What Went Down In The 2018 Midterms

In the case you’ve been living under a rock, Republicans keep control of the Senate — and that should not be a surprise. Democrats were always going to face an uphill battle.

The education divide persists. Democrats appear to be doing well in well-educated suburbs, which extends a trend we’ve seen of Democrats gaining ground with college-educated voters. In 2017, Pew Research Center reported that people with a bachelor’s degree or higher favored Democrats by 22 points. As recently as 2010 that group was split evenly between the two parties and in 1992, it favored Republicans by 4 points. On the flip side, Republicans have gained plenty of ground with non-college educated whites in recent years.

The Minnesota 2nd and 3rd districts generally went hand in hand in discussions this year; we had both rated “likely Democratic.” But for the second straight year, Republican Rep. Jason Lewis in the 2nd District is proving a surprisingly strong candidate (or perhaps Democrat Angie Craig is proving a surprisingly weak one). Even as the 3rd District has gone strongly Democratic, Craig leads Lewis 51 percent to 49 percent right now.

Democrat Tony Evers has a 1.6-point lead in Wisconsin, but almost all of Milwaukee and about three-fourths of Dane County (Madison) has reported. So has almost all of super Republican Waukesha County, though. Gonna be close.

I want to follow up on my note earlier about poll accuracy. As I said, pollsters will have a very good case to make that polls this year showed races close, and that they generally painted a picture that played out as expected: Republicans doing well in the Senate, Democrats doing well in the House. No one should be surprised by these results at a macro level. But … I guarantee, because of the high profile nature of some of the races that did surprise, there will still be a lot of folks wondering and grumbling about whether polling works.

It’s razor-tight in New Jersey’s 3rd District, where incumbent Republican Tom MacArthur faced off against Obama national security official Andy Kim. With 99 percent reporting in this bow-tie of a district (seriously, look at a map), Kim leads by 395 votes.

ABC News projects Republican wins in six House races — AL-1, NY-24, PA-10, PA-16, TX-6 and WI-6.

ABC News also projects Democratic wins in AZ-2 and WI-3.

The Arizona 2nd District has been called for Democrat Ann Kirkpatrick, who will return to the House after two years away. We had this race at Solid Democratic, but a pickup is a pickup.

Not everything is going badly for Republicans in New York state, as John Katko has been declared the winner in the 24th District. Katko was well ahead in the polls, but that’s a nice hold in a district that voted for both Obama and Clinton.

Electoral reform is looking good on the Michigan ballot so far. The measure on establishing an independent redistricting commission leads 61 percent to 39 percent, and a measure to create both automatic and election day voter registration leads 68 percent to 32 percent (marijuana legalization is also up 58 percent to 42 percent).

That may convince Democrats and reformers in other states to pursue reforms with ballot initiatives. But bipartisan redistricting will also come just when Democrats would have already had a role in the process (because they won the governor race).

Nathaniel and I have been tracking candidates endorsed in the primary by more liberal groups. By the end of the night, we will know a little bit more about whether Democrats might be electing candidates who may represent more progressive interests or not.

I think that will be different for each chamber. If House Democrats have a bunch of people representing suburban and competitive districts, then the party may have a strong moderate — even Blue Dog — contingent. In the Senate, a bunch of the moderate Democrats have just lost.

How much do you think tonight’s results go towards further polarizing Congress (roughly speaking)?

Rakich, you can say no surprise all you want. And, indeed, the evening wound up right about where we expected it to. But it was a bit of an adventure to get there, with Democrats really underperforming in the Southeast, which is the first region to report a significant number of results.

The growing or solidifying city-rural divide is an important story of the night. We still have a lot to learn about the reasons for this geographic polarization.

One reason might be that the same factors that affect individual voting (like race and education level) also affect everyone in a community. For example, a college educated white person in a low education area might have social networks full of Trump supporters. In addition to their friends, people may also may be affected by their broader community. For example, even people without a college degree living in a college town might come to think of themselves as part of an educated diverse area. Geographic partisan enclaves may thus be hard to reverse, once an area comes to seen by its own residents as living in a culturally red or blue state.

There’s still a long night ahead, but two energy/environment issues on the Colorado ballot appear to be split. With more than 70 percent reporting, Proposition 112, which would require all new oil and gas development to be located at least 2,500 feet from occupied structures and other “vulnerable” areas, is opposed by 57.5 percent. Meanwhile, Amendment 74, which would force local and state governments to pay compensation when regulations or laws reduce the fair market value of their property, is opposed by 53.3 percent of voters — and as a constitutional amendment, it requires a 55 percent yes vote to pass.

Correction: A previous version of this post said Proposition 112 was favored by voters. It is opposed.

No surprise there. After a bit of a sluggish start, Democrats started picking up not only the seats that leaned to them, but some tougher races as well. Now it’s time to watch the margin — which definitely matters in terms of giving Nancy Pelosi (or whoever the next speaker is!) room to maneuver in terms of floor votes.

ABC PROJECTS THAT DEMOCRATS WILL WIN THE HOUSE

ABC News has called New York 22 for Democrat Anthony Brindisi; he defeated incumbent Republican Claudia Tenney. Lot of downside for Republicans in New York state right now.

Democrats are doing VERY well in Iowa. In the 1st District, Abby Finkenauer is leading GOP Rep. Rod Blum 58 percent to 40 percent. In the 3rd District, Cindy Axne is leading Rep. David Young 55 percent to 42 percent. And … wait for it … in the 4th District, J.D. Scholten is leading Rep. Steve King 51 percent to 47 percent.

