The US mid term elections 2022.

[yorksrob]

It certainly is. It's clear that the Republicans lost it (especially with the Senate) rather than the Democrats winning, but I think there's a lot to be said about how the Republicans organised themselves for the midterms as well. Putting up MAGA candidates hasn't helped them (the MAGA queen Lauren Boebert will only just scrape into the House, and she's probably toast in 2024), and they let Trump put unelectable MAGA candidates into races where they had a realistic chance of winning.

In particular, the Senate should never have been this close. Georgia will probably be lost (again), and controlling the Senate will make it harder for the Republicans to impose their agenda.

There is also an interesting subplot that I don't think has been mentioned enough: just how much money did Trump take from the GOP? It seems that the Republican campaign this year was underfunded, and if Trump has taken a huge amount of Republican donations into his political committee, then they might have similar problems in 2024 as well.

Perhaps American republicans just want a nice, normal president, like Regan or the Bush's.

 

[johnnychips]

I know I could Google it, but just for the benefit of other perplexed readers, what is MAGA, and what significance is it?

 

[brad465]

I know I could Google it, but just for the benefit of other perplexed readers, what is MAGA, and what significance is it?

"Make America Great again", which was Trump's 2016 campaign slogan and has since been used to describe candidates loyal to Trump and/or nationalist views in the US.

 

[johnnychips]

"Make America Great again", which was Trump's 2016 campaign slogan and has since been used to describe candidates loyal to Trump and/or nationalist views in the US.

I appreciate your rapid answer, and that now makes a lot of things clearer to me.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Perhaps American republicans just want a nice, normal president, like Regan or the Bush's.

This is why Trump is such a problem for them. He will completely trash the Republican party in 2024 if they don't make him the nominee, yet he's disliked and hated enough that he won't win against most Democrats.

DeSantis is their best hope, because while he says the right things to appeal to their radicalised electorate, he also doesn't have that huge negative baggage that Trump carries around. In a sense, what we have right now is a giant game of chess: Biden will struggle against DeSantis, but Trump won't let DeSantis run without scorching the earth beneath him. DeSantis himself has to decide whether he wants to risk losing to Trump in the primaries, because it might also derail any chances he has in 2028. Yet, Biden beats Trump, while the American people don't really want either of them.

I know I could Google it, but just for the benefit of other perplexed readers, what is MAGA, and what significance is it?

To explain more: to the extent that Trump has an ideology, then it can be described as MAGA.

 

[DelW]

"Make America Great again", which was Trump's 2016 campaign slogan and has since been used to describe candidates loyal to Trump and/or nationalist views in the US.

I appreciate your rapid answer, and that now makes a lot of things clearer to me.

The slogan and/or acronym is also plastered across the huge amount of merchandise that Trump has flogged to his supporters, probably very profitably to himself. It was alleged that much of it was made in China despite Trump's decrying offshore manufacturing, but I'm certainly not going to buy any of his cr*p to confirm that
Seeing someone wearing that clothing is probably a hint of their world view and level of education.

 

[Gloster]

To explain more: to the extent that Trump has an ideology, then it can be described as MAGA.

I would have thought that Trump’s ideology is more MMRAAA... (Make Me Rich Again And Again...).

 

[brad465]

This is why Trump is such a problem for them. He will completely trash the Republican party in 2024 if they don't make him the nominee, yet he's disliked and hated enough that he won't win against most Democrats.

DeSantis is their best hope, because while he says the right things to appeal to their radicalised electorate, he also doesn't have that huge negative baggage that Trump carries around. In a sense, what we have right now is a giant game of chess: Biden will struggle against DeSantis, but Trump won't let DeSantis run without scorching the earth beneath him. DeSantis himself has to decide whether he wants to risk losing to Trump in the primaries, because it might also derail any chances he has in 2028. Yet, Biden beats Trump, while the American people don't really want either of them.

Maybe it's now in the GOP's interests to let the criminal investigations into Trump proceed, as if found guilty and jailed he'd both be unable to run and unable to say anything publicly.

 

[Busaholic]

"Make America Great again", which was Trump's 2016 campaign slogan and has since been used to describe candidates loyal to Trump and/or nationalist views in the US.

