2018 Midterm Election Results

It seems to me….

“Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.” ~ Franklin Pierce Adams[1].

Democrats should find little solace in the 2018 midterm election results. It certainly was not the blue wave predicted by the polls; pre-election polls seem increasingly inaccurate and unreliable. The split decision – Democrats winning the House majority, Republicans retaining control of the Senate – might be seen as a fitting outcome for an election about Trump, the single most polarizing President in modern politics, but definitely not the resounding renunciation of Trump Democrats had anticipated.

Unfortunately, when one chamber of Congress is based on population and the other on territory, such politically divided government has historically been a recipe for gridlock, poor governance, and, eventually, political system disenchantment. It can only be hoped that will not be true for the next two years as there are many critical issues that must be addressed.

It is difficult to understand how when only 21 percent of voters have a positive opinion of Congress (the highest approval in years), that 96.4 percent of its members are re-elected. It also should be noted that the political party that has most complained about the direction in which the country has been heading has also been the one with their hands on the steering wheel. While the results of all elections have yet to be determined[2], initial results appear to be:

	Prior	New	Undecided
President	1 GOP	1 GOP
Senate	51 GOP 47 Dem	51 GOP 44 Dem	3
House	236 GOP 193 Dem	196 GOP 222 Dem	17
Governors	33 GOP 16 Dem	26 GOP 23 Dem	1
State Legislatures	70 GOP 29 Dem	56 GOP 53 Dem	???
Supreme Court	5 GOP 4 Dem	5 GOP 4 Dem

Democrats improved their seat share in state legislatures by 4.6 percent; below the historical average for statehouses (5 percent) and also below their gains in the U.S. House (8.5 percent). Their increased share of state governorships, while noteworthy, still allows Republicans primary responsibility for state redistricting following the 2020 census.

While there are only two Senators representing each state, seats in the House of Representatives are reapportioned following every 10-year census. The number of seats in the House was initially set at 65 and then expanded as new states joined the Union until reaching its current 435 in 1929 and has remained at the number since.

Democrats appear likely to have claimed about 230 seats in the House, a pickup of 36, while significant, since the average in midterm elections is 29, it’s not historic. With Republicans in the White House in 1982, Democrats picked up 26 seats and 30 seats in 2006 but that is far less than the 54 seats Republicans won while Democrats held the Presidency in 1994 or the 63 seats in 2010. This would be true even if when all the votes are counted Democrats end up with something in the range of 238 seats (a pickup of 44).

In historical terms, midterm losses were to be expected and Trump’s were far less than in the two mid elections during Obama’s tenure. The President’s party typically loses ground in midterm elections because only the opposition is roused to anger. While prospects have possibly improved for Democrats to retake control of both Congress and the White House in 2020, Republicans should not be overly dissatisfied with their performance in his election.

Two-thirds of voters in exit polls said the President affected their vote, about one in four to show their support for him, about four in 10 to show their opposition. Midterm elections are almost always referendums on the President and his party – and they are almost always negative referendums (Americans seem to prefer a divided government). It’s why the President’s party has lost House seats in all but three midterms since the Civil War: 1934, 1998, and 2002.

Democrats attained large majorities of women, young people, and nonwhite voters according to exit polls; they achieved majorities among voters with college degrees; and captured contests in historically Republican suburbs of cities like Richmond, Va., Chicago, and Denver. For the first time in American history, more than 100 women will serve in the House, at least 31 of them newly elected and representing at least 19 districts Democrats wrested from Republicans. The Democratic caucus will include the youngest Congresswoman ever elected, 29-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; two of the first Native American Congresswomen; and the first two Muslim Congresswomen. Texas elected two Latina Congresswomen, Iowa sent its first two women to the House, Massachusetts and Connecticut elected their first black Congresswomen, and Colorado gave a nod to the first openly gay governor in American history. Why then did Democrats not achieve greater overall electoral success?

As a result of widening economic inequality largely stemming from partisan gerrymandering, voter suppression, and the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, the U.S. has become more of an oligarchy determined by wealth than a democracy dependent upon individual voting. Republicans in several key states redrew boundaries of Congressional districts to dilute the electoral impact of minority voters who traditionally vote heavily Democratic. In the 2012 election, Democrats in the House of Representatives got more than a million more votes than Republicans but because of gerrymandering, the Republicans were able to maintain a strong House majority. This is not denying that Democrats have not also redrawn Congressional districts to their advantage when afforded the opportunity – just that Republicans have controlled more state legislatures and consequently been more successful.

