How Election Week 2022 Went Down

You didn’t think I was just going to roast the Republicans, did you? Gerrymandering happens on both sides of the aisle, and this year two Democratic gerrymanders really stood out (well, three, but New York’s was so egregious it got struck down by the New York Court of Appeals.)

First we have Nevada, where Democrats gambled with the redistricting process in the hopes of securing three seats in Congress. Now, according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus is in a dead heat with her Republican challenger, Mark Robertson.

But the worst Democratic gerrymander in the country is arguably in Illinois. The most recent round of redistricting set off a high-stakes game of musical chairs among the state’s five Republican House members.

After the 2020 census, every state in the nation began redrawing its district lines. In this video series, I explored some of the most egregious gerrymanders from this round of redistricting. Here, let’s take a look at some of the worst Republican congressional gerrymanders. (In another post, I’ll roast the Democratic gerrymanders.)

First up, Florida. Gov. Ron DeSantis drew a particularly extreme gerrymander. Even some Republicans have privately told reporters that they think certain district lines in the new map are illegal.

Next, Ohio. Back in 2018, Ohio voters thought they were doing a good thing by reforming redistricting in their state. It turns out they created a convoluted process that has left their congressional map as gerrymandered as ever.

Then there’s Alabama. The state’s contested congressional map is now in the hands of the Supreme Court. But regardless of how the case shakes out, it will change voting rights across the South.

And finally, perhaps the worst Republican gerrymander of all this year: Texas. Several advocacy groups have argued that Texas’s new congressional map discriminates against people of color.

Every 10 years, states redraw their congressional-district lines to reflect the results of the latest U.S. Census (since every district has to have the same number of people). That process took place in late 2021 and early 2022, and the 2022 midterms are the first election to make use of the new boundaries.

We kept close tabs on this process through our redistricting tracker, and we found that the new lines didn’t have a huge partisan impact: Thanks to gerrymandering and geographic vote patterns, the House was slightly biased toward Republicans before redistricting, and it is slightly biased toward Republicans after redistricting. The number of Republican-leaning seats (defined as those at least 5 percentage points redder than the nation as a whole, according to our partisan lean metric) was the same before and after redistricting. The number of Democratic-leaning seats did increase by six, though, and the number of swing seats decreased by six.

However, there are still more Republican-leaning seats than Democratic-leaning seats, and the median seat by partisanship is 2.5 points redder than the nation as a whole. In addition, on net, three or four Democratic-held seats were redrawn to be Republican-leaning — meaning Republicans could come close to flipping the House based on redistricting alone.

According to FiveThirtyEight’s final Deluxe forecast, Republicans have an 84-in-100 chance of taking control of the House of Representatives today.

Our average projection is that Republicans will win 230 seats and Democrats will win 205, which would be a 17-seat net gain for Republicans. However, a wide range of outcomes is possible. Our model estimates that there’s an 80 percent chance that Republicans will win between 214 and 246 seats.

If the House is at all competitive, though, what districts should you keep an eye on? Our forecast can tell you that, too, by calculating the odds that a given district will be the “tipping-point” seat in the House, or the seat that clinches the House majority for either Republicans or Democrats. Here are the 25 districts most likely to be that tipping point in our final forecast:

Coming into tonight, the most uncertain part of the 2022 midterms is the race for control of the U.S. Senate. Currently, the chamber is evenly divided 50-50, but Democrats hold power via the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. As a result, any net gain for one party will change the power dynamics of the chamber.

But will one party gain ground? FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe forecast essentially calls the race for the Senate a toss-up, as it gives Republicans have a 59-in-100 shot of winning a majority, which is not much better than a coin flip:

What does this mean for the actual number of seats each party could control? In 80 percent of outcomes in our forecast, Republicans win between 48 and 54 seats. But the average outcome is now 51 Republican seats, which would represent a one-seat gain and, crucially, a GOP majority. This is a far cry from earlier in the cycle, when polls suggested Democrats might be in a decent position to retain control. Now the best they may be able to hope for is preserving the status quo.

Zooming in, four races will largely decide party control in the Senate. For Democrats, they need to hold onto at least two and possibly all three of the seats they are defending in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada. In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is a slight favorite over Republican Blake Masters, but he is far from secure. Meanwhile, Nevada is a toss-up, so Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is very much in danger of defeat. And in Georgia, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is actually a slight underdog to Republican Herschel Walker. Meanwhile, Republicans’ most insecure seat is in Pennsylvania, where Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is retiring. Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and TV personality and physician Mehmet Oz are locked in a tight race that could go either way.

After months of primaries, campaigning and tea-leaf reading, Election Day is finally upon us. Within a few days (or weeks), the 2022 midterm elections will be completed and we will know who will control Congress and various governor’s mansions and statehouses for at least the next two years.

There are a couple factors that set this election apart. First, it’s taking place under new district lines, drawn following the 2020 census as part of the decennial redistricting process. (Our redistricting tracker contains tons of information about each state’s new congressional map.) Second, it comes at a volatile time for the economy, which has consistently been the issue Americans report caring most about. Plus, in the months since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion and the status of legal abortion in many states began to change, abortion became a more salient electoral issue — although there are still lots of questions about who is motivated to vote and where. And finally, two years after former President Donald Trump’s false allegations of election fraud took hold in the Republican Party, hundreds of candidates continue to carry forth that belief, echoing Trump’s claims and keeping Trumpism on the ballot even if Trump himself is not.

There are few rules in politics as steadfast as this one: The president’s party will lose seats in Congress in the midterms. Our forecasts, which are now frozen, project this will again be the case. Republicans have a 59-in-100 chance of taking the Senate, and are heavily favored to take the House. At the state level, our model has at least two — and perhaps as many as five or six — governorships changing hands, and there are an additional 18 states where one party could take or lose full control of state government.

If you’ve ever tuned into a FiveThirtyEight live blog you’ve probably heard this before, but there remains a lot of uncertainty. We’ve had relatively less polling to draw on this cycle than in years past; polling errors can still happen; and there are a lot of important races that are close, particularly in the Senate. We also don’t know exactly when we’ll have full results, as each state counts votes differently and at different rates.

Throughout the day — and well into the night — FiveThirtyEight will be following races for Congress, governorships, key ballot measures and more. We’ll keep you informed until we know who won, and we’ll continue to track any outstanding races. We’ll be clear about what the results do show, and what results we don’t have yet, as the vote count could change in a number of key states as more ballots are counted. That also means we won’t be afraid to say what we simply don’t know.

If you have any questions about the midterm elections or its implications, be sure to ping us at @538politics. Here we go.