As partisans and pundits digested the shock of the 2022 midterm elections on Wednesday, some new themes emerged. Finger-pointing among Republicans. Mixed results for election deniers. The return of choosy voters. And a more nuanced picture on the impact of abortion.
Here are four fresh takeaways on the first full day of reckoning for both parties:
Trump had a bad day.
Many Republicans lit up cable news and conservative websites on Wednesday with withering criticism of the former president they once championed — and, in some cases, worked to elect or defended once in office.
It was clear that many in the G.O.P. political class were angry about the outcome of an election they assumed would go much better for their side. It was far less clear whether their fury was shared by Republican voters — or the man in Mar-a-Lago, who congratulated himself from a “personal standpoint” as he grudgingly acknowledged a “somewhat disappointing” election in general.
But Republican operatives, using words like “disaster” or “debacle” and making unflattering comparisons between former President Donald J. Trump and various circus acts, anvils, mental patients and even the Pied Piper of Hamelin, lashed the head of their party and openly wished for someone to seize his crown.
Some Republican operatives even said they were reconsidering pursuing jobs with the third Trump presidential campaign, they reported — as others urged him to delay an announcement until after the runoff election for Senate in Georgia.
“He needs to put it on pause, absolutely,” Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump White House press secretary, said on Fox News. “If I’m advising any contender, no one announces 2024 until we get through Dec 6.”
Voters rejected election deniers in several big races.
What Democrats called the “Big Lie” was a big dud at the polls.
In several battleground states, voters rejected Republican candidates for statewide offices who had sown doubts about the 2020 election. In races for governor in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, they shunned State Senator Doug Mastriano, who organized buses for the Jan. 6, 2021, rallies in Washington, and Tim Michels, who didn’t go quite as far. Another election denier backed by Trump, Tudor Dixon, lost in Michigan.
Swing-state voters seemed especially reluctant to hand allies of Mr. Trump the keys to the election machinery itself. They rejected Trump-backed candidates for secretary of state in Michigan, New Mexico and Minnesota, although closely watched races in Arizona and Nevada remained too close to call as of Wednesday.
But they weren’t repudiated everywhere. So far, at least 210 Republicans who have questioned President Biden’s legitimacy have won seats in the House and Senate or state races for governor, secretary of state and attorney general.
Ticket-splitters forged a comeback.
“Candidate quality” can be a nebulous concept — the kind of thing where you know it when you see it. But as of Wednesday evening, the midterm results offered preliminary signs that hundreds of thousands of both Republican and Democratic voters distinguished between candidates in their own parties whom they deemed worthy and not. In a deeply partisan age, it was one of the election’s most striking developments.
Take Pennsylvania. As of Wednesday evening, 2,462,615 votes had been counted for Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who lost his race to Lt. Gov. John Fetterman. But just 2,217,847 Pennsylvanians chose Mastriano — a drop-off of more than 200,000 votes.
Or consider New Hampshire, whose flinty voters pride themselves on being less partisan than the average bear. A popular Republican governor, Chris Sununu, bested his Democratic opponent by racking up 343,551 votes. At the same time, just 268,990 New Hampshire voters pulled the lever for Don Bolduc, the Republican nominee for Senate.
Ticket-splitting cut both ways, however. In Georgia, for instance, 1,941,499 voters chose Raphael Warnock, the Democrats’ nominee for Senate. But only 1,809,522 picked Stacey Abrams, the Democrat who failed to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp.
Abortion mattered, but not always in the same way.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer, it jolted a midterm campaign that was trending Republicans’ way. But it didn’t affect all states equally. In some, like Michigan and Wisconsin, decades-old bans suddenly become law. Others, like Massachusetts and Nevada, had already protected the practice.
Those differences might help explain the Democratic gains in states like Michigan, where voters passed a ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in their state constitution. Or the survival of Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Laura Kelly of Kansas. And it may be a factor in the upsets Republicans pulled off in several House districts in New York, where Democrats already controlled the legislature and the governor’s mansion.
In states under firm Democratic control, Republican candidates for governor said they wouldn’t touch the subject. And it nearly worked. Lee Zeldin ran an ad promising, “I will not change and could not change New York’s abortion law” if he dethroned Gov. Kathy Hochul. Christine Drazan, who put a scare into Democrats in Oregon, told a public radio station: “Roe is codified into Oregon law. Regardless of my personal opinions on abortion, as governor, I will follow the law.”
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November 10, 2022 at 08:00AM
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What We Know Now About the Midterms: Election Deniers, Trump and More - The New York Times
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