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This article could have just been a basic rundown of the results and implications of the midterm elections: Democrats keep the Senate, Republicans take the House, Trump-endorsed candidates performed poorly, etc. I could have written that. It would have been easy. But this is the opinions section, and I am a nerd. So instead, I have shoved as much content as humanly possible into the forthcoming thousand words. Good luck.
Let’s start with the obvious: this election was good for Democrats. There was no red tsunami, not even a red wave. In fact, there was barely a red ripple. Democrats retained their slim majority in the Senate, and even look positioned to expand it if Senator Raphael Warnock can fend off former NFL player Herschel Walker in the upcoming Georgia runoff election. And despite predictions of a huge swing towards Republicans in the House, it looks like the GOP will have only the slimmest of majorities come January, no more than three or four seats. Even among the congressional districts where Republicans did make gains, many had more to do with redistricting (read: gerrymandering) than the will of any electorate. In Florida, for example, GOP gerrymandering carved out new districts that gave Republicans three extra congressional seats.
For context, it is important to note that the president’s party almost always performs poorly in midterm elections. In 2010, during Obama’s first term, Democrats lost six Senate seats and 63 House seats. In 2006, in the middle of Bush’s second term, Republicans lost five Senate seats, 31 House seats, and control of both chambers. This year, meanwhile, Democrats are poised to gain a Senate seat, and lose only eight or nine seats in the House – so few that I had to write them in words rather than digits!
That’s the superficial analysis. Now, let’s pop the hood, and take a look at some state-level results. Across legislatures and corner offices in swing(ish) states, Democrats performed exceedingly well. In Minnesota, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party flipped the state senate, giving the DFL – Minnesota’s Democratic affiliate – control of both legislative branches and the governorship. Democrats won enough seats in the North Carolina House to give Democratic governor Roy Cooper the ability to veto any GOP legislation. Democrats have taken control of the Pennsylvania State House for the first time in over a decade; pending on one soon-to-be-decided seat, the GOP may lose control of the New Hampshire legislature. Perhaps most notably, Democrats have flipped both Michigan’s senate and house, giving the party full control of the Michigan government for the first time in 38 years. And despite pre-election anxieties, Democrats retained control of the governorship in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Kansas.
Republicans, meanwhile, had their own strengths on Tuesday night. For one, the GOP painted the swing state of Florida solidly red. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis crushed his Democratic challenger by nearly 20 points, netting 59% of the vote. Some crucial context: the last three Floridian gubernatorial elections have been decided by just 1.2%, 1%, and 0.4% of the vote. Even the historic Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County rode the DeSantis wave, fueled by a significant shift towards the GOP among Latinos in Florida. In traditionally blue New York, meanwhile, Republicans made deep inroads, coming within six points of the governorship and unexpectedly flipping four congressional districts: NY-03, NY-04, NY-17, and NY-19. How do New York Camels feel about their newfound Republican representation? “Bad,” says Sabrina Malec ‘26 of NY-17.
But these shifts weren’t the only ones that took pundits by surprise. Democrats, too, outperformed expectations in two red states: Ohio and North Carolina. In these states, two exceedingly strong Democratic candidates – Tim Ryan and Cheri Beasley, respectively – ran unexpectedly close races. While they ultimately lost, their success in driving up turnout led Democrats to victories further down the ballot: in a significant upset, Democratic House candidates won OH-01, OH-13, and NC-13, three Republican-leaning congressional districts.
In Colorado, meanwhile, it was opposite day. Like Florida, Colorado is traditionally a swing state, where top-level elections are determined by fractions of a percent. But as Florida turned to the right on Tuesday night, Colorado lurched left: Democratic governor Jared Polis cruised to reelection with a nearly 20 point lead over his Republican opponent. And down the ballot, in CO-08, where elections analyst FiveThirtyEight gave the GOP candidate 91% chance at victory, Democrat Yadira Caraveo eked out a win. The biggest surprise, though, came from CO-03, the turf of U.S. representative and QAnon enthusiast Lauren Boebert. In this solidly Republican seat, Boebert is currently neck-and-neck with her moderate Democratic challenger in a still-uncalled race as of this writing.
That brings me to perhaps the biggest of this midterm election: candidate quality mattered. America is not insane. Across our nation, extremists and charlatans were defeated. This rang true in the House, in districts even redder than Boebert’s. In Washington’s conservative 3rd congressional district, Republicans crossed party lines to elect Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Her GOP opponent, Joe Kent, has ties to white nationalist organizations. In Pennsylvania, where Biden won by less than two points in 2020, voters rejected Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano by nearly fifteen points in the governor’s race, and flipped a Senate seat by defeating Trump-endorsed TV personality Dr. Oz. Not a single election-denier was elected Secretary of State in a swing state: Democrats swept virtually every race against an extremist candidate for that post. Even in the Arizona governor’s race, election denier Kari Lake (considered one of the GOP’s strongest candidates) lost her race – bringing to an end a decade of Republican rule in Arizona. From coast to coast, Americans split their tickets and crossed party lines to stop conspiracy theorists from taking office. I think it’s safe to breathe a sigh of relief.
“I don’t care,” says British international student Luke Johnson ‘26.
