Overview:
Why did the red wave fail to show up? We can thank Gen Z, pro-choice voters, and, ironically enough, Donald Trump.
The U.S. midterms are over, and this was a year like few others.
As of Sunday, November 13, a few races are still being counted. The Republicans are likely to take the House, but only by a razor-thin margin—and incredibly, Democratic control is still an outside possibility. Meanwhile, the Democrats will keep the Senate and could even expand their majority! That’s a huge prize, since it means President Biden can keep confirming judges and executive branch officers for the rest of his term.
At the state level, Democrats also did very well. Republicans will have a net loss of both governor’s seats and state legislatures. Michigan was a particular bright spot: Democrats swept the state, winning races for governor, secretary of state, attorney general, a majority of congressional seats, and the legislature for the first time in forty years.
This outcome defied the predictions. For months leading up to the election, pundits were forecasting a Republican sweep. And, it has to be said, they had history on their side.
Midterms are almost always bad for the president’s party. The exhilaration of seeing your candidate elected inevitably fades. Lofty campaign promises run up against the ugly reality that the American political system makes it almost impossible to get anything done. By two years into a presidential term, the incumbent’s supporters tend to be disillusioned and complacent. Meanwhile, the party that’s out of power is angry and motivated to take the country back.
Over and above this general theory, there were specific reasons to expect this election to be bad for Democrats. The economy is struggling: gas prices are high, inflation is hot, and a recession seems likely in the near future. Again, this is usually bad news for the party in power. Americans tend to hold the president responsible for how their lives are going—even if it’s because of economic factors he has no control over—and President Biden’s sagging approval rating reflects that.
And yet.
On election night, the red wave went missing. Instead, this was the best midterm for the president’s party since at least 2002 (when George W. Bush was riding a post-9/11 approval bump). Republican pundits who predicted an overwhelming victory were left with egg on their faces.
Needless to say, this shatters historical precedent. What happened?
Three reasons why Democrats won
There are analyses yet to be written about this election, including the role of nonreligious voters. However, there are three significant factors we already know:
- Americans turned out against Trumpism. Despite all the loudmouths who support him (and they’re extremely loud, no doubt about it), never forget that Trump and his cult are a minority. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by millions, only squeaking into office thanks to the anti-democratic electoral college, and in 2020 he was soundly defeated. However, the Republican party is still dancing to his tune.
It could fairly be argued that the public is too often apathetic and indecisive. Nevertheless, it’s clear that Americans are sick of Trump and all that he represents: his belligerence, his chaos, his flagrant lying, his willful cruelty, his brazen contempt for law.
In races all around the country, the far-right MAGA candidates he backed—the Trump-wannabes who tried to mimic his style—went down in flames. It’s likely that the January 6 hearings had a bigger impact than we thought in convincing Americans that Trump and his ilk are a threat to democracy.
- Reproductive choice was on the ballot. The Kansas thunderclap this summer hinted that the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade would loom over this election. Sure enough, it did.
Polls show that Americans back abortion rights by something like a 2-to-1 margin, but for decades, pro-choicers were a mostly-silent majority. Anti-abortion candidates thundered about “baby killers!” to rile up their base, while pro-choice voters yawned, assuming nothing would come of it.
Now that calculus has changed. People—especially women—know that the way they vote will have very tangible consequences on their lives. In every state where it was on the ballot, reproductive choice won hands-down, including Montana and Kentucky (!).
- Gen Z showed up. In 2022, voters under 30 turned out in record numbers, and they voted overwhelmingly blue. Meanwhile, older generations went Republican, and my generation leaned Democratic only slightly. If not for Gen Z, this election would have been much worse.
In response, some Republicans groused that the voting age should be increased to 21. (Why don’t they just try to raise the voting age to 60 and be done with it?)
The GOP has a demographics problem
The outcome of this election puts American democracy on a firmer footing. It cuts off several of the routes by which Donald Trump tried to steal the last one.
The nightmare scenario was that Biden would lose both houses of Congress in the midterm, then win re-election in 2024—only to have a Republican-ruled Congress vote to throw out the electoral college results and anoint Trump or someone else the winner instead. That would have been a constitutional crisis unlike anything since the Civil War. Progressives and nonreligious voters can breathe a sigh of relief that there’s now no chance this will come to pass.
This election has left conservatives in an unenviable position. It’s clear to the smart Republicans that Trump is electoral poison—but he commands the fanatical loyalty of the party base, and his stellar-mass ego won’t let him fade away quietly. If he runs again in two years, he could drag the GOP down to its third crushing loss in a row.
But even when Trump is gone, conservatives will have a bigger problem: they’re speeding toward a demographic brick wall. America’s political breakdown can be described as “white Christians versus everyone else”—and those white Christians are an aging, shrinking minority, while younger generations are growing more diverse, better-educated, more tolerant and more secular.
RELATED: America’s post-Christian future
It’s only America’s creaky, undemocratic electoral system that’s allowed Republicans to stay competitive as long as they have. But with every year, the tide turns against them a little more. The anti-vax conservatives continuing to die of COVID have only accelerated this demographic shift. Make no mistake, they still pose a grave threat to democracy—but their time is running out.