Midterm American elections 2022

[Tom_Mazanec]

My understanding is that when the White House changes Party, the new Party always loses seats in Congress and maybe State Houses. Is this true?
Anyway, discuss the next national ordeal here.

[The Walrus]

My understanding is that when the White House changes Party, the new Party always loses seats in Congress and maybe State Houses. Is this true?
Anyway, discuss the next national ordeal here.

Yes, this is true, and not just when the White House changes party.  The party that wins the Presidency almost always loses seats in the midterm elections. Over the past 5 midterm elections in which a Democrat sat in the White House, the Democrats lost an average of 28 seats in the House and 5 in the Senate.  For Republicans, it was 15 seats in the House, and 2 in the Senate.  The Senate is much more variable, as it depends on which Senators are up for re-election that year.  There are a few exceptions.  In both 1998 (Clinton) and 2002 (Bush), the party in power gained seats in both houses.  That is not the norm, as the only other year that the party in power won seats in the House during a midterm election was 1934! 

Most recently, during the first midterm in the Obama presidency, the Democrats lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats.  In 2018, the Republicans lost 41 House seats, but gained 2 Senate seats (only 9 of the 35 seats up for election were Republican held, and many of the Democratic seats were in states that Trump carried).  Therefore, expect the Republicans to gain seats in both chambers in 2022.

[Sciguy]

A google seach leads to a Wikipedia article that answers your question.  Try it and post your answer.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Thanks, Ken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_midterm_election

Midterm elections are sometimes regarded as a referendum on the sitting president's and/or incumbent party's performance.[5][6]
The party of the incumbent president tends to lose ground during midterm elections[7]: since World War II the President's party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House, and an average of four seats in the Senate.
Moreover, since direct public midterm elections were introduced, in only seven of those (under presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump) has the President's party gained seats in the House or the Senate, and of those only two (1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt and 2002, George W. Bush) have seen the President's party gain seats in both houses.

And also from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_elections

Also, https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20221108T00&p0=417&font=cursive

[wili]

This is good:

https://www.rawstory.com/radical-centrism/

...A rational observer might assume that the victory of a reactionary psychopath who upended all normative assumptions about politics would have introduced a little humility and introspection into the [Democratic] centrist consensus. That observer had best not hold her breath.

Biden hasn't even taken the oath of office, and the centrist crew, including Obama and Biden himself, are blaming the left for Democratic losses in the Senate, House and state legislatures, citing the activist call to "defund the police" as the primary reason for the party's poor down-ballot performance. There is no data to support this conclusion. If anything, the available evidence actually suggests that candidates with progressive positions outperformed the so-called moderates.

Lack of evidence has never stopped the centrists before. Now they've reached a point where information is an unnecessary impediment to their effort to overwhelm all legitimate political or ideological debate with a mélange of platitudes and bromides...

The RAND Corporation — hardly an advocate of socialism or Marxism — recently reported that from 1975 to 2018, the top 1 percent, taking advantage of tax policies, corporate welfare and other built-in benefits, took in $47 trillion — that's trillion, with 12 zeroes – that otherwise would have been distributed among the bottom 90 percent...

But the whole thing is great (and it's clearly opinion, so please spare me any comments about how this site is 'biased'...)

[Sigmetnow]

Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A.

Judith Tarr ⁦‪@dancinghorse‬⁩

Strong "Mom is on her last nerve" energy here.
 
Maricopa's election officials are pretty much all Republicans. Just so you know.

11/12/22, 10:05 PM. https://twitter.com/dancinghorse/status/1591628344478814208

 
Maricopa County ⁦‪@maricopacounty‬⁩  11/12/22, 3:26 PM.

VOTERS: All legal votes will be counted. Your vote will count equally whether it is reported first, last, or somewhere in between. Thank you for participating.

CANDIDATES: All legal votes will be counted, including votes for you. If you have the most votes in the final tally, you will be elected. If you do not have the most votes, you will have lost your election.
‬⁩
DISINFORMATION SUPER SPREADERS: Please read Arizona election law & the elections procedures manual before asking leading questions about how something seems suspicious. There are processes + checks and balances in place to make sure every legal vote is only counted once.
 
SOCIAL MEDIA BOTS: Your disapproval is duly noted but your upvotes and retweets will not be part of this year’s totals. This is not meant as an affront to your robot overlords, it’s just not allowed for in Arizona law.

11/12/22, 3:26 PM. https://twitter.com/maricopacounty/status/1591527778280935425

[Sigmetnow]

🚨 Big news.
 
Democrats Keep Control of Senate After Catherine Cortez Masto Wins Nevada Race
Victory over Republican Adam Laxalt gives Democrats at least 50 seats in Senate; House control still not decided
Updated Nov. 12, 2022

Ms. Cortez Masto had 48.7% of the votes with 97% counted when the Associated Press called the race, compared with 48.2% for Mr. Laxalt, a former state attorney general. Her win gives Democrats control of 50 seats, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking ties, even without a result yet from the Dec. 6 Senate runoff in Georgia.

The clearest consequence of the Democrats’ win will be to give Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) the power to confirm President Biden’s nominees without help from the GOP, extending a string of judicial confirmations that he pushed through over the past two years. Senate control also will allow Democrats to more easily confirm any new executive-branch appointees, including cabinet officials, who may have faced long odds if Republicans took control.

