How Election Week 2022 Went Down

Maya, Inside Elections ended on 199 House races pointing in Democrats’ favor, with 216 pointing in Republicans’ favor and 20 pure toss-ups. So far, we’ve seen pretty much all called House races go down as expected, with Democrats winning seven of the 20 toss-ups and Republicans winning none (yet). To me, that’s in line with what the ratings say we should have expected.

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?