So...the dreaded red wave turned out to be a red trickle. Not all results are in, but we do have a good idea of what is happening, and republicans are underperforming predictions. While they will likely make some gains, it's really unclear if they'll take the senate OR the house at this point. Everything is still up in the air. And people are wondering...wtf just happened?
Discussing the senate a bit more
As things stand, these are the results as of 6:30 PM EST on 11/9:
Colorado: Called, Bennet (D) wins by 12%, 85% reporting
Washington: Called, Murray (D) wins by 14%, 57% reporting
New Hampshire: Called, Hassan (D) wins by 8.8%, 96% reporting
Arizona: NOT called, Kelly (D) leads by 4.6%, 67% reporting
Pennsylvania: Called, Fetterman (D) wins by 3.6%, 95% reporting
Georgia: Goes to runoff, Warnock (D) leads by 0.9%, 98% reporting
Nevada: NOT called, Laxalt (R) leads by 2.7%, 77% reporting
Wisconsin: Called, Johnson (R) wins by 1%, 99% reporting
North Carolina: Called, Budd (R) wins by 3.6%, 98% reporting
Ohio: Called, Vance (R) wins by 6.6%, 97% reporting
Florida: Called, Rubio (R) wins by 15.6%, 99% reporting
Right now, the senate is at 48-49, with three races up for grabs: Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. Two of these three were some of the most controversial calls, and while I had them going R, well, AZ was a last minute call after it was blue, Georgia technically has Warnock winning but because he won by less than 50%, it's gonna go to a runoff election next month (which I would expect him to lose, what saved him was the 2% libertarian vote not backing the GOP, if those guys turn up next month and vote R, it's over), and Nevada is still in question, with Laxalt leading, but who knows what happens.
But yeah, other than Florida, where the GOP crushed by insane margins to the point of it no longer being remotely a swing state, they underperformed. Keep in mind, Bennet was at like +5.7% here, Washington was down to +3.0%, and New Hampshire was swing as fudge, at 1.4%. But the dems VASTLY overperformed and crushed the GOP here. Perhaps they never did stand a chance, as it was weird for Colorado and Washington to even be swing states. Arizona has Kelly up by 4.6%, and its been hovering around 5% for a while, but it's still up for grabs so who knows what happens, but that's what I would have predicted a month or two ago. PA, Fetterman overperformed by roughly 4% relative to my predictions. I knew it was gonna be close to the point of a coin flip, but it worked out fine in his favor. Georgia once again, has Warnock technically winning, just not enough to avoid a runoff. But given it was 1.4% in Walker's direction, yeah. Nevada is about dead on. Wisconsin Johnson won but underperformed about 2 points. North Carolina, same. Ohio, underperformed around 1.4. Florida is the only OVERperformance for the GOP, but given I almost didn't include it in this analysis, it's like STOP HE'S ALREADY DEAD.
Generally speaking, mathematically, the results work out to a rough D+2 scenario, pulling AZ, PA, and GA back into the dem category, with Nevada leaning red, but who knows. The senate is still ANYONE's game. The GOP has 49, and the dems have 48. Whoever wins 2 of the remaining 3 races controls the senate. And it's ANYONE's game.
I would honestly expect, given everything else I've seen over the past 24 hours, that AZ goes blue. AZ going red was always a questionable scenario. The polls had a healthy lead, and now that we know we have a roughly D+2 scenario, given PA and GA leaned much bluer than expected, I would expect Kelly to pull that off. Georgia...well it depends how the runoff goes. As I said, 2% of people voted libertarian and I'd expect most of them to vote R in a runoff. Maybe dems should get out another round of $1400 "inflation mitigation" checks. Worked last time. Nevada is a total crapshoot. It has Laxalt leading now...but again, that could narrow. I think I heard the votes left are a combination of rural votes (lean R) and mail in vote (lean D). And if we apply the D+2ish scenario to that race, well, things can narrow to within a point or so. If i HAD to call it, I'd say it goes Laxalt, but Cortez Masto isn't out of it. It hasn't been called for a reason.
As for the big win of the night. JOHN FREAKING FETTERMAN is going to be the next senator from Pennsylvania. Dr Oz can pack up and go home to New Jersey and eat some crudite from "Wegners" while the rest of us stroke risk prone savages can enjoy our wawa and sheetz. Oh, and Fetterman is basically Bernie as a bald dude with tattoos. And he apparently outperformed Biden here. Yeah. Goes to show that maybe, just maybe, Bernie would've won PA after all. But yeah. I remember watching last night and it was like 88% reporting with him ahead and they said the last votes were in Philadelphia. I was just thinking, yep, it's over. If Fetterman is AHEAD, and the last votes to be counted are in Philly...yeah....just give the man his victory already.
