How Election Week 2022 Went Down

So, Maya, there are two sets of expectations here: There’s what the FiveThirtyEight model said, which was a modest Republican win, and what the conventional wisdom said, which was a more decisive GOP win. Going by the latter, this is clearly a Democratic overperformance. But going just by the data, it’s pretty in line with expectations so far. Of course, the remaining seats could still go either way, which could change the narrative quite a bit.

So let’s step back and take a look at where we’re at. There are 40 unprojected House seats, with an estimated 188 seats for Democrats and 207 for Republicans. The Senate is currently tied at 47 seats apiece, with six seats (including key races in Arizona and Nevada) uncalled. Let’s put aside the uncalled races for a sec — how good a night has this been for Democrats? Is it in line with the upper bounds of their expected performance, or can we call this a Democratic overperformance?

In this late-night installment of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast, Nate Silver and Galen Druke put their “Model Talk” hats on and discuss the initial results from the 2022 midterms. As of this recording, we still don’t know which party will control the House or Senate, and we may not know come the morning. But that doesn’t stop us from talking about what we do know: that Republicans didn’t make major gains in the Senate, and that the polls were pretty good this cycle.