Voters
turned out in massive numbers on Election Day to hand Democrats control of
Congress, in a sweeping snub of President Donald Trump and Republicans.
Democrats won several statewide races in places long considered GOP bastions,
including races that were considered insurmountable even weeks ago.
Democrats
took control of the House and Senate, flipping Senate seats in Texas, South
Carolina, North Carolina, Kansas and Ohio. The results reflected broad
dissatisfaction across the country with Trump, his agenda and the candidates he
had endorsed.
The
Conversation’s senior politics editor, Alfonso Serrano, spoke on election night
with Charlie Hunt, a scholar at Boise State University who studies Congress and
elections.
It
was obviously a strong showing for Democrats on Election Day, something that
was even evident in the margin of some Democratic losses. What does it tell
you, for example, that democratic socialist Angie Nixon fought a competitive
race for the Senate in Florida?
There is
this big uniform shift toward the Democrats that we’re seeing really across
virtually all kinds of locations and geographies and counties. What I think is
particularly notable here, and something we were on the lookout for in this
election, and we’re seeing it, is the substantial shift in the Hispanic vote
from 2024 in places like Texas and Florida, where you’re getting these 30-to-35
point shifts from how Donald Trump performed in 2024. That was a big part of
what helped him win, and it seems like it has snapped right back and even
farther in the other direction. This is what made Florida, I think, closer than
a lot of folks thought.
It’s
what put a number of really, really right-leaning districts in play,
particularly in South Florida. And it looks like it is going to help Democrats
keep the number of seats they had in Florida in the House that they had before
the election, which is incredible when you consider that Florida did this
mid-decade gerrymander to try to get them out of a bunch of those seats.
Some
rural areas of the country were also more competitive than expected, like North
Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, where Democrat Jaime Ager flipped a
conservative district. What does that tell you?
It’s
definitely an indicator of at least one of these two things. One is just really
massive Democratic turnout across the board. Regardless of where they live,
Democrats were so enthusiastic and energized to turn out that they did so
across all different types of districts and counties.
It could
also be an indicator of some cross-party voting, where Republicans are crossing
over in some cases and voting for the Democrat. I don’t imagine there’s a ton
of that, but in a lot of these close districts, and if you’ve got enough of
those folks in places like Texas, it really does make a big difference, those
small shifts.
I think
we’re probably also likely to see, and we saw some of this in the exit polling,
a major shift in independent voters, unaffiliated voters, toward the Democrats,
whereas in 2024 they had been closer to Trump.
I’d
like to go back to turnout briefly. Turnout looks like it was strong across the
country. In Georgia, for example, Election Day’s turnout was on pace to beat
turnout in the 2024 presidential elections.
That’s
unprecedented, at least in modern elections. In Texas, for example, in some
counties we saw James Talarico getting as many raw votes as Kamala Harris did
in a presidential election. This isn’t a very political science term, but
that’s insane. In a midterm election you typically see 10% or 15% less turnout
than you would in a presidential election. But Democrats voted in
presidential-level numbers in a lot of these really key areas, and that’s
explaining how they’re able to overperform at levels we haven’t seen in at
least 20 years.
Elon
Musk spent nearly half a billion dollars supporting Republican candidates,
including some US$200 million in Texas to elect Ken Paxton for the Senate, who
lost. What does that tell you about the influence of political spending?
Republican
PACs, super PACs and billionaire donors like Elon Musk may have raised more
money compared to Democrats, but Democratic candidates themselves outraised
Republican candidates through donors that gave directly to their campaigns.
This is
important for a couple of reasons. Number one, because candidates get much
better rates on TV ad buys than outside spenders. And so they get more bang for
their buck when they’re spending on advertisements, which is the most expensive
component of any campaign. And more to the point, that is an indicator of sort
of dedicated grassroots donors who turn into voters, whereas Musk gets one vote
at the end of the day.
And
there is no amount of money that can make up for a really flawed candidate like
Ken Paxton. And more to the point, a lot of this money, once you get into the
tens, the hundreds of millions of dollars, a lot of the research talks about
the diminishing returns that you get on that. Going from zero dollars spent to
$10 million spent, that’s a very different kind of campaign. But once you go
from $500 million to $510 million, that’s not going to get you a whole lot more
votes.
Any
final thoughts?
The
territory that Democrats covered is unbelievable. The South Carolina Senate
race went to Annie Andrews, the Democrat, which was unfathomable even a few
months ago. Mississippi still appears to be somewhat in play. The blue wave
turned into something approaching a tsunami. I think a lot of Democrats saw the
polling and didn’t want to believe it or couldn’t bring themselves to believe
it. But some of this late polling seems to have gotten things on the mark.
What
we’ve seen in these midterm elections is a massive rebuke of the last two years
of the Trump administration, and a sort of blue wave of epic proportions toward
the Democrats, the likes of which we haven’t seen in 20 or more years. It’s a
huge confirmation of the approach that Democrats took in this election.
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