How Election Week 2022 Went Down
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.
With Fetterman’s projected win, Oz is now the sixth Trump-backed candidate to be defeated tonight. Here are the other five:
- In New Hampshire, Republican Don Bolduc is projected to lose the Senate race to incumbent Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan. Bolduc is among Republicans that accepted the results of the 2020 election (though with reservations), and Trump endorsed him late in the election.
- Elsewhere in Pennsylvania, ABC News projects Doug Mastriano to be defeated by Josh Shapiro in the governor’s race. Trump endorsed Mastriano in the GOP primary and hosted a rally for him Saturday night.
- In Maryland, Trump’s pick for governor, Dan Cox, is projected to lose to Democrat Wes Moore. Cox attended the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol and has claimed the 2020 election was “rigged.”
- Trump endorsed Republican Geoff Diehl for Massachusetts governor, which was always a long-shot race. ABC News projects Democrat Maura Healey to win the seat.
- And lastly, in New York, ABC News projects incumbent Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to beat Trump-endorsed Republican Lee Zeldin.