The red wave becomes a low tide

On November 8th, American voters went to the polls to cast their ballots for all 435 members of the US House of Representatives and 35 members of the 100-seat Senate. There were also gubernatorial elections in 36 states, and, importantly, referenda on abortion in 5 states. Here are 3 key takeaways from the election.

The "red wave" becomes a "low tide" for Republicans
In midterm elections, the party of the President typically loses seats - over the past 20 years, the average midterm loss in the House for the President's party has been 28 seats. The most recent exceptions to this "rule" occurred during the George W. Bush presidency (2002) and the Bill Clinton presidency (1998). Before those, one would have to go all the way back to the FDR presidency (in 1934) to find a midterm election in which the party of the President gained legislative seats.
At least in the House, the 2022 midterm has followed this rule, but not nearly to the extent that was widely expected by the media, pollsters, and the dominant predictive models in political science. Underlying the dismal expectations for Biden's Democratic Party was the President's very low approval rating. According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on the day before the election, approximately 57% of Americans disapproved of the President's job performance, while only 39% approved. A big part of the reason for the President's low approval is the current state of the economy, particularly inflation, which (according to the same poll) ranked as the most important issue for about 30% of Americans. Historically, approval ratings this low have translated into very large losses for the President's party. Trump's approval rating in 2018, for example (according to a Gallup poll at the time) was 41%, and his Republican Party paid a steep price in the House, suffering a net Democratic gain of 41 seats. Similarly, Obama's approval rating was 45% in 2010, and the opposition Republicans picked up 63 House seats.
On this basis, the loss for Democrats in the current election was expected to be enormous. Instead, Republicans are currently projected to win 223 seats in the House, only 5 more than necessary for majority control. The exact number may not be known for weeks, as canvassing (the official tabulation of votes) in some states, such as California, has a deadline of one month from Election Day. If the projections hold up, the narrow victory for Republicans comes despite some extreme partisan gerrymandering - a process by which state legislatures, the majority of which are currently controlled by the Republican Party, determine the shape of Congressional districts for their own electoral advantage. Meanwhile, in the Senate, Republicans failed to make any gains. Democrats will retain control with 50 seats (because of the tie-breaking vote from Vice-President Kamala Harris), and could even increase their majority by one seat after the runoff election in Georgia on December 6th. Overall, then, this election has been a severe disappointment for the Republican Party.
It's not always "the economy, stupid"
With stubbornly high inflation, rising interest rates, and a troubled stock market, how did Democrats manage to do as well as they did? Political scientists have shown that, in general, the economy matters less in midterm election years than in presidential election years, and certainly, that finding seems apply to this election. Nonetheless, the dominant message in the media for the past several months has been that high inflation would translate into massive losses for the President's party. One possibility that has been floated for why this did not happen is that Americans may not have blamed the President for inflation (associating it instead with the global pandemic and Putin's war in Ukraine). But that idea is actually not supported by opinion polls, such as a recent one published in Newsweek, which suggested that approximately 60% of eligible voters viewed the President as "significantly" or "fairly" responsible for inflation. Another possibility, which seems much more likely, is that another issue was also on the minds of many Americans - one on which Republicans held a very unpopular position.
That issue is abortion. In a recent decision (the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization), the US Supreme Court overturned a previous Court decision (the 1973 landmark case of Roe v. Wade) that established a constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court became a very conservative body after the appointment of 3 Trump-nominated justices who were confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate over the past few years. The Dobbs decision returned the matter of setting abortion policy to state legislatures, more than a dozen of which subsequently (and some, immediately) placed greater restrictions on a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy - in several states, without any exceptions for rape or incest. At the national level, at least one Republican Senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, proposed the idea that the US Congress should enact a national abortion ban. Yet, according to a 2022 report by Pew Research, a large majority of Americans (61%) believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And according to a recent poll by the Penn Program on Opinion Research and Election Studies, 86% of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest (that includes 76% of Republicans). Thus, at least in terms of public opinion, Republicans entered this election on the wrong side of the abortion issue. As reported by TheUpshot (a website published by the New York Times) in August 2022, in the aftermath of Dobbs, there was a pronounced surge in voter registration among women across several states. In the very red state of Kansas, for example, more than 70% of newly registered voters were women, which preceded a referendum in that state that would have given its legislature greater authority to restrict abortion. That referendum was soundly defeated in August, just as several abortion-restricting referenda were defeated this past week in all 5 states that put abortion on the ballot. An exit poll published by NBC revealed that abortion was rated as the most pressing issue for 27% of all voters, not that far behind inflation (at 32%). For Democratic voters, abortion was rated as far more important than inflation (46% vs. 15%). In short, for a great number of voters, concerns about reproductive freedom eclipsed concerns about the economy, and those voters likely broke overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Trump's star appears to be fading, while DeSantis is on the rise
Another possible explanation for the Democrats' better-than-expected result involves the continued presence of the previous President, Donald J. Trump, in the news cycle. He was an unpopular President while in office, and has been even more so after the widely-covered January 6th insurrection investigation by the House of Representatives, as well as the discovery of hundreds of classified and top-secret documents at his home in Florida. Currently, his approval rating is slightly below that of President Biden. Yet, despite his presidential defeat in 2020, his contribution to the loss of the Senate in that same election year, and his contribution to the loss of the House in 2018, Donald Trump has only seemed to tighten his hold on the Republican Party. He will quite possibly announce his reelection bid for the presidency this week in Florida. This has naturally caused many voters to associate the Republicans in 2022 with the former President, and this probably suppressed their share of the midterm vote.
However, the midterm results also suggest that Trump's renomination chances as the Republican candidate may, at long last, be in serious trouble. He campaigned hard for several candidates in very competitive, high-profile races, most of whom happened to be (not coincidentally) vehement deniers of the 2020 presidential election results. Those candidates included Doug Mastriano (running for the governorship of Pennsylvania), Mehmet Oz (running for the US Senate in that state), Trudor Dixon (running for Governor in Michigan), and Kari Lake and Blake Masters (hoping to become Governor and Senator, respectively, in Arizona). All of these candidates lost their elections. Trump's only clear win in highly-competitive elections (at least so far, pending the Georgia runoff election) was J.D. Vance (who won the US Senate seat in Ohio). Part of Trump's grip on the party has been the shared sentiment among many Republican politicians that he is a "kingmaker." However, the loss of these high-profile races by his anointed candidates calls that into serious question. It also calls into question whether election denialism will be a continuing message for Republicans going forward, at least in very competitive races. In addition to the abortion issue, the embrace of electoral denialism by many Republicans - along with the fear of many Americans that democratic institutions and the rule of law have been undermined by Trump and his allies - appears to have hurt them among many voters, particularly independents.
Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis - widely perceived as Trump's chief competitor for the 2024 nomination - won his gubernatorial race by a landslide, and even won in traditional Democratic strongholds in the southern part of the state. Add to that Trump's continuing (and quite possibly, soon worsening) legal woes, including possible criminal indictments at the federal and state levels, and it looks as though Ron DeSantis has emerged as the new "star" of the Republican Party. He could well be the frontrunner for the party's presidential nomination in 2024. Mirroring this competition, factionalism within the Republican Party over the next two years is likely to increase, pitting MAGA adherents against "establishment" Republicans both inside Congress and within the party's electorate. This battle for leadership does not bode particularly well for the party in 2024.