And GOP stands for Grand Old Party, founded in the mid 19th century by anti-slavery activists and which became the Republican Party. What a turnaround from the Democrats being the Southern state racists and the Republicans the progressives!! Nowadays, I'd say GOP stands more for 'God's Own Party' as self-defined by the TV evangelist charlatans and their backers.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

And GOP stands for Grand Old Party, founded in the mid 19th century by anti-slavery activists and which became the Republican Party. What a turnaround from the Democrats being the Southern state racists and the Republicans the progressives!! Nowadays, I'd say GOP stands more for 'God's Own Party' as self-defined by the TV evangelist charlatans and their backers.

It's quite fascinating looking at the electoral map of the US to see how it changed in line with the Democrats and Republicans swapping positions. For example, this Wikipedia link has a map of the 1896 Presidential election results. It's almost the complete opposite of what you'd expect today: The deep South and the rural states in the middle at the time solidly Democrat, and the West and NE Coasts solidly Republican.

 

[Cloud Strife]

It's quite fascinating looking at the electoral map of the US to see how it changed in line with the Democrats and Republicans swapping positions.

Yes, it really is quite fascinating. Even if you jump to 1976, you can see that Carter won through a very impressive victory in the south, along with holding much of the North East as well.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 12 Nov 2022 ==

Maybe it's now in the GOP's interests to let the criminal investigations into Trump proceed, as if found guilty and jailed he'd both be unable to run and unable to say anything publicly.

It is absolutely in their interests. Trump suffering a tremendous fall and being taken out of the next election would allow the Republicans to adopt a far more sane approach to the elections, instead of having MAGA candidates wreck the primaries and then putting up a relatively poor show in the actual campaign. There is a curious problem with these MAGA candidates as well: they seem to do very well when fighting against their fellow Republicans, but then they get lost when they have to repeat it in the election.

I've also noticed that the Democrats appear to be (wisely) putting up conservative candidates against these MAGA figures, which seems to work especially well in suburban-rural districts.

That said, it is hard to appeal simultaneously to Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and a Republican candidate nowadays has to do all that in order to be elected President. Whether DeSantis can do that or not - in the way Trump managed to do in 2016 - remains to be seen.

I've read an article a while ago about this, and it pointed out that places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania weren't naturally Trump voters, but that the Clinton campaign made the fatal mistake of assuming that the Rust Belt voters would go to the Democrats regardless. It turned out that the critical 'small city' voters went to Trump because Clinton didn't focus on them, and so she lost the election. Biden didn't make the same mistake, and it delivered both states to him as a result.

The question is whether what works in Florida will work on a national scale. I think it will: he usually picks the talking points of the Republicans as a whole and then goes all-in on them, and from what I can see, he (astutely, from a political point of view) quietly works with the Democrats on issues that relate rather to Florida, such as disaster relief funding.

 

[MP33]

There is a photograph of a Trumpanze, as they call them over there. With a number plate on their car of MAGA4547.

 

[Busaholic]

There is a photograph of a Trumpanze, as they call them over there. With a number plate on their car of MAGA4547.

Trumpanzee. An insult to primates.

 

[brad465]

Nevada Senate seat projected for Democrats, ensuring they retain control of the Senate.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Nevada Senate seat projected for Democrats, ensuring they retain control of the Senate.

Quite astonishing that they've potentially gained a Senate seat in the midterms. Regardless of how you spin it, this was a huge loss for Trump.

The House elections are on a knife-edge as well now. Most observers seem to agree that the Republicans will still win, but with a tiny majority. From my own calculations, it looks like the Democrats should reach 215, and 218 will hinge on some specific circumstances that don't seem very probable, such as Boebert losing badly among the overseas/military vote. If the Republicans do indeed only have a majority of 2 or 3, then they really will struggle to do much in this term, because they'll be held up by the Trumpist radicals who won't let the moderate Republicans pass legislation.

Incidentally, in the Georgia Senate race, it's as I thought: Walker did very, very poorly among suburban Atlanta voters. Unless the Democrats simply don't turn up in the run-off, they should reach 51 in the Senate, giving them some breathing room.

 

[brad465]

Quite astonishing that they've potentially gained a Senate seat in the midterms. Regardless of how you spin it, this was a huge loss for Trump.

The House elections are on a knife-edge as well now. Most observers seem to agree that the Republicans will still win, but with a tiny majority. From my own calculations, it looks like the Democrats should reach 215, and 218 will hinge on some specific circumstances that don't seem very probable, such as Boebert losing badly among the overseas/military vote. If the Republicans do indeed only have a majority of 2 or 3, then they really will struggle to do much in this term, because they'll be held up by the Trumpist radicals who won't let the moderate Republicans pass legislation.

Incidentally, in the Georgia Senate race, it's as I thought: Walker did very, very poorly among suburban Atlanta voters. Unless the Democrats simply don't turn up in the run-off, they should reach 51 in the Senate, giving them some breathing room.

NBC have a projection that has been updated to currently stand at D-216 vs R-219, with a margin of error of +/- 4 seats.

What was also interesting was the Washington 3rd District seat flipped to Democrat yesterday, where the Republican incumbent was defeated in the primary (for voting to impeach Trump), and Joe Kent won as candidate, who has now been defeated, despite the probability of a Democrat win here of just 2%. If there was one case that sums up how Trump's MAGA ideology is becoming toxic to the Republicans, it's arguably this specific result.

 

[Gloster]

The elections are definitely a good result for the Democrats, even if the Republicans take the House of Representatives. My feeling is that Trump/MAGA has galvanised many soft Democrat and swing voters into voting Democrat, while many soft Republicans have either switched or withheld their votes. However, it appears that the Trump/MAGA camp are already making clear that they believe that the failure is due to the more moderate wing of the GOP doing or not doing...well, something or other which they hate. Another step on the war in the party, but I fear the right will win it, at least as far as the party is concerned.

 

[Busaholic]

Quite astonishing that they've potentially gained a Senate seat in the midterms. Regardless of how you spin it, this was a huge loss for Trump.

How very dare you?! The great man had already announced that if they 'won big' it'd be all down to his inspirational magnetism, but if they lost it'd have nothing to do with him. He has, by the way, only tomorrow nowto obey the summons to attend the Jan 6th hearings - he thought the midterm results would ensure the order got rescinded, now that's by no means certain.

 

[Cloud Strife]

The elections are definitely a good result for the Democrats, even if the Republicans take the House of Representatives. My feeling is that Trump/MAGA has galvanised many soft Democrat and swing voters into voting Democrat, while many soft Republicans have either switched or withheld their votes. However, it appears that the Trump/MAGA camp are already making clear that they believe that the failure is due to the more moderate wing of the GOP doing or not doing...well, something or other which they hate. Another step on the war in the party, but I fear the right will win it, at least as far as the party is concerned.

Yes, it really does seem as if soft Republican voters simply stayed away, or even switched sides in order to deal a blow to MAGA candidates. It's very clear that Trump's position is considerably weaker than it was a week ago, but it's hard to imagine him surrendering now. I could see him going on a massive tour to really hurt DeSantis, while knowing that DeSantis can't leave 'the day job' without angering Florida voters.

As an aside, looking at the House maps, what an absolute disgrace gerrymandering is. IL-13 is a textbook example, but there's also an example in Alabama where they managed to put all the Black voters into a single district.

 

[nw1]

And GOP stands for Grand Old Party, founded in the mid 19th century by anti-slavery activists and which became the Republican Party. What a turnaround from the Democrats being the Southern state racists and the Republicans the progressives!! Nowadays, I'd say GOP stands more for 'God's Own Party' as self-defined by the TV evangelist charlatans and their backers.

Indeed, Abraham Lincoln is testament to that. Couldn't get a more different person to Donald Trump!

 

[MikeWM]

There's something really quite problematic with US elections at this point though, the electoral system doesn't have the confidence of a large part of the population - which is a dangerous state of affairs, but one that I think feels somewhat justified when you look at the issues.

It may be entirely legitimate and above-board in the end, but look at what happened in Nevada from an objective standpoint. One candidate was well ahead after election night. Late *on the following day*, they finally announced how many votes were outstanding to count. Then each day they counted a fraction of those, and on each of these daily drops the candidate who was behind got a much larger proportion of that vote drop than they had in any of the other parts of the election process. After a 3-4 days of this happening, the candidate who was behind managed to get in front by a few tenths of one percent, at which point they decided all the votes had been counted and that person had won.

As I say, that may be how these elections are 'supposed' to work given the laws of the state, but it sounds rather more like what you'd expect in a banana republic.

And as for California, which almost a week on still has a number of Congressional Districts that haven't even counted 50% of the votes yet...

As an aside, looking at the House maps, what an absolute disgrace gerrymandering is. IL-13 is a textbook example, but there's also an example in Alabama where they managed to put all the Black voters into a single district.

Though in the end it appears that Republicans got between 4 and 5 million more votes in total than Democrats in this election. It just hasn't turned into seats for whatever reason. I used to think it was the Republicans that were doing most of the gerrymandering, but given they haven't managed to turn votes into seats, maybe not. Or they're really bad at it!

 

[nw1]

Though in the end it appears that Republicans got between 4 and 5 million more votes in total than Democrats in this election. It just hasn't turned into seats for whatever reason.

It's just the American system, I guess. Remember it worked the other way in 2016, when Clinton got more votes than Trump

 

[DynamicSpirit]

There's something really quite problematic with US elections at this point though, the electoral system doesn't have the confidence of a large part of the population - which is a dangerous state of affairs, but one that I think feels somewhat justified when you look at the issues.

It may be entirely legitimate and above-board in the end, but look at what happened in Nevada from an objective standpoint. One candidate was well ahead after election night. Late *on the following day*, they finally announced how many votes were outstanding to count. Then each day they counted a fraction of those, and on each of these daily drops the candidate who was behind got a much larger proportion of that vote drop than they had in any of the other parts of the election process. After a 3-4 days of this happening, the candidate who was behind managed to get in front by a few tenths of one percent, at which point they decided all the votes had been counted and that person had won.

I'm pretty sure it was all legitimate: At the point you're describing, the authorities did not officially decide one candidate had won - that only happens once all the votes have been counted. What's happening is that in the USA, the counting results so-far are made public at intervals throughout the count. That allows media organisations to analyse the partial results and then use statistical techniques combined with a knowledge of which votes have not yet been counted (which geographical areas, etc.) to make predictions about who is (probably) going to win. So when you heard that Nevada had been 'called' for the Democrat candidate, that didn't mean the Democrat had officially won: It simply meant that the main media organisation doing the analysis now felt they had enough information from the partial results to be extremely confident that the Democrat candidate would win - confident enough to stake their reputation on 'calling' the result. I believe that was because at that point, the Democrat had overtaken or almost overtaken the Republican in votes, and they knew that the remaining votes to be counted were from strongly Democrat areas. The media groups that call the results are very experienced, so their predictions are almost invariably correct, although occasionally they do get it wrong (As I recall, in the US Presidential election in 2000, several organisations called Florida for Al Gore. It later turned out - when the last few votes had been counted - that they were wrong and George W Bush had just got ahead).

So - yes it is all above board. Sadly, though, it will look suspicious to anyone who doesn't understand how it works and what 'calling' for a candidate means - which is part of the reason why it's been so easy for Trump supporters to make baseless claims of fraud.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 14 Nov 2022 ==

Though in the end it appears that Republicans got between 4 and 5 million more votes in total than Democrats in this election. It just hasn't turned into seats for whatever reason. I used to think it was the Republicans that were doing most of the gerrymandering, but given they haven't managed to turn votes into seats, maybe not. Or they're really bad at it!

Where did you read that the Republicans got more votes? And is that figure talking about the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the various State elections? I haven't seen any figures for this election, but I would be extremely surprised if the results had over-represented the Democrats because in the US it's invariably the opposite: Gerrymandering and the distribution of States vastly favours the Republicans, so it's almost always the Republicans who get more seats than they argualby should get if you're going by numbers of votes.

 

[MikeWM]

It's just the American system, I guess. Remember it worked the other way in 2016, when Clinton got more votes than Trump

...or indeed 2000, when Gore got more votes than Bush.

It seems to me to be a very big problem for a democracy when 4 of the last 6 major elections are looked at by many with serious question as to whether they were fairly conducted (2000 in Florida, 2004 in Ohio, 2016 with 'Russia', 2020 in various places). The recent 'innovations' with postal votes, drop boxes, counting going on for weeks, and voting opening many weeks before election day, have really not helped, in fact they've made the problem significantly worse.

And look at Arizona, for example, where one of the two candidates for Governor is the person responsible for overseeing the election and certifiying the result. That doesn't inspire confidence in a fair election, whether it is actually conducted fairly or not.

--

So - yes it is all above board. Sadly, though, it will look suspicious to anyone who doesn't understand how it works and what 'calling' for a candidate means

You're correct about the difference between the 'authorities' and the media - I think I was ambiguous about the use of 'they' in what I posted. I'm rather more concerned about things such as only declaring how many ballots are left to count 24 hours after voting has finished and the majority have been already counted - it shouldn't be too hard to see what that could be a major risk of fraud, even if it didn't happen in this particular case.

I would also say look at Florida. Elections there were deeply problematic in the past, as we know - but they've fixed their systems, and this year managed to count 99% of votes on the night, then have a hurricane, and then rebuild various roads destroyed in the hurricane, all before parts of California have even managed to count 50% of the vote!

Where did you read that the Republicans got more votes? And is that figure talking about the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the various State elections? I haven't seen any figures for this election, but I would be extremely surprised if the results had over-represented the Democrats because in the US it's invariably the opposite: Gerrymandering and the distribution of States vastly favours the Republicans, so it's almost always the Republicans who get more seats than they argualby should get if you're going by numbers of votes.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/charts/house-charts/national-house-vote-tracker/2022

has the Republicans on about 5 million more votes than the Democrats in votes for the House, 51.7% vs 46.8%.

I agree that my perception was always that gerrymandering favoured the Republicans, but it appears not after all.

 

[Busaholic]

Everyone seems to be expecting Trump to announce tomorrow that he will be seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 Presidential election: everybody bar one, and his name is Michael Cohen. For those unaware of his significance, he was one of Trump's attorneys both before and after the 2016 election, and was prosecuted, found guilty and jailed for tax evasion and violations of campaign monies in 2018-9. It appeared at the time that he was a fall guy for Trump himself, and this was confirmed as soon as he was released. Ever since, he has been intent on revenge against Trump personally, and he is no fool. He obviously has many covert and a few overt people helping him with inside information, but it's his latest opinion that is particularly interesting, as he is insisting that Trump will not be making that statement tomorrow, and maybe never. He reckons that, privately, Trump is already saying that perhaps he ought to wait for the Georgia senate result, a red herring if ever there was one, and totally contrary to his usual ignoring of due protocol. He actually said on NBC that 'there's no diaper large enough to cope with what is seeping from Trump' with his 'fragile ego'! If he is right, it'll be a turn-up for the book, to say the least.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You're correct about the difference between the 'authorities' and the media - I think I was ambiguous about the use of 'they' in what I posted. I'm rather more concerned about things such as only declaring how many ballots are left to count 24 hours after voting has finished and the majority have been already counted - it shouldn't be too hard to see what that could be a major risk of fraud, even if it didn't happen in this particular case.

Isn't the declaring how many ballots some time after voting has finished an inevitable consequence of allowing postal votes that have been posted on or before the election but arrive later? You won't therefore know how many postal ballots will turn up until the cut-off date for receiving them has passed. Offhand I can't see how that could lead to much risk of fraud - provided of course there are robust process for receipt and processing of ballot forms, and candidates' representatives are allowed to view the process.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/charts/house-charts/national-house-vote-tracker/2022

has the Republicans on about 5 million more votes than the Democrats in votes for the House, 51.7% vs 46.8%.

I agree that my perception was always that gerrymandering favoured the Republicans, but it appears not after all.

