No, it wasn’t a blue wave. But a week after the voting, Democrats are riding higher than they thought on election night.
As vote counting presses on in several states, the Democrats have steadily chalked up victories across the country, firming up their grip on the U.S. House and statehouses. The slow roll of wins has given the party plenty to celebrate.
President Donald Trump was quick to claim victory for his party on election night. But the Democrats, who hit political rock bottom just two years ago, have now picked up at least 32 seats in the House — and lead in four more — in addition to flipping seven governorships and eight state legislative chambers.
They are on track to lose two seats in the Senate in a year both parties predicted more. On Monday night, Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema won Arizona’s Senate race, beating Republican Rep. Martha McSally to take the seat held by retiring GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.
The overall results in the first nationwide election of the Trump presidency represent the Democratic Party’s best midterm performance since Watergate.
“Over the last week we’ve moved from relief at winning the House to rejoicing at a genuine wave of diverse, progressive and inspiring Democrats winning office,” said Ben Wikler, Washington director of the liberal group MoveOn.
The blue shift alters the trajectory of Trump’s next two years in the White House, breaking up the Republican monopoly in Washington. It also gives Democrats stronger footing in key states ahead of the next presidential race and in the redrawing of congressional districts — a complicated process that has been dominated by the GOP, which has drawn favorable boundaries for their candidates.
Trump and his allies discounted the Democratic victories on Monday, pointing to GOP successes in Republican-leaning states.
“Thanks to the grassroots support for @realDonaldTrump and our party’s ground game, we were able to #DefyHistory and make gains in the Senate!” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel tweeted, citing Senate wins in Indiana, Missouri, North Dakota and Tennessee, among others.
Indeed, just once in the past three decades had a sitting president added Senate seats in his first midterm election. But lost in McDaniel’s assessment was the difficult 2018 Senate landscape for Democrats, who were defending 10 seats in states Trump carried just two years ago.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said in an interview: “I believe in facts. And the fact of the matter is, the Democratic Party had a historic night at the ballot box — and we are not resting,”
He said, “Our goal was to compete everywhere, to expand and reshape the electorate everywhere — and that’s exactly what we’ve done.”
The Democrats found success by attracting support from women, minorities and college-educated voters. Overall, 50 percent of white college-educated voters and 56 percent of women backed Democrats nationwide, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate.
Democrats featured historic diversity on the ballot.
Their winning class includes Massachusetts’ first African-American female member of Congress, Ayanna Presley, and Michigan’s Rashida Talib and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress, along with Kansas’ Sharice Davids, the first lesbian Native American.
They also won by running candidates with military backgrounds who openly embraced gun ownership, such as Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb and Maine’s Jared Golden, who is poised to win his contest because of the state’s ranked-choice voting system.
The Democrats needed to gain 23 seats to seize the House majority. Once all the votes are counted, which could take weeks in some cases as absentees and provisional ballots are tallied, they could win close to 40.
Democrats have not lost a single House incumbent so far. Yet they defeated Republican targets such as Reps. Mike Coffman of Colorado, Barbara Comstock of Virginia, Carlos Curbelo of Florida and Dana Rohrabacher of California.
They could win as many as 19 House races in districts carried by Trump two years ago, according to House Democrats’ campaign arm.
Ten House races remained too close for the AP to call as of Monday evening.
Far more of the Senate landscape was decided early, although contests in Florida and Mississippi remain outstanding.
While there were notable statehouse Democratic losses in Iowa and Ohio, the party flipped governorships in seven states: Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Kansas, New Mexico and Maine.
Republicans now control 25 governorships nationwide compared to 23 for Democrats. High-profile contests in Florida and Georgia remain outstanding, though Republicans hold narrow leads in both states.
Overshadowed perhaps by the higher-profile statewide elections, Democratic gains in state legislatures could prove deeply consequential.
Overall, they flipped state legislative chambers in eight states this midterm season, including Washington state’s Senate in 2017. The others include the state Senates in Maine, Colorado, New York, New Hampshire and Connecticut in addition to the state Houses of Representatives in New Hampshire and Minnesota.
With hundreds of races still too close to call, Democrats have won at least 370 new state legislative seats nationwide, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, although the new seats were offset by Republican wins in some cases. The pickups include surprises in West Virginia, where Democrats knocked off the GOP majority leader-designate in the House and the majority leader in the Senate.
“We have elected a new generation of inspiring leaders and we know that a new era of democratic dominance is on the horizon,” said the committee’s executive director Jessica Post.
Still, Republicans will control the majority of state legislative chambers, governorships, the U.S. Senate and the White House. And even before the new Democrats take office, attention has begun to shift toward 2020.
Many Democrats have yet to shake off the stinging losses of 2016. Publicly and privately, Democrats are lining up for the chance to take down Trump in two years.
“This is step one of a two-step process to right the ship,” Guy Cecil, chairman of the pro-Democrat super PAC Priorities USA, said of the midterms. “Democrats have every reason to be optimistic.”
(AP)
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6 Responses
They do as well as the opposition party usually does in the off year election when the President’s party controls both house of Congress. For an example of a wave, see 2010 and 2014. The Democrats are no where’s near being able to pass legislation without building bi-partisan coalitions, and due to the decision of the Democrats to change the rules for confirming judges, Trump is free to pack the courts (as Obama was) as long as they have an even one-vote margin in the Senate.
Of course it is looking better for them, they keep “finding” votes all over the place until they win.
Even where democrats lost or it’s still too close to call, it’s so close in states and districts that should have been in the Republican’s pockets. In the last 7 presidential elections, republicans won popular vote ONCE, Bush 41. Repudiation of the degenerate lying adulterer, his policies, his incompetence and stupidity.
NOYB: LOL as the Republicans an the Trumpkopfs keep shrieking “gevalt’ as one red state after another, certifieds a Dem as the “winner”. In most cases, the elections are managed and administered by Republican appointees since they control 38 of the 50 state governments. In the few cases where the Dems are in control of local election districts, the Republicans like Scott and Rubio keep screaming “genavah” but have failed to provide any real evidenc (beyond the obvious ineptness in Broward and PB) and their own state director of law enforceent says to Bondi “put up or shut up” about her demand to inestigate something. Dems are taking a victory lap and the Trumpkopf is slowly going crazy and lashing out at everyone, at home and abroad,. Surprised he hasn’t declared martial law, invaliated all the election results and appointed some more of his chevrah as ‘acting” congressman and senators
Get used to it NYOB…..2020 is just 2 years away and maybe by then you will have decided to leave the U.S. and made aliyah to EY here politics is totally transparent and there is no such question about “manipulation”.
No they’re not “finding” the votes. The votes are finding them. It’s called the US Mail, and it just keeps delivering all those mail-in, absentee and military ballots that by law must be counted.
Let’s see some connection with the real world and state laws. Are we going to tell our military that their votes won’t be counted because they weren’t able to vote in person? And right after Veterans’ Day? This is the US, not some banana republic.
Midwest2 I agree 100%. The most scurrilous occurrence perpetrated by trump is skipping going to the U.S. Marine cemetery and not going to the tomb of the unknown soldier on Veterans Day. A complete slap in the face (if not spitting in the face) to those who made the ultimate sacrifice and to all veterans. Enough with the fake flag waving and phoney support of the military. But a football player taking a knee is supposed to be the greatest dishonor in the world.