Our updating list of party flips in the House and the Senate now shows the Illinois 6th.

Voter ID requirements often poll well, and they are doing well at the ballot box tonight. North Carolina’s voter ID ballot measure is expected to pass, and with 45 percent of precincts in, a voter ID measure in Arkansas has 79 percent in favor.

According to The Upshot, Democrats are likely to win the popular vote for the House by somewhere in the range of 6 to 10 points — which is right where polls had the generic ballot.

Nationally, voters did not support Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court: 48 percent opposed it while 43 percent supported it, according to early exit poll data. Opinions divide across party lines, 87 percent of Republicans supported it while 90 percent of Democrats opposed it. There was also a gender divide: about half of men supported his confirmation but less than 40 percent of women did.

Arizona’s Senate race is looking very close. GOP Rep. Martha McSally leads Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema by about 1 point, 49 percent to 48 percent. Only 5 percent of precincts have reported, but much of Arizona’s vote is early. A little more than 1.2 million votes have been counted versus the 2.2 million that were cast in the 2014 Senate race and 2.6 million in the 2016 presidential contest. So there are possibly another million votes to come in Arizona.

This is a night where all the toss-ups really have behaved like toss-ups, rather than everything breaking in the same direction. Nice win for the GOP in the Ohio gubernatorial race.

It’s looking like Republican Mike DeWine is going to win the Ohio governor’s race. Not what Democrats wanted to see there, obviously, and it’s interesting that it happened the same night the state’s voters re-elected Democrat Sherrod Brown. Some ticket-splitting happening there, I’d say.

ABC is projecting that Sean Casten has flipped the Illinois 6th for Democrats. It’s the 15th Democratic flip of the night in the House. Just eight more, and they officially clinch the House. (Spoiler alert: They will do it.)

Earlier this year, Rick Scott ran an ad, titled “Quien Es Bill Nelson,” suggesting that Nelson had failed to engage with the Hispanic community in Florida. And the exit polls in Florida seem to support that view. Nelson is now +11 among Hispanics, which trails Hillary Clinton’s margin with Latino voters in the state from 2016.

On my mind this evening: Ballot measure results are far to the left of candidate races, at least in the Senate. Though as friend-of-the-site Ben Casselman points out, this was more true in 2014 than now.

Florida is looking good for Republicans. The races for Senate and governor are very close, but the GOP leads in both. Republican Gov. Rick Scott leads Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson by 0.8 points, and Republican Ron DeSantis leads Democrat Andrew Gillum by 1.0 points. Both of those leads are outside the 0.5-point margin required for an automatic recount.

So far, it’s been a pretty good night for LGBTQ candidates and issues. Jared Polis of Colorado is now the first openly gay man to be elected governor. And in Massachusetts, a ballot measure to protect laws that prohibit discrimination against transgender people has passed. These milestones and measures are no longer as surprising, but represent a big change in national attitudes from just over a decade ago.

Amendment 1 in Missouri has passed 62-38, according to the AP. It would usher in a series of changes to state-legislative elections, including having a nonpartisan “state demographer” draw state-legislative districts.

The conventional wisdom heading into tonight was that Republicans would do well in the Senate and Democrats would do well in the House. That’s playing out for the most part. But I think Democrats were also quite excited about the gubernatorial races. So far, that seems like more of a mixed bag: Democrats picked up Kansas, currently lead in Wisconsin and Iowa but trail in the potential pickup states of Ohio, Florida and Georgia and in Democrat-held Connecticut.

Under Maine’s new ranked-choice voting, the state’s 2nd District has the potential to be the first congressional district to go to an instant runoff — it’s early, but neither major-party candidate has close to 50 percent.

Illinois is another state where Democrats are having a good night in the House — and coattails may be playing a role.

In my native district, the Michigan 8th, Republican Mike Bishop is ahead so far — although The New York Times has Democrat Elissa Slotkin as a favorite based on where the vote is outstanding.

At 11 p.m. Eastern, most of the remaining states will close their polls, including California, Hawaii, the rest of Idaho, the rest of Oregon and Washington. Almost all the competitive races in these states are in the House, and California is the epicenter. Look for close races in the 25th, 39th, 45th and 48th districts, according to our pre-election forecast. Washington’s 8th District is also uncertain.

Some state legislative news! Democrats appear to have flipped the Colorado state Senate. They already won the governorship, and the state House was never in much doubt. By my count, that’s the second state government trifecta that Democrats have picked up tonight, after Illinois.

Amendment 4, which passed in Florida earlier tonight, would restore voting rights to felons and would affect 1 million people, says Perry Bacon Jr.

Overall it’s looking like a good night for women. So far, 48 women have been elected to the U.S. House (that number could hit 100 by the end of the night) and six in the Senate. There have also been three female governors elected so far. Among the women elected to office, 23 are women of color. We also have the first two Muslim women in Congress.

I’d like to submit a potential candidate for the “wait, what?” race of the night: Connecticut’s governor race, where with 27 percent reporting, Republican Bob Stefanowski is ahead of Demoracat Ned Lamont 48.5 percent to 46.8 percent. I haven’t yet looked into where that 27 percent is coming from but still, I am raising at least one eyebrow at this one.

But Democrats are also doing pretty well in districts won by both Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. They’re losing more of them, but many (like the New York 2nd and 21st) were never expected to be competitive. Interestingly, the margins here are much wider, suggesting that maybe they turned on individual candidate quality — dare I say, “authenticity.”