Anyway, REALLY happy over that one.
Onto the house
Discussing the house a bit more
Right now...the house is at 183-207 in favor of the GOP.
BUT...it's not 218 yet. And we're unclear if it will be. Currently I'm only seeing TEN outstanding races in which the GOP candidate is ahead. The rest look like they're going D. And while we could be wrong, and anything can happen, uh....207+10 only gets us to...217. Maybe AK will be #218. They seem to have ranked choice voting up there, and while the dem candidate is ahead, it's possible it pulls through for the republicans. Actually, that does make sense. So 207+11=218. GOP will control the house by ONE SEAT. Not 10 like I and Nate Silver seemed to predict. Not 20-30. ONE.
It's possible some D leaning seats will go R (CA13 has the GOP candidate only 0.2% ahead at 42% reporting), but it's also possible some R leaning seats will go D. I still give the edge to the GOP, but right now it's RAZOR THIN. Ya know, like their chances at the senate. The fact that the GOP might not even take the house is embarrassing.
Lauren Boebert might not even win her seat. Which is an embarrassment to the GOP.
We really don't know what's happening here, so we'll have to see. Again, I still give the edge to the GOP, but the fact that it's in question at all indicates this isn't the red wave that we thought it was. Again, the house was supposed to be a foregone conclusion.
Discussing governor's races
Maine: Called, Mills (D) wins by 12%, 92% reporting
New York: Called, Hochul (D) wins by 5.6%, 94% reporting
Minnesota: Called, Walz (D) wins by 7.7%, 99% reporting
New Mexico: Called, Lujan Grisham (D) wins by 6.3%, 98% reporting
Kansas: Called, Kelly (D) wins by 1.5%, 99% reporting
Oregon: NOT called, Kotek (D) leads by 1.9%, 69% reporting
Michigan: Called, Whitmer (D) wins by 10.6%, 98% reporting
Wisconsin: Called, Evers (D) wins by 3.4%, 99% reporting
Nevada: NOT called, Lombardo (R) leads by 4.8%, 77% reporting
Arizona: NOT called, Hobbs (D) leads by 0.2%, 67% reporting
And to discuss a couple more:
Pennsylvania: Called, Shapiro (D) wins by 13.6%, 95% reporting
Florida: Called, Desantis (R) wins by 19.4%, 99% reporting
Okay, so another mildly blue night relative to expectations. Whitmer went WAY down at the last minute, but she was up by 10.6% in the results. Hochul seemed to slightly underperform in NY, there's been a lot of discussion on that and how Cuomo basically sabotaged the democratic party up there (he;'s always been a scumbag) giving the GOP an unfair advantage in house districts. Still, even on a state wide level, it never should've been too close. This is NEW YORK. Ya know, California 2. The big state we should never lose ever on the left. But...Cuomo left the state in such a bad shape the dems struggled to win there. In Florida on the other hand, DeSantis CRUSHED Crist. Idk who expected Crist to win, even the polls had him up by 12.2%, well outside of the margin of error. But DANG. Overperformed 7 points over that. Oregon is suprisingly still in play. Idk why that was even on the radar. Another state that should never appear ever in my predictions. Wisconsin went blue. That's surprising but it was almost 50-50 there and we did have a slightly more blue year. Pennsylvania, between Shapiro and Fetterman I'm really happy with my state. Not to mention Susan Wilds (PA7) and Matt Cartwright (PA8) winning their house seats. Very good night for democrats in PA.
Generally speaking, abortion rights are safe in my state, and that's what i care about more than anything else as far as governors' races go. That said, let's do a post mortem on what went wrong with the GOP.
The GOP was too extreme
A common trend last night was that if the republican candidate was a January 6ther or election denier, they lost. The democrats actually did frame the election as a referendum on democracy itself. And while it seemed hyperbolic on paper, as they always do this, this time it was actually kind of true. The GOP has been a festering problem for decades now, and they're literally to the point of wanting to violently overthrow the government to get their way. I watched some clips of Trump at a rally the night before the election, and JESUS, this guy was talking about death penalty for drug dealers. Like this guy is a crazy right wing authoritarian. And we all know what he thinks about the election. He's dangerous, and any candidate that had an association with Trump, whether through endorsements and January 6th stuff, they got soundly rejected in many races.