It also marks a major disappointment for Republicans, who had banked on a late-breaking “red wave” to catapult them to a majority of at least a few seats in the Senate, which has stood at 50-50 for the past two years. Ahead of Election Day, nonpartisan analysts had favored Republicans to win back the House, while considering Senate control a tossup.

Republican control of the Senate, coupled with expected GOP control of the House, would have given the party more power to try to roll back some of President Biden’s legislation and shape must-pass bills to fund the federal government or raise the debt ceiling.

With Ms. Cortez Masto and Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.) prevailing over Republican challengers, Democrats head to next month’s runoff in Georgia between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker with control already in hand. …

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-majority-rests-on-nevada-georgia-as-results-trickle-in-11668270190

[Sigmetnow]

Good news for democracy.
 
Election deniers lose races for key state offices in every 2020 battleground
The candidates could have gained power over election administration. Voters rejected them in the six most pivotal states.

Voters in the six major battlegrounds where Donald Trump tried to reverse his defeat in 2020 rejected election-denying candidates seeking to control their states’ election systems this year, a resounding signal that Americans have grown weary of the former president’s unfounded claims of widespread fraud.

Candidates for secretary of state in Michigan, Arizona and Nevada who had echoed Trump’s false accusations lost their contests on Tuesday, with the latter race called Saturday night. A fourth candidate never made it out of his May primary in Georgia. In Pennsylvania, one of the nation’s most prominent election deniers lost his bid for governor, a job that would have given him the power to appoint the secretary of state. And in Wisconsin, an election-denying contender’s loss in the governor’s race effectively blocked a move to put election administration under partisan control.

Trump-allied Republicans mounted a concerted push this year to win a range of state and federal offices, including the once obscure office of secretary of state, which in many instances is a state’s top election official.

Some pledged to “decertify” the 2020 results, although election law experts said that is not possible. Others promised to decommission electronic voting machines, require hand-counting of ballots or block all mail voting. Their platforms were rooted in Trump’s disproven claims that the 2020 race was rigged, and their bids for public office raised grave concerns about whether the popular will could be subverted, and free and fair elections undermined, in 2024 and beyond.

Election administrators and voting rights advocates said the rebuke of election deniers seeking state-level office was a refreshing course correction by U.S. voters, whose choice of more seasoned and less extreme candidates reflected a desire for stability and a belief that the nation’s elections are in fact largely secure.

“This was a vote for normalcy,” said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R), who prevailed against a Democratic opponent Tuesday after defeating U.S. Rep. Jody Hice in the spring primary. Hice, who was endorsed by Trump, spent the campaign attacking Raffensperger for refusing to block Joe Biden’s 2020 win in Georgia.

Voters “were looking for and rewarded character,” Raffensperger said. “They were looking for people who could get the job done. They rewarded competence.”

Elsewhere, the losers included Doug Mastriano for governor in Pennsylvania, as well as three candidates for secretary of state — Mark Finchem of Arizona, Jim Marchant in Nevada and Kristina Karamo of Michigan — all of whom sought to overturn the 2020 result. Losing gubernatorial contender Tim Michels in Wisconsin would have had the power to push a Republican plan to eliminate the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission and transfer election administration to the secretary of state or another partisan office. …

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/13/election-deniers-defeated-state-races/

[Bruce Steele]

Sigmetnow, I would tend to believe abortion was driving  the Dems to vote and maybe money issues were driving the Republicans. But most of us are weary of trump, trump, trump and the War in Ukraine tends to unite us. Maybe the middle is still possible?

“This campaign has, and continues to build, something new here in West Michigan,” she said. “A new political home for people on the right, the left, the center, who are tired of politics as usual, who are ready to cast aside the old frame of division, ‘us versus them,’ and join hands together for a better, brighter West Michigan for all of us.”

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/november/election-results-evangelicals-inflation-abortion.html

[The Walrus]

Sigmetnow, I would tend to believe abortion was driving  the Dems to vote and maybe money issues were driving the Republicans. But most of us are weary of trump, trump, trump and the War in Ukraine tends to unite us. Maybe the middle is still possible?

“This campaign has, and continues to build, something new here in West Michigan,” she said. “A new political home for people on the right, the left, the center, who are tired of politics as usual, who are ready to cast aside the old frame of division, ‘us versus them,’ and join hands together for a better, brighter West Michigan for all of us.”

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/november/election-results-evangelicals-inflation-abortion.html

I agree with you Bruce.  The Dems were running largely on two issues; abortion and anti-Trump.  This worked well in the midterms, but the party will need to come with other issues in two years (unless the GOP nominates Trump again).

[Sigmetnow]

A popular opinion I’m seeing is that (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell’s stacking of the Supreme Court with far-right conservatives who overturned Roe v. Wade cost the Republicans their Senate power — a decision that came from Republican voters as well as Democrats. 

The GOP went after the fringe voters, who cheered on leaders who speak their language for once — but thankfully the majority of the electorate said “that’s not who we are or what we want.”

The Dems don’t have enough lead in Congress to get done everything they want, but for many voters it was just essential to keep the Republicans from doing what they promised they would do — cut Social Security and Medicare, ban abortion nationwide,  “free up business” by eliminating consumer protections; let state governments choose who wins elections, instead of the voters, etc.