires like Nike CEO Phil Knight astroturfed former Democrat Betsy Johnson as an independent candidate. Johnson's backers were worried about environmental regulations that Democratic nominee Tina Kotek supported.^[77] However, when it was clear that Johnson was going nowhere, many of her billionaire supporters jumped ship to the Republican candidate Christine Drazan, which allowed Kotek to regain ground and eventually win.^[78]
• Pennsylvania—While this race was expected to be competitive, Republicans nominated January 6 participant^[79] Doug Mastriano, whose extremist rhetoric and poor campaigning jeopardized any chances Republicans had at winning in this state. State attorney general Josh Shapiro (no relation to Ben Shapiro) ended up crushing Mastriano by almost 15 points.^[80]
• Wisconsin—The Dobbs v. Jackson decision put abortion in legal limbo in Wisconsin, and the Republican nominee Tim Michels said he would support a full ban on abortion, but fortunately incumbent Democrat Tony Evers defeated him.^[81]

Other results[edit]

• State legislatures—Democrats flipped the Pennsylvania House of Representatives,^[82] the Minnesota Senate (giving them their first trifecta there since 2014),^[83] and both houses of the Michigan state legislature, giving them a trifecta in Michigan for the first time since 1984.^[84] Democrats also won a supermajority in the Vermont legislature, allowing them to overturn Republican governor Phil Scott's vetoes,^[85] while Republicans conversely failed to gain supermajorities in North Carolina and Wisconsin, meaning that Roy Cooper and Tony Evers will continue to be able to veto Republican legislation.^[86][87] This was the first time that the president's party didn't lose any state legislatures during the midterm elections since 1934,^[88] and this meant that, for the first time in over a decade, more Americans lived in Democrat-controlled states than Republican ones.^[89]
• Secretaries of State—One type of election that is usually ignored by the majority of voters is that of the Secretary of State. In this case, however, coverage was given to far-right candidates who claimed they would not have certified the results of the 2020 presidential election, and were part of the America First Secretary of State Coalition, consisting of nominees who have attended QAnon conferences. Most of them lost to Democrats, though, including in battleground states like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, and Nevada, with Diego Morales of Indiana being the only one of these candidates to win.^[90]
• Ballot initiatives—In every state where there was an abortion-related ballot measure, the pro-choice side won, even in deep-red states like Kentucky and Montana—notably, abortion was made fully legal in Michigan after being in legal limbo for some time.^[91] Slavery as a criminal punishment was outlawed in four states (yes, this was still a problem in 2022), although Louisiana rejected a similar measure (although to be fair it was because the measure was problematically worded).^[92] Drug-related measures were more mixed: Maryland and Missouri both voted to legalize cannabis and Colorado voted to legalize psilocybin, but Arkansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota voted against cannabis legalization.^[93]

Aftermath[edit]

Like the last last time when Trump refused to concede defeat, other Republicans decided to take cues from the former president. Two notable examples come from Arizona, in the form of unsuccessful candidates Kari Lake (for governor) and Mark Finchem (for Secretary of State).^[63] Speaking of Trump, he announced that he will be running for president again in 2024,^[94] although this time many Republicans were not amused as Trump's handpicked candidates were blamed for the Republicans' poor performance in the midterms.^[95] Overall, this sets the stage for a bitterly divisive 2024 Republican primary.

Notes[edit]

References[edit]