And then there was abortion. While I thought that inflation and crime were the top concerns, with abortion being a relative blip....no...actually abortion ended up being as consequential as inflation. And it worked to counteract most of the damage that inflation was poised to do to the democrats. The fact is, by abolishing Roe, imposing state level restrictions on abortion, and threatening a nationwide abortion ban, that crap is actually really unpopular with voters, and they basically screwed themselves on that. I mean, KANSAS went blue. KANSAS, wtf. And a dems did very strong on most governorships in play.
This is why I say when the dems play culture war, they should play defensively and from a libertarian perspective. Very few people, push comes to shove, want to go backwards. We just aint all on board with this "woke" crap and cringe slogans like "defund the police". But most people, no they don't want abortion overturned. They don't want gay marriage gone. Contraception. Dear god, Thomas was threatening to overturn contraception. The fact is, the right are these crazy authoritarians, and people are LITERALLY SCARED of them taking power again because they want to do things like undo all social progress over the past 50 years minimum, and probably beyond that, and undermine elections.
And we're not even getting into economics. They were literally talking about undermining medicare and social security. Jesus Christ. WTF. Like really, the GOP is trying to achieve all of these crazy goals they've had their sights set on for decades and now that we're at this crisis point, people are saying no. They don't actually want these things. And they're pushing back. And that's good. These are all reasons I voted blue too. I don't want abortion to go. I dont want social security and medicare to go. I dont want to see the country descend into a one party state like Russia. Even freaking Ralph nader was telling people to vote blue. So this is an actual case in which people actually united behind the democrats in the face of a common existential enemy. I don't think democrats should get complacent here. Generally speaking the democrats were lucky to do as well as they did, and this very well could've ended badly. They shouldn't take these results for granted and use it as an excuse to sit back and screw up.
Polls and websites overstated GOP chances
The second big thing worth mentioning is the polls themselves. I know there's a lot of liberals acting haughty now that the results are in and asking people who predicted doom and gloom to explain themselves and be held accountable, and being someone who predicted this, I'll be HAPPY to explain this.
When I actually predict elections, I am just a numbers guy. I run the numbers and I report them. I get my data from RealClearPolitics, who gives polling averages. I know they've been under fire today, with Joy Ann Reid saying you can't trust them, but uh...okay, let's discuss this.
RCP does have some flaws. They call races wrong sometimes. Some stuff in the "leans GOP' category were actually leaning democrat. Virtually all "toss up" seats in the house that had polls were leaning democrat. So that led to a red mirage in the house that actually ended up busting. I could kind of tell this might happen and looking into the data that the GOP lead was way weaker than it appeared to be. But ultimately, we just had very little polling data either way. Too many people leaned into these "fundamentals" that implied this would be a red year, and they made inferences based on insufficient data. This is why I largely refrained from doing a detailed house forecast. How? There just isn't enough data to judge many of these races. And the data that existed was sparse and could've been wrong. Looking at the results I think the polls that implied the outcome would be more blue than expected seem to be coming true, but yeah, that's the thing, RCP just compiles data. Poll averages are poll averages. Where they were wrong was in categorizing some races one way or another.
Kyle Kulinski had a video today from the owner of RCP discussing this too, and how many right leaning pollsters like Trafalgar skewed polling averages. They didn't screw up, pollsters did. And I mentioned poll bombing last night. I didn't correct for it because in 2020, those guys turned out to be right no matter how bad their methodology was, but this time, they were WAY off and pollsters WAY overcorrected for a right bias that just didn't come into play this time.
And on top of that, one thing that's worth discussing is that I honestly dont think the polls were THAT far off. You guys might wonder my methodology for calculating races. It's pretty simple. I take polling averages, and then I assume a 4 point margin of error, and then I calculate the Z score based off of that. Generally speaking, any result within 2 standard deviations (in this case the margin of error) is going to fall within say a 95-96% confidence range. On one side of the bell curve, you'll have 2% of results fall outside on that end, and on the other, you'll have 2 percent. But 96% or so will fall within 2 standard deviations.
This is why I tend to focus on races within 8 points. Because given both candidates can move 4 points in either direction, you need a spread of 8 or more to fall outside of that 96% confidence range. And given the results only flip if it goes one way, I can be around 98% confident in a result that is 8 points in one direction or another.
Honestly, most of the races that ended up not turning out as polls indicated were within 2 points. I mean you had Wisconsin where I predicted Michels (R) would win by 0.6%, Evers won by 3.4%. You had PA where Fetterman won by 3.6%, he was supposed to lose by 0.4%. And here's the thing. When races are within a point...you might as well flip a coin. A 1% lead is a 0.25 Z score, which indicates the result is gonna be roughly 60-40. A 2 point lead is going to be 69-31. A 3 point lead is going to be 77-23. A 4 point lead is going to be 84-16, etc. So....if a race is within a 1 point, and I'm "wrong"....yeah that's just statistics. I can't predict worth a crap. I don't have a crystal ball. I just tell you what the odds are.
