What Went Down In The 2018 Midterms

Earlier this year, I published a book on how American political behavior is becoming increasingly nationalized. There are lots of symptoms of this: people are disproportionately engaged with national politics, and races for governor increasingly look like re-runs of presidential races.

In key respects, tonight is playing out as a highly nationalized election: Similar battles are playing out in different parts of the country, with voters’ racial, ethnic, and educational backgrounds being key to how candidates perform. The national environment is shaping not just races for House and Senate but also races for governor, too. The incumbency advantage sure didn’t help Sen. Joe Donnelly of Indiana or Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, and I’ll bet it proves increasingly small in future elections.

But it’s noteworthy that in this case, nationalization seems to have substantially boosted voter turnout, even in a race when the most national of figures — the president — wasn’t on the ballot. Up to this point, one of the things I charted was the extent to which turnout in midterms had been declining relative to presidential turnout. Tonight appears to have decisively broken that trend.

More calls coming in. Stabenow has held on in Michigan. In better news for Republicans, Brian Fitzpatrick has won a toss-up race in Pennsylvania 1.

So far, 13 percent of precincts have reported in Montana’s Senate contest. Incumbent Democrat Jon Tester is up 57 percent to 41 percent over Republican Matt Rosendale. Tester won statewide by a little less than 4 points in his 2012 re-election win. Yellowstone County, one of the bigger counties in the state, is about half in, and Rosendale leads there by 1 point. Tester won it by 1 point in 2012, so it’s running closely to what happened in Tester’s last race, at least so far.