Midterm results: The least surprising of surprises

I wrote yesterday that, by Wednesday morning, what seemed confusing would feel all so predictable and so it proved. The polling had indeed been wrong or, at least, recent polling had been deliberately misleading. This was the polling that many analysts believed was done in bad faith by the GOP to help swing national polling averages back in their favour and establish a big bold MAGA narrative that never reflected the moderate reality in the middle-ground of US politics.

Wednesday morning might not have brought much in the way of certainty. Nevada is still in the balance and if Democrats can’t retain the state, then to control the Senate, they would still need to win the Georgia runoff on 6th December. If they can take Nevada, victory in Georgia would be a bonus. Meanwhile, over in the House, Republicans look like they might take a small majority but even here it’s in the realm of speculation.

Yet what we can say is that there was no red wave, despite economic conditions that should have produced huge gains for the GOP. Tuesday’s results look rather like a confirmation of the Democrat optimism that had been percolating for months. Some betting markets had Democrats losing the House and Senate for most of the year but through August and September, they began to track the political reality rather than the media headlines focussed, as they tended to be, on the sensationalist coalition of MAGA candidates. What we’re seeing, rather, is a more accurate reflection of the mood of America, where the Republican descent into Trumpism has been largely rejected for a fourth time: he lost the popular vote in 2016; the 2018 midterms were memorable for the so-called “slow Blue wave”; and he lost the election in 2020. This time it’s been a rejection of the frankly lousy candidates that were cast in his mould with defeats for the likes of Lauren Boebert, Doug Mastriano, and Mehmet Oz. The places where Trumpers did win are places like Ohio where J.D. Vance was carried over the line by the sheer weight of the vote in what has certainly become a red state.

So, is the result an affirmation of Biden? It certainly sets him apart from recent Democrat presidents who oversaw disastrous losses in their first-term midterms with Obama losing 63 House seats and Clinton 54 (and both went on to win second terms). This is on the back of a few major wins in his first two years. For all the talk of his mistakes and his supposed frailty, too often repeated by the British media channelling the talking heads on Fox News, Biden has passed the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that Trump had spent four years promising. He has cancelled student debts, signed a $1.9 trillion COVID relief deal, seen improving employment numbers, as well as brought a sense of normality back to the White House. America has had two years free of riot police gassing peaceful protestors and crazy medical advice offered from the bully pulpit.

Yet, even if you discount Biden’s achievements, the midterms also express the degree to which the Republican Party have failed to press home any advantages presented to them by the economy. We now have demonstrable evidence of the harm done to the GOP by a Supreme Court that gave them exactly what they’d been asking for in terms of overturning Roe vs Wade. The response across America has been a series of ballots to enshrine protection for abortion into state law. The GOP simply does not represent the national consensus and, as long as they pursue this minority opinion, they will be fighting each election with a losing hand.

That’s not to say there was nothing for Republicans to celebrate and, again, the whole picture could yet change, albeit not in terms of dramatic numbers. Even in the absence of a wave, Republicans could yet win a symbolic victory. If the Republicans only get to take the House, they will get to block Biden for two years. They’ll also be able to stop the January 6th investigation and even repurpose it to tell a very different story. Speaker Pelosi will no longer be Speaker Pelosi and we might yet get Speaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, though whether that’s a victory for Republicans is another matter. Making the craziest of the GOP crazies second in the line of succession might not be the best move for a party whose ambitions have just been curtailed by an electorate clearly worried about their extreme tendencies.

Meanwhile, Republicans have a choice to make after the results in Florida. The state has become solid red, partly due to Governor Ron DeSantis overseeing some redistricting that gave them some easy wins in the House. His easy victory over the experienced former governor Charlie Crist sets him up for a run against Trump for the 2024 nomination. The problem for the GOP is that DeSantis is not much better (and, in some ways, much worse) than Trump and represents many of the MAGA values that saw them do so poorly in these midterms. A strong performance in Florida does not mean he’d perform well at a national level. Democrats would fancy their chances going into the next election cycle knowing they’d be fighting the Florida governor who has as little personality as Trump has it in abundance.

Even if Trumpism has again been discredited, for all his considerable sins, the 45th president remains a charismatic force who is hard to ignore or discount. Given there’s now likely to be a runoff in Georgia (Raphael Warnock won the last run-off in 2020), Republicans will hope that Trump doesn’t declare his intention to run for 2024, thereby turning the December election into a proxy election between Biden and Trump. That’s hard to see. The former president has been itching to declare for months, hinting at every opportunity that an announcement is imminent. Betting markets still make him the favourite to be the next Republican nominee and the next president, but they also undervalued Democrat chances in these midterms. Democrats will be feeling upbeat this morning. Power could still change hands and congressional dynamics might yet turn against them. But there was no blue wave. There was not even a blue ripple. That, alone, is a huge win for Joe Biden.

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