2022 mid-term comparison to 2020 and 2018

It happened earlier than I thought.

The race in AZ has been called for Mark Kelly.





After the latest tranche of votes was posted, Kelly's margin increased from +5.7 to +5.8

 

Sticking with AZ but now at the gubernatorial level, Hobb's lead has increased from +1 to +1.3

 

The Senate is now 49-49 with NV still uncalled and GA going into overtime.

If the Ds win NV then the game is over and although they certainly want to keep GA blue, the pressure would be off.

If however the Rs win NV then we've all got Georgia on our minds...

 

Speaking of NV, the margin is now Laxalt +0.1%, with 94-95% of the vote in. Laxalt's +2.3 margin has completely disappeared.



We are seeing a redux of Harry Reid's victory in 2010. Just as in 2010, the last tranches of votes from Washoe and Clark counties are likely to put the D over the top, with thanks in no small part to the culinary union.

Also, all 3 outstanding CD-elections have been called for the Ds, just as predicted.

It's looking like the entire NV congressional delegation will mathematically remain unchanged.

 

I show 1.4% lead for Hobbs.

31,097 lead with 406,993 votes to count.

Lake needs 58/42% split of the remaining vote to win.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/live_results/2022/state/az/governor/

 

CNN now shows the following House tally to date:



Most if not all of the 23 remaining races are in the SW and West coast. The Rs only need 8 more wins to get to 218. The Ds need 16.

 

211 +7 = 218

 

Your tribal analysis of our country is concise and omnipresent. Dems will vote dems and GOPers will vote GOPers. There really isn't any more analysis needed.

I still laugh when I remember Biden saying he would unite the country after his inauguration, er, Biden meant, IMO, he'd unite the part of the country who thought like him (and demonize those who didn't think like him).

 

Did you laugh as hard with these remarks “The level of hatred between Republicans and Democrats was unbelievable. The level of – I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said. “I’m going to unify. This country is totally divided. Barack Obama has divided this country unbelievably. And it’s all, it’s all hatred, what can I tell you. I’ve never seen anything like it…I’ve gotten along with Democrats and I’ve gotten along with Republicans. And I said, that’s a good thing.... “I absolutely think so,” he said, adding, “I will be a great unifier for our country.”
https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/25/poli...icans-bipartisanship-great-unifier/index.html

 

For those who want to watch those remaining races in real-time, here links to various news outlets:

2022 Midterm Election Results | Fox News Elections Center

2022 Midterms | CNN Politics

Election Results 2022: Live Map | Midterm Races by State (politico.com)

Midterm elections 2022: Latest news, updates and results | NBC News

My experience is that regardless of one's feeling about any specific news outlet, they all tend to be very timely and accurate in terms of getting the figures reported by the various states out there. I am just as comfortable seeing the results roll in at FOX as I am watching them on NBC, etc. They all have similar teams of statistics nerds who help to make calls and very often at the end, all of the networks make the call at pretty much the same time.

 

And the Networks all called NV for the Democrat, which means that the Senate will remain in Democratic hands.





Now remains to be seen what will happen in Georgia in early December. It will also be interesting to see how hard both parties will fight for the seat. As of this point in time I would say that anything can happen.

 

Lots of preliminary information to glean right now. Today I will focus on the US Senate.

As I am sure that most all, if not all of us know, the Senate is divided into three classes of seats and that classification is based purely upon WHEN those seats are up for election. For 2022 it was Class 3. In 2024, Class 1 will be up for election, in 2026 it will be Class 2 and then in 2028, the class that was just elected will be up again.

The point of doing this as set up in the Constitution is to make sure that 1/3 of the Senate is up for election each time, which means that in any given election cycle, at least 33 Senate Seats are up for election.

Also, mathematically, a 6 year cycle for Senators vs. a 4 year cycle for Presidents means that every other cycle, that Class is either in a mid-term or in the middle of a presidential cycle. For instance, this cycle for Class 3 was a mid-term cycle, 6 years ago it was part of a presidential cycle and 6 years before that, it was part of a mid-term cycle.

Dave Leip's uselectionatlas.org ( Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections (uselectionatlas.org) ) has been and still counts as the gold standard as a repository for election statistics out of the present and the past. He is respected by the Right, Left and the middle and I can recommend his site any day of the week.

Before I go on, you should know that his color-coding sytem is the opposite of what we are used to these days. At his site, red= Democrat, while blue = Republican.

So, here are the current, preliminary numbers for the 35 Senate races that just happened in 34 states:



I arranged the table by descending percentage margins. You can see that 26 of these elections ended with a landslide margin of +10% or higher. Of those 26, 15 were with a blowout margin of +20% or higher and of those 20, 4 were with +40% or more. No senatorial election was unopposed this time around.

Of the 9 elections with less than +10% in margin, 3 were between +5 and +10, all three were considered battlegrounds for 2022. The remaining 6 were elections with less than +5 in margin. Of course, with ranked voting in Alaska, this margin of +1.66% will surely change when the second round is calculated. Please note that although it was touted by the Left as an extremely close election, the media paid relatively little attention to North Carolina, where Budd won by +3.6%, but in Arizona, Democratic incumbent Kelly won by a considerably higher margin than that, namely, +5.6%.

For context, let's look at the Class 3 seats from the last two cycles before, 2016 and 2010. First, 2016:



For 2016, can see that 25 of these elections ended with a landslide margin of +10% or higher. Of those 25, 16 were with a blowout margin of +20% or higher and of those 16, 6 were with +40% or more. No senatorial election was unopposed during this cycle.

