The Cook Political Report released this morning showed that Republicans had won 6 million more votes than their Democratic opponents but had only flipped nine House seats at the time that the report came out.
Republicans need to flip just 5 seats during Tuesday’s elections in order to win a majority in the House of Representatives.
So far three House seats, two in Florida and one in Virginia, have flipped to Republican control. Follow along for updates: https://t.co/7LzvU6uGKx
— MarketWatch (@MarketWatch) November 9, 2022
While it is almost a certainty that Republicans will take control of the House and that the Senate will most likely come down to who wins the Georgia Senate runoff, the numbers barely add up.
Coming into the midterm elections, Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and Presidency, and historically that should have led to Republicans winning a considerable number of seats. When you add to it that inflation was at a 40-year high, gas prices were almost doubled from the day Biden took office, and the political momentum had made a clear shift to the right in recent weeks, many people were predicting a “red wave.”
According to the AP, “The party in power almost always suffers losses in the president’s first midterm elections, though even if the GOP ultimately wins the House, it won’t be by a margin as large as during other midterm cycles. Democrats gained a net of 41 House seats under then-President Donald Trump in 2018, President Barack Obama saw the GOP gain 63 in 2010 and Republicans gained 54 seats during President Bill Clinton’s first midterm.”
The lack of success by Republicans in flipping seats has many second-guessing what could have been done differently and what needs to change moving forward.
Breitbart explains the mismatch of overall votes to actual results like this: “It reflects the polarized nature of congressional maps. It also reflects the fact that Republican losses against many Democratic incumbents were very narrow. However, it could also suggest that Democrats ran a more effective campaign, concentrating resources where they were needed to defend their vulnerable positions.”
