How Election Week 2022 Went Down

It’s interesting to see that in the preliminary exit polls (which are incomplete and subject to change), support for legal abortion in all or most cases is higher than it was in 2020. As usual, there isn’t much of a gender gap on this question — women are about as likely as men to say that abortion should be legal, although women were more likely to say that it was their top issue. That’s likely due at least in part to the fact that women are more likely to identify as Democrats, and Democrats were more likely to say that abortion was their top issue. But still, it’s something worth keeping tabs on as the night goes on.

Republicans are doing really well in Florida. Notably, Rubio is leading in Miami-Dade County and Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), and DeSantis is leading in those two plus Hillsborough County (Tampa). And Election Day votes (which skew Republican) haven’t even reported yet!

One thing I’m watching tonight is how much the results differ between Georgia’s races for Senate and governor. You’d expect them to look pretty similar due to the state’s racially polarized electorate, which makes the state quite “inelastic” from year to year, with white voters mostly voting Republican and Black voters mostly Democratic. This makes for few swing voters and few split-ticket voters, too. But with how close the Senate race looks and how likely Kemp looks to win in the governor’s race, every Kemp-Warnock voter could be of critical importance. And so far, there is a bit of a split between the two contests, with Warnock leading by 22 points in the Senate race and Abrams up by 14 in the governor’s race. Notably, this is also in line with the 7-point split the polls had coming into Election Day, with Warnock down 1 point and Abrams down 8 points.