The more you look at the recent midterm election, the more the crazy quilt makes sense. While fundamentals worked against Democrats — a president with low ratings and an uncertain economy with high inflation — one thing that didn’t work against them was the alternative.
This year’s election was not a referendum on President Joe Biden. Had it been, Republicans would have done much better. Instead, it was a choice between Team Biden versus Team Trump, a dynamic that didn’t strengthen Democrats but did weaken Republicans.
Exit polling shows that 44% of those who voted approved of Biden’s job performance and 55% disapproved — that’s not good. But Trump’s ratings were even worse, at 39% favorable and 58% unfavorable.
Regardless of fundamentals, each side had negatives that were far too vivid for voters to overlook. The big wins Republicans expected didn’t materialize because of their own limitations, namely Trump’s disrupting influence (his unfavorable rating was six points higher than his party’s) and the GOP’s failure to offer more appealing candidates and policies. Republicans won the nationwide vote in House elections by four points, 51% to 47%. But midterm elections have geographic soft spots and votes are unevenly distributed among states and districts.
While the election was heavily influenced by national themes, it was also shaped by candidate-to-candidate combat, which helped Democrats. The five states with the hottest Senate races (Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) were all states that Trump lost to Biden in 2020.
Independent voters were key. In 2014, the last midterm when Republicans gained seats in both houses of Congress, they carried independents by 12 points. This year, Democrats won independents by two points — which is why there was no red wave. Moreover, Democrats won so-called “moderates” by 15 points. While 51% of voters said the Democratic Party was too extreme, 52% said the Republican Party was too extreme.
Looking at issues, more than three-fourths of voters had negative perceptions of the economy. One in five said inflation had caused them “severe hardship” and three in five said “moderate hardship.” When asked about their personal lives, 52% said their family’s financial situation was either better or the same as it had been two years ago.
Voters with intense views on abortion favored Democrats by nearly three-to-one: 29% of voters said abortion should be legal in all cases and 10% said it should be illegal in all cases. But a majority were in between, with 30% saying abortion should be mostly legal and 26% saying it should be mostly illegal.
While 53% of voters said immigrants to the U.S. do more to “help the country,” 39% said they do more to “hurt the country.” 75% of Democrats said immigrants mostly help, while 83% of Republicans said they mostly hurt.
In terms of demographics, 18 to 44-year-olds, who made up slightly more than a third of the electorate, favored Democrats by 13 points. Those 45 and older, who made up nearly two-thirds of the electorate, favored Republicans by 10 points. Republicans carried men by 14 points and Democrats won women by 8 points. Republicans won married voters by 17 points, but unmarried voters favored Democrats by an even bigger 20 points. Men with children voted Republican by 12 points and women with children voted Democratic by 4 points. Regular churchgoers went Republican by 33 points and those who never attend religious services went Democratic by 35 points.
While Republicans won white voters by 18 points, Democrats won black voters by 73 points, Latino voters by 21 points, and Asian American voters by 18 points. Democrats ran up a 17-point lead in urban areas but lost the suburbs by 6 points and rural areas by a whopping 29 points. College graduates sided with the Democrats by 10 points. Those without college degrees voted for Republicans by 12 points. GOP candidates won white voters without degrees by a thumping 34 points.
This is what the American electorate looks like in a time of polarization when voters vote against, more than they vote for, both parties.
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Ron Faucheux is a nonpartisan political analyst. He publishes LunchtimePolitics.com, a nationwide newsletter on polls and public opinion. He’s the author of Running for Office.