Even the real crazy blowouts don't exceed my 96% confidence range. I mean Hassan in NH won by 8.8 but I predicted 1.4. It's a 7 point difference, sure, but it's still within that 96% confidence range. DeSantis, up by 12, won by 19. Still within that 8 point range. Bennet, up by 5, won by 12. Need I go on? The only one I see outside of that range that I looked at was Murray, who won by 14 but was only expected to win by 3. The odds of a race being THAT far off is about...0.6%? 2.75 gives me a score of 0.0030 on single tail, or 0.3%, so 2 tail, 0.6%. It can happen. It just happens about 1 time in 167.
And let's be honest, how is this any different than 2016 and 2020? WISCONSIN in 2016 was like 6.5% in favor of Hillary...it ended up going red. The same thing happened in the rust belt in 2020 where the dems had like a 9 point lead in Wisconsin and Michigan, and then won by like 1-2.
All things considered, the only races that actually flipped were within 2 points. That's not bad at all. And 2 points is all that really existed between us and electoral oblivion. So I'm not sure if we should be celebrating or scared that like 2020, we almost lost again. Just because the republicans underperformed doesnt mean they did bad. They still won or are projected to win much of what they were supposed to. Most major blowouts were in races that already skewed heavily one way or the other. And if anything, the bias of the results in favor of the democrats is much less than the polling bias in favor of the GOP in 2020. We had a R+4 situation on our hands in many swing states, and here we instead get like D+2 in close races, with random blowouts in races that were already 5-8 points one way or another.
Really, I want to make that clear. We were TWO POINTS from electoral oblivion. The only reason democrats can be so cocky today was that we overperformed by 2 points. It could have easily gone 2 points in the other direction, or even 3-4 like in 2016 and 2020. If that happened, we WOULD be looking at a 240ish seat republican majority in the house, and a total blowout of 54 GOP seats or more in the senate. Seriously, if it went the other way like some other recent elections did, it would be BAD NEWS. We're just happy that that DIDN'T happen.
And given how much bad polling orgs were skewing results, and how little information we actually had on the state of the house, eh....I mean, we did the best with what we had. We just didn't have all of the information and much of the information we did have was flawed.
This victory might allow dems to walk away saving face given the result was supposed to be TOTAL WIPEOUT, but let's not get cocky here, this was, much like 2020, a very narrow victory, and if we hold onto the house or the senate, we BARELY did so. We mightve shut down a massive red wave, but let's face it in a sane world we wouldnt be coming down to the point where our abortion rights, electoral system, and safety nets are under direct assault from a batcrap insane republican party. The fact that we're here is still a failure of a democratic party that has failed to offer a better alternative for decades, specifically since 2008 or so.
And and just for the record, we still might lose the house and/or the senate. We didn't WIN either yet. We just didn't lose yet either.
Still, democratic messaging was popular...
Still, I must give the democrats credit here. Democrats fought hard for this, and I deemed it fit to reward them. There was a reason I voted democrat and encouraged others to do so, other than fear of the GOP. The democrats are doing stuff. They forgave some student loans. They tried to pass a climate plan. They pardoned some drug offenders. They told the American people "give me a congress and I'll try to codify abortion rights". These are popular ideas. And despite facing inflation, an oil crisis, and reliving the 1970s, we managed to stave off disaster. Because those ideas are popular. And I know if we didnt mitigate damage, the democrats would just say it was because they were too extreme and move to the center. But young people did come out and reward the democrats, and Biden gave a nice speech today suggesting he would keep doing good things and he wouldnt take crap off of the GOP if they did win one of the chambers of congress and tried to pull crap. He has a mandate, and Biden is running with it. And I applaud him for doing so. That's really been my issue with the democrats all along. I want them to do nice things. I dont want them to run to the center and say "We CaNt Do AnYtHiNg!!!11!". I admit the dems havent done everything i want them too. They're still too centrist, everything they do is still too watered down, and at the end of the day I still have significant ideological differences with the party, but they're doing better than expected. And given the state of the green party (offer the world but have no decent plans to get theret) and the forward party (be as much of a worthless centrist circlejerk as I normally stereotype the democrats as being), eh...the democrats are the best option right now.
And in PA....we had fetterman on the ticket. Did I mention this dude has the same worldview and politics as Bernie more or less? So yeah, I'd be stupid NOT to support him. I'd be not rewarding the democrats for doing what I screamed at them for years to do.