Of the 9 elections with less than +10% in margin, 4 were between +5 and +10. The remaining 5 were elections with less than +5 in margin. The bottom three state names on the list should ring a bell with you as to the term battleground state.

And here is 2010:



For 2010, there were 37 races (unusual), can see that 30 of these elections ended with a landslide margin of +10% or higher. Of those 30, 17 were with a blowout margin of +20% or higher and of those 16, 6 were with +40% or more. 1 senatorial election was unopposed during this cycle: North Dakota

Of the 7 elections with less than +10% in margin, 1 was between +5 and +10. The remaining 6 were elections with less than +5 in margin.

And here the electoral history of the "national popular vote" of senatorial elections between 1990 and this year, 32 years of history:



The cycles I highlighted in green are mid-terms during the 1st (or only) term of a US President. The arrow marks all of the years for Class 3, which I have been discussing exclusively in this posting.

In 1992, Class 3 was up for Bill Clinton's first election and you see that overall, the Ds won in the NPV for Senate by +5.45%. In 1998, a mid-term during his 2nd term in office and right around the time he was impeached but not convicted, the margin was D+2.24%. In 1992, the Ds controlled the Senate, in 1998 it was the Rs.

Class 3 was next up in 2004, which was George W. Bush's successful re-election year and it shows a D+4.35% however, the R's took the Senate.

Class 3 was next up in 2010, which was the mid-term during Obama's 1st term in office, also a major red-wave year in which the Rs took 63 House seats. It shows an NPV senatorial margin of R +5.53%.

Class 3 was up next in 2016, which was Donald Trump's successful election to the presidency. The NPV for the senatorials in 2016 was D +6.73% but the Rs maintained the Senate and increased their margin as well.

Which brings us to the here and now, where the current NPV for the Senate is R +2.27%, however, the Ds have maintained the Senate.

Let's look at the total votes cast in mid-terms from 1990 to present:

1990: 36,313,856
1994: 57,749,980
1998: 53,792,040
2002: 43,028,337
2006: 62,961,874
2010: 66,612,940
2014: 43,961,284
2018: 86,020,576
2022: currently 75,330,285

The number for 2022 is sure to rise but I do not think it will even come close the high-water mark from 2018.
I bolded the 6 mid-terms during this time frame that occured during the 1st (or in the case of Bush 41 and Trump, the only) term of a president.

As you can see, there is no recognizable pattern as elections are driven by politics and issues. For instance, the 2002 mid-term elections happened in the shadow of 911 and pretty much everyone wanted to give Bush 43 a fair chance. Something similar happened to Kennedy in 1962 directly following the Cuban Missile Crisis. But in 2006, 3 years after the beginning of the Iraq War, tensions were far higher and the backlash to Bush 43 was evident, also clearly within his own party due to his moderate stance on immigration.

In 2010, with the advent of the Tea Party movement, the backlash on the right to the Obama presidency was obvious and scored the biggest gains since Newt Gingrich's contract with America in 1994. By contrast, 2014 was pretty mute in terms of turnout.

However, in 2018, the backlash on the Left to the Trump presidency was equally virulent, ushering in a record-shattering turnout for the Senate. Still, the Senate remained in Republican control.

Right now, so deep in the thick of 2022, it's really hard to know where to place this mid-term cycle, but one thing is for sure and it can be proven on paper immediately: there was no red wave at all. We have seen cycles where split-governance worked out ok and cycles where it was terrible. Wait and see.

-Stat

 

The CNN site for the 19 remaining house elections has some excellent, pertinent Information as to when we can expect final results. I can heartily recommend a read:

https://edition.cnn.com/election/20...n&filter-key-races=false&filter-flipped=false

And just to note, CNN called a number of right races for the Republican candidates BEFORE FoxNews did.

The Ds are currently at 204, but CNN notes that in 2 undecided races, the Republican has already conceded (NM-02, CO-08 ), so the Ds are actually currently at 206.

It's looking more and more like R219/D216 when all is said and done and that is IF Boebert maintains her seat in CO-03.

What a strange world we have....

 

The Rs are currently at 217 in the House of Representatives, whilst the Ds are at 207 or 208, depending on which outlet you read.

Of the 10-11 races yet to be called, 7 are looking strong D but 3 are all but guaranteed to go R, so we will land somewhere between R219/D216 and R223/D212.

I've been writing all along that the wind, albeit more like a breeze, was at the GOP'S back.

One issue most have not yet internalized is the January 6 committee, currently in the House. With the Senate staying in Democratic hands, it is entirely possible for the House J6 committee to turn over all documentation to a newly formed Senate J6 committee before the next legislative session begins and the J6 work can continue without pause in Senate, picking up where the House left off.

 

In ME-02, the ranked voting recaculations for the Golden/Peloquin race should have finished last night, so I expect the rematch race to be called for Golden (D) today, 2022-21-016.

In Alaska, the Elimination round recalculation will take place on 2022-11-027, so it is likely to be the last race to be called.

In CO-03, the military ballots and Americans Abroad ballots must be in by the end of today. Democratic challenger Adam Frisch said on Tyler Cohen's podcast that That's about 6,500 ballots, all expected to skew very heavily D. The Americans Abroad ballots in 2020 in CO were 80% D, 16% R. This is why everyone is waiting despite a +1,222 vote lead for incumbent Boebert. I stand by my prediction that this goes into an automatic recount.

In newly created CO-08, although not yet called, the Republican has already conceded.

 

The Republicans have won an absolute majority in the HOR

 

So, the last race of 2022 is decided. In the US-Senate, it is D51 / R49: