How Election Week 2022 Went Down

We obviously don’t yet know the full story — California says hi — but sometimes an important thing to monitor in an election is the trend at the end. And the trend was definitely favorable to the GOP. So with that in mind, I think it was not unreasonable to think we might end up with a better-than-average GOP result. Instead we have a better-than-average Democratic result, and potentially a strong Democratic outcome should they actually get to 51 seats in the Senate, which seems possible — although we are a long way from knowing Arizona and Nevada, not to mention Georgia’s potential runoff.

I mean, not to get too pointed here, but the lesson here is to not let hot takes and narratives influence our expectations of an election. To Jacob’s point, if you were following the data and the professional prognostications, this is not a surprising outcome. If you were listening to the Democratic dooming and Republican gloating, it is.

I agree with Nathaniel. We expected Republicans to gain between one and 33 seats. In general, the races we expected to be close have been close, but Democrats flipped some likely Republican wins in House races in Ohio. Of course, some of the Republican gains were baked in because of redistricting. We thought it was likely we wouldn’t know about control of the Senate and the House for a few days, and with some key races yet to be called, that’s where we are.