How Election Week 2022 Went Down

In Texas 🤠, where polls just closed, I’ll be keeping an eye on quite a few races — notably three South Texas congressional races and the gubernatorial contest between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and Democrat Beto O’Rourke.

The governor’s race should be an easy get for Abbott, despite O’Rourke’s record-breaking fundraising hauls. But the three House races along the Texas-Mexico border I’ll be monitoring — the 15th, 28th and 34th districts — should be a bit more interesting to watch considering Republicans have a good chance of flipping one or two of these seats (read our write-up on these districts here). In fact, according to our forecast, which is now frozen, both the 15th and 34th districts are ranked as toss-ups. The 28th District, meanwhile, which is currently represented by Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, falls more squarely in his column.

If Republicans win — or come close — to winning any of these races, though, I think this region will become much more competitive in future election cycles. The 15th, for its part, was redrawn during the redistricting process to make it more favorable for the GOP, while the other two seats have drawn formidable GOP opponents that could make it hard for Democrats to bring the voters that they lost in 2020 back into their camp.

ABC projects that Republican Ron DeSantis has won reelection as governor of Florida, defeating Democrat Charlie Crist. In the state’s Senate contest, ABC projects that Republican Marco Rubio has defeated Democrat Val Demings. At the beginning of the cycle, Democrats thought they could make serious runs at both of the incumbents, and Demings raised quite a bit of money, which allowed her to run a fully fledged campaign against Rubio. But Florida has been a bloodbath for Democrats tonight.

That’s interesting about the Kentucky results, Amelia. I wrote about this in August, but a lot of red-state voters have been more progressive on ballot measures than in their choice of candidates in recent elections. There are a lot of reasons for this, but it’s partly that voting for, say, a Republican candidate while also voting to protect voting rights might just mean that voters who are conservative on most issues can have their say on abortion while also getting the candidates they want on almost everything else.