Well, just about everyone expected the midterms to go much much differently from the way they ended up going. Leading up the Election Day, experts and the media kept predicting a “red wave” and for the Republicans to take control of the Senate and the House. However, the results ended up going much differently. As it currently stands, the only senate seat to flip was that of Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman (D) beat out Mehmet Oz (R) to flip the seat from red to blue. This, along with a tie between Raphael Warnock (D) and Herschel Walker (R) in Georgia that will lead to a runoff, puts the Democrats at 50-49 currently in the Senate. This means that once again, the senate could be decided by Georgia.
The House of Representatives fared slightly better for the Republicans. Projections gave Republicans a massive majority after the midterms, but now, a week after Election Day, they have yet to take control of the House. As it stands, they are currently one seat away from the 218 seat majority, but that is underwhelming. 6 races that were projected to be won by Republicans were won by their Democratic opponent1. This is leading to the great question of what happened? How did the Republicans manage to sputter out so badly in the midterms? Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro calls this the “Red Fizzle” writing this in a piece for The Daily Wire that perhaps sums up the loss best:
There was no red wave. There was no red tide. There was no red trickle.
There was a fizzle.2
A Red Fizzle it was indeed.
In FiveThirtyEight’s final projection for the election, they called it as this:
Republicans have a 59 percent chance of winning the Senate and an 84 percent chance of winning the House.3
Now, the Republicans have a zero percent chance at the Senate. The results of the election however weren’t what you would have expected once we saw the election results in Florida. Marco Rubio (R) beat Val Hemings (D) winning 57.7% of the vote to 41.3%, or roughly 1.2 million votes. Republicans won 20 of the 28 house seats in Florida, and all of those came with over 53% of the vote. The biggest win however came in the gubernatorial race. Ron DeSantis (R), who many view as a potential 2024 Presidential candidate, defeated Charlie Crist (D) with 59.4% of the vote to Crist’s 40%, or 1.5 million votes. This election solidified Florida’s turn from a purple state that’s won elections and gave everyone a headache in 2000 to a GOP stronghold, potentially becoming as strong as California. This was massive for Republicans, however, as we all know that success did not continue into the night.
Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and John Fetterman (D-PA) narrowly won their senate races, defeating Blake Masters and Mehmet Oz respectively. These two races effectively ended Republican chances at the house. Several House Races that leaned Republican went blue. Despite all this, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) claimed victory for Republicans in the House early Wednesday morning. Regardless, many conservatives outside the political mainstream, like Shapiro, are wondering what happened.
The answers are intricate and nuanced, but three major takeaways can be examined.
The first of these is the presence is Donald Trump. While the former president holds massive amounts of sway among the Republican base, he is incredibly unpopular upon independents. This can be proven by close examinations of the senate races in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
The second of these is candidate quality. Several candidates, while being great people, are not good politicians. They have no major accomplishments to fall back on, nor do they have any major backing outside of a few sponsors. This can be seen once again in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but also in smaller races, like one of the House races in my home state of Oregon.
The third and final of these is the lack of a good clear message. Republican messaging was incredibly mixed, being between avenging the 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, to voicing concerns on immigration, inflation, and foreign policy. Republicans tried and failed to make the election a referendum on the Democrats because of their messaging. They shrugged off Democratic messaging because it was “fake news” or “lies”. However, the messaging by Democrats worked, and painting the current Republican party as the party of January Sixth, along with fueling outrage over the Dobbs decision, ended up saving them the Senate and lessening losses in the House.
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) authoring a federal abortion ban didn’t help Republicans either.
These three topics all warrant their own articles, which will be coming out this week (I gotta keep you all coming back somehow don’t I), and the answer to how did the Red Fizzle happen, will hopefully become a little bit clearer.
One thing is for sure however, nobody won the 2022 midterms. Democrats lost the House but gained in the Senate, and Republicans fizzled out at the worst possible time.
Thanks for reading! I am finally back and hope to be posting more articles now that football season is over. If you would like to see more articles like this one please subscribe, and let your friends and family know about my work if you think they may be interested. If you would like to share your thoughts, please consider leaving a comment. If you would like to read more, check out my September predictions for the midterms. Or why we need to unify the country. Thanks once again for reading, and have a great rest of your day!
“2022 House Election Live Results - 270toWin.” n.d. 270toWin.com. Accessed November 15, 2022. https://www.270towin.com/2022-election-results-live/house/.
Shapiro, Ben. 2022. “The Red Fizzle.” n.d. The Daily Wire. Accessed November 15, 2022. https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-red-fizzle.
Silver, Nate. 2022. “Final Election Update: The Forecast Is More or Less Back Where It Started.” FiveThirtyEight. November 8, 2022. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/final-2022-election-forecast/.