Since 2010, 21 Republican-controlled states have passed restrictive voting measures making it more difficult for reliably Democratic voters – minorities, the elderly, and the young – to cast their ballot. When voters went to the polls in November 2016 to elect the next President, 16 states had new restrictive voting measures in effect for the first time in a Presidential contest that required strict forms of ID to cast a ballot not necessary in previous elections. States are shutting down voter registration drives, requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, and cutting back on early voting and the amount of time voters have to vote before Election Day.

Admittedly not being a fan of Trump, one of the most difficult aspects to understand about Trump’s support is that his base in some masochistic manner seemingly indifferent to the fact that they are the very ones most negatively affected by his actions and policies. Every action he takes denigrates them but rather than being disaffected, apparently only strengthens their level of support. Trump’s strategy has been to aim for his base which works better in conservative and rural areas. So far it has been successful.

Economic issues typically are of primary importance in elections but not this time. Healthcare and immigration, especially among conservatives, seemed to predominate.

In poll after poll, voters said access to affordable care was their top concern; they want to keep parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that work and fix those that do not. The Trump Administration has systematically weakened the ACA, cutting back its patient protections, undermining insurance markets, boosting state decision making at the expense of federal rules, and also refusing to fully defend the ACA against a lawsuit brought by 20 Republican attorneys general and governors who argued in federal court in September that the entire healthcare law is invalid.

Republicans also have failed to follow through on their promise to fix what hasn’t worked with the law despite controlling both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Roughly 16 percent of nonelderly Americans lack health insurance today, up from 13 percent in 2016. That’s much more expensive than simply offering those same people coverage under Medicare or Medicaid according to independent analyses of the law. The federal government now spends tens of billions each year subsidizing millions of Americans’ healthcare coverage on the public exchanges.

A majority of Americans support some version of a single-payer system and a slim majority of Republican voters now support some version of the universal health care proposal known as Medicare for All (which was championed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016). Conservatives have long opposed proposals allowing people to buy into public Medicare or Medicaid plans painting that as a prelude to socialized medicine. Until relatively recently, this was considered politically radical.

Trump sharply intensified his largely baseless immigration assertions so as to frame the midterm elections as a battle over immigration and race even though Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration by a margin of 58 percent to 39 percent (though 80 percent of Republicans back the President). 26 percent of GOP voters cited immigration as their top election concern; Democrats ranked it third with only 7 percent saying they consider it to be their primary issue.

Trump’s unsubstantiated charges mark an escalation of efforts to stoke fears about foreigners and crime as he did in the Presidential race. Trump and other Republicans have insistently sought to claim Democrats support unfettered immigration and violent crime. Over this summer and fall, a number of Republican candidates and political committees delivered messages plainly aimed at stoking cultural anxiety among white voters, even attacked minority candidates in blatantly racial terms.

Trump’s widely panned “zero tolerance” immigration policy that resulted in the separation of children from their families by detaining parents while turning children over to the Department of Health and Human Services, suspended in late June only because of general outrage, was generally considered to be cruel and immoral.

Trump repeatedly issued dark and factually unsubstantiated warnings prior to the election that “unknown Middle Easterners” were supposedly marching toward the U.S./Mexican border. Stating obviously politically motivated allegations as justification, he mobilized the military a week prior to the election claiming the migrant caravan of about 1,300 people posed a direct national security threat to the U.S., ordered up to 15,000 troops to the border to help “harden” ports of entry, transport Border Patrol agents, and otherwise provide support for border enforcement – even though the migrant caravan was still about 1,000 miles and weeks away from reaching the U.S. southern border.

The political rhetoric on immigration often ignores facts and important nuances about this complex issue. The number of apprehensions at the southwest border in recent years is nowhere near the high levels of the early 2000s. Additionally, the border wall he persistently advocates won’t solve illegal immigration and will waste billions of dollars of taxpayer’s money.

A lesson Democrats clearly have yet to learn is how to gain the support of organized labor, ordinary working people, and non-college graduates. Perhaps the most important lesson from any individual Democratic victory was the candidate’s attention to local political needs rather than adherence to any strict ideology.

While Trump rapaciously sows division and discord, he always pugnaciously responds to any perceived criticism or correction totally refusing to accept his personal primary responsibility. When the media attempts to hold the President accountable for inflaming animosity, he attacks them for the bias and fueling division which he has successfully engendered; conspiracy theories flourish among his steadfast adherents as a substitute for the hard work of actual knowledge.

Where will we find moral leaders in an age of abdication, when “elites” of all kinds are suspect whether they be teachers, preachers, scientists, or scholars? Hopefully some of the newly elected members of Congress will be able to step forward and provide some of the answers.

That’s what I think, what about you?

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[1] Franklin Pierce Adams was an American newspaper columnist, translator, poet, and radio personality best known for his witty and satirical column syndicated in the New York Tribune, the New York World, the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Post.

[2] The outcome for state legislatures is difficult to determine. Results shown are only an estimate.