Thanks! OK, that looks like a genuine, unbiased report. I am a bit surprised by that, although I would note that the Republicans are ahead in both seats and votes for the House, so in that sense the results are 'correct', although all things being equal, you'd expect the Republicans to be further ahead in seats based on those votes. I don't have any reason to doubt that it's mainly Republican states that do gerrymandering of house seat boundaries - that seems to be well documented, and would certainly favour the Republicans. So something else about the geographical vote distribution must be disfavouring them in this election. It would need quite a detailed analysis to figure out what that is, but off the top of my head I wonder whether it's to do with the Republican support often being more geographically concentrated than Democrat support?

 

[brad465]

Another matter that can delay election results is that different states are allowed and have different rules regarding how results are declared and set conditions based on certain result scenarios. For example, Georgia's Senate seat rules require a run-off between the top 2 candidates if no candidate reaches 50%, which is happening next month, while in Nevada the Senator has been projected re-election despite not reaching 50%. Also, in Colorado, if the vote margin is less than or equal to 0.5% separating first and second, a mandatory recount takes place, which is happening in the 3rd district where Lauren Boebert is the incumbent (this particular result was much closer than anticipated).

 

[Cdd89]

One notable thing is that the previous election results were before the denials that they had lost the election and the Jan 6th capitol incident. I expect a number of 2020 Republican voters pretty immediately regretted their vote when they saw how Trump reacted to defeat, and nothing has really happened on the republican side to win them back (other than disaffection and worsening economic conditions under the Democrats).

Thus there may be a bigger change in the Republican result than appears.

 

[MikeWM]

Isn't the declaring how many ballots some time after voting has finished an inevitable consequence of allowing postal votes that have been posted on or before the election but arrive later? You won't therefore know how many postal ballots will turn up until the cut-off date for receiving them has passed. Offhand I can't see how that could lead to much risk of fraud - provided of course there are robust process for receipt and processing of ballot forms, and candidates' representatives are allowed to view the process.

I'm not sure why you need to allow 'arriving later' though in the first place. We don't in the UK.

Much of the griping over the 2020 election involved this process - the postmarks and the drop-boxes. Whether that was reasonable griping or not has of course been much debated, but it seems an unnecessary thing to do in the first place, and it does give some traction to those who try to cast doubt, so it seems a simple thing to change back to improve confidence in the process.

Thanks! OK, that looks like a genuine, unbiased report. I am a bit surprised by that, although I would note that the Republicans are ahead in both seats and votes for the House, so in that sense the results are 'correct', although all things being equal, you'd expect the Republicans to be further ahead in seats based on those votes. I don't have any reason to doubt that it's mainly Republican states that do gerrymandering of house seat boundaries - that seems to be well documented, and would certainly favour the Republicans. So something else about the geographical vote distribution must be disfavouring them in this election. It would need quite a detailed analysis to figure out what that is, but off the top of my head I wonder whether it's to do with the Republican support often being more geographically concentrated than Democrat support?

I'm guessing it could be that (in much the way Labour in 2017 and 2019 piled up votes in safe seats in London and the North-West, so the number of seats won was well below what their vote share would imply). I'm not sure why that would affect Republicans more than Democrats though - as you say, you'd need a detailed analysis to really work this one out.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I'm not sure why you need to allow 'arriving later' though in the first place. We don't in the UK.

No, and from a UK perspective, it does seem unnecessary. I think there may be issues that the US postal service is possibly less reliable, and slower, than in the UK, which makes it easier for us to insist on ballot papers arriving before election day. But at any rate, it's something that many US states have been allowing for years, without any controversy until Trump and his supporters decided to try to discredit elections that they lost in.

I'm guessing it could be that (in much the way Labour in 2017 and 2019 piled up votes in safe seats in London and the North-West, so the number of seats won was well below what their vote share would imply). I'm not sure why that would affect Republicans more than Democrats though - as you say, you'd need a detailed analysis to really work this one out.

My suggesting that the Republican vote is more concentrated is just from my personal ad hoc observation. I've noticed over a few elections when looking at the results for the Senate (which correspond to state boundaries so can't be gerrymandered) that it's not at all uncommon for Republicans to get >60% of the vote in lots of states, but it seems much less common that the Democrats get over 60% in their states - they more typically seem to win lots of states with 55-60% of the vote. That suggests to me that Republican support is more concentrated. (Although to be fair, that may also be a consequence of Republican-leaning states tending to be smaller).