And you know what? I think this stuff resonates with people too. Even though things arent perfect and inflation is a problem, and the dems are kind of centrist, perhaps their ideas are more popular than they are given credit for. And maybe people really would prefer to see them in charge than the crazy GOP.
The Attack of the Young People
EDIT: this section is edited in later after hearing several segments discussing how young people really drove democratic turnout.
Young people are the democrats' greatest assets, while gen X, boomers, and silent lean conservative, younger people like Millennials and Zoomers are far more progressive. We are sitting on a demographic timebomb that very well could lead to a very swift party realignment left in the coming years. I've noticed this for a while, since the Obama years. The democrats just have a terrible time motivating these people to come out. But when they do, the right is screwed. They were what propelled Obama to office. They are why I think Bernie would've won in 2016. And they are what bailed out the democrats here.
But here's a thing. Young people often need to be motivated to vote. Democrats finally did a good job in motivating them by doing things for them, while in recent years they just talked down and lectured them. And it's very well possible that in future elections, say, 2028 and later, we might see a very heavy left wing party realignment, as long as we can preserve democracy and not fall into fascism.
Of course it's also possible that some will become more conservative as they age, and it's also possible the current divisions the republicans and democrats are creating in the electorate will lead to the left being forced to stay moderate structurally, which is my biggest fear outside of fascist takeover (and also why I spend so much time throwing shade at the democrats). But if democrats embrace young people and their politics and do things that motivate them, they could have an unstoppable coalition on their hands, similar to FDR and Reagan. It all depends on whether the powers that be embrace it, or intentionally derail it. We've been doing the latter, but if the democrats do the former, the GOP in its current form will never have a good election again (for a long time at least).
GOP messaging didn't do as well as expected
I'm gonna be honest. Seeing the massive ad campaign from the GOP here, especially in the fetterman/oz race, I thought we were screwed. The GOP talked about inflation. They talked about crime, they painted fetterman as a far left radical who wants to tax joe working man to pay for rich college students' student loans and put killers back on the street, and I thought that message was working. I just saw the polls go down and down and down, and I saw some suggest inflation and crime were really what voters were concerned about, and while there was a lot of GOP energy, it wasn't as much as expected. It's normally expected, after the president's party wins control of the government, that they lose it. And given Biden inherited COVID and has to deal with the recovery and all of the problems and how that's quickly spiraling into a repeat of the 1970s...uh...I thought they were toast. Not gonna lie. But....democrats held out fairly well. Abortion mattered a lot more than expected, and crime ended up doing so far less. Inflation was still at the top of peoples' concerns, but people weren't as stupid as I expected and just mindlessly supporting the opposition party, which is what historically happens. Historically, when the economy is bad, the people blame the president and his party no matter whether they're at fault and we see a major wave the other way. But, it didn't happen. The GOP might gain ground. Hell they might win control of congress. But it will be an extremely narrow win. 51 senators tops, and maybe like 220 house seats or something. I mean, right now I'm estimating 218 exactly. So literally the bare minimum for any victory at all. Which for a supposedly red year is kind of bad.
For all the money and repetition put into scaring voters into voting republican, it just didn't work. People saw through them, they saw them as too extreme, and they largely rejected them.
Conclusion
So, the red wave has turned into a red trickle. The GOP still might win the house and/or the senate, but it's really down to the wire, and nothing like the blowout expected. Democrats defended well. We're currently at 48-49 for the senate with each party needing 2 of the remaining 3 races to win. The house looks like we're gonna see 218 republican seats exactly, meaning they JUST take control of it, and even then, it could easily go the other way. Democrats did well. They swept most controversial races in my state, and generally speaking, I think they sent a message that the GOP are too extreme on abortion rights and this anti democratic January 6th crap, while the democratic message remains reasonably popular. This wasn't a sweep year for the democrats either, but no one expected it to be. Conventional wisdom showed they had nowhere to go but down and they largely put up a successful defense that mitigated the damage done. So this is a win.
Still, democrats shouldn't get cocky because it was a narrow win, and we were only a few points away from the electoral oblivion projected. Polls were off, but they were still within the margin of error, and really, in context, democratic victories were quite narrow. It just happened to be that expectations were so low that they happened to avoid the worst case scenario. I guess that's the best democratic victory we can expect from this year, but eh, we still have a lot of work to do. The GOP coalition is still fairly strong, and we really were only a couple points from losing it all. Much like 2020.
Democrats better start preparing for 2024, and they really have zero room for error here.
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