The 2022 midterm elections are here, as voters across the nation decide who will set the agenda in Washington and statehouses across the country for the next two years — and who will set the ground rules for 2024.
The House and Senate, where Democrats currently hold narrow majorities, are at the center of attention. Republicans need net gains of just one seat to win the Senate and five seats to win the House.
Governors’ offices – and control of the electoral machinery – are also on the line in a slate of states poised to play critical roles in the next presidential race.
Voters will make final judgments about the trends dominating the political landscape in 2022. Among them: Is a Democratic backlash brewing over the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade? Can the GOP build on its 2020 gains among Latino voters and reshape the battleground map in the process?
And will discontent with President Joe Biden and big challenges like inflation trump everything else, sweeping Republicans into office — or will voters reject some GOP candidates, giving Democrats some surprise wins?
Here are seven things to watch in Tuesday’s midterm elections:
Of all the major stories Tuesday afternoon, this is one that few Democrats dispute: It’s unlikely the party will control the Legislature in January.
Since Republicans only need a net gain of five seats to take the majority, the chances of the GOP taking back the House are high. The party is aggressive in House races across the country, but especially in areas Biden won just two years ago, including once-seemingly solidly blue areas in Rhode Island, New York and Oregon.
“If you knew nothing but that there was going to be generationally high inflation this cycle, you could predict that the party in power was going to have a tough election night,” said Tyler Law, a Democratic operative who worked as a spokesman for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018. “This certainly does not mean that Democrats will not exceed expectations. But we cannot ignore the macroeconomic trends that have shaped the cycle.”
The poll also boosts Republican confidence. In a CNN poll released this month, Republicans topped Democrats on a blanket question asking voters which party’s nominee they would support in their own House district 51 percent to 47 percent among likely voters, just outside of margin of sampling error of the poll. The general ballot question is often a key indicator of which party will have a better midterm night.
“Those odds would be zero,” Doug Hay, a longtime Republican strategist and former communications director for the Republican National Committee, said of the odds of his party not controlling the House in January. “If the Republicans only win seven seats, it would be a disappointment, but they would still have the House.”
If control of the House looks more like an inevitable loss for Democrats, control of the currently evenly divided Senate offers a surprising bright spot for the party — helped by voters who harbor unfavorable feelings about Republican candidates while also disapproving of his performance. Biden.
The most vulnerable Democratic congressmen are on the ballot in Nevada, New Hampshire, Arizona and Georgia, where polls show each of those races to be tight.
The party is aggressive in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two states that Biden won just two years ago. Even as party operatives have grown less confident about their chances of unseating Republican Sen. Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, the same operatives remain confident about Democrat John Fetterman’s chances of defeating Republican Mehmet Oz in the open Pennsylvania Senate race . The party also benefited from Republicans being forced to spend millions defending candidates in Ohio and North Carolina, two states lost by Biden that have seen stronger-than-expected campaigns from Democrats Tim Ryan and Cheri Beasley .
The outcome of these races depends on whether enough voters go to the polls seeking to punish the incumbent party, or whether their ill will toward unpopular Republican candidates can outweigh economic concerns.
For both Republicans and Democrats, the Senate race likely hinges on which party wins the contested and sometimes divisive Pennsylvania Senate race, a contentious race that has spent nearly $160 million in advertising spending since Labor Day, most other Senate competition.
Contests in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and several other states could have key implications for the 2024 presidential race as Republicans parroting former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread voter fraud seek to take over the electoral machinery. of these oscillating states.
The results in those states could have dramatic consequences in 2024, with Trump on the brink of another presidential bid and candidates in swing states looking for seats they could try to use to undermine the will of voters.
Republican gubernatorial candidates in these three states have challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential race. Arizona’s Kari Lake is one of the staunchest supporters of Trump’s election lies. Doug Mastriano of Pennsylvania, a state senator, transported people to Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, rally that preceded the attack on the US Capitol. In Michigan, a GOP ticket of election deniers includes Matt DePerno, an attorney general candidate linked to a string of possible election machine hacks.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has positioned himself as the last line of defense against a GOP overhaul of election laws that would impose new restrictions on mail-in voting, eliminate the state’s bipartisan election commission and more. Evers vetoed those measures in 2021, but Republican challenger Tim Michels could sign them into law. Or, if the GOP wins supermajorities in the heavily partisan Assembly and Senate — where the party already holds large majorities — it could simply override Evers’ vetoes.
Republicans have nominated 11 candidates who have rejected, challenged or tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election for their state election chief positions. Among them: In Nevada, Jim Marchand, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, released a campaign ad questioning the legitimacy of Democratic congressional leaders’ victories in heavily Democratic districts.
One of the most important questions Tuesday — one that could decide the outcome of a number of key races — is whether Republicans will build on the gains Trump made among Latino voters two years ago.
Three House races in the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley in Texas will tell part of the story. The area has historically voted Democratic, but it’s also culturally conservative, and Trump dramatically narrowed the Democratic margins there in 2020.
In the 15th District – drawn as the state’s most competitive – Monica De La Cruz is the most likely of the three Latina Republican candidates to carry her party to victory. But if the GOP manages to defeat two Democrats in neighboring districts — Rep. Henry Cuellar in the neighboring 28th District, which stretches from San Antonio to Laredo, or Rep. Vicente Gonzalez in the 34th District, which includes McAllen – will provide a clear sign. that the GOP has built on its gains in the district.
Latino voters also make up critical portions of the electorate in Arizona and Nevada, where governorships and Senate seats are up for grabs. Clark County, home to Las Vegas and historically a bulwark for Democrats in the state, could provide important insight into the makeup of this year’s electorate.
Another key place to watch: Miami-Dade County in Florida. Historically a Democratic stronghold — Hillary Clinton beat Trump there by 29 percentage points in 2016 — Trump made a huge splash in 2020, losing to Biden by just 7 points in the county. If Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who lost the county by 21 points in 2018, can pull even further from that margin or even win the county, it would mark a huge shift that could fundamentally change the political landscape in one of the most important oscillating states.
It may be a midterm election, but the impact on presidential politics will be dramatic.
That much was clear this past weekend, with the last three presidents – one current, two former – campaigning in Pennsylvania alone. Biden also made trips to New York, Maryland and California, among other states, while Trump spent the past week in Iowa, Florida and Ohio.
Their appearances on the campaign trail this week were both a possible harbinger of a 2024 rematch and a reminder of how midterm elections can affect a presidency. Although Biden told reporters in California that he believed Democrats would hold the House and pick up a Senate seat, Democrats in Washington have privately acknowledged how a Biden presidency would be reshaped by a Republican-controlled Congress, a lesson that Trump learned in 2018 when Democrats took control of the House.
“If we lose the House and the Senate, it’s going to be a horrible two years,” Biden said at a fundraiser on Friday. “The good news is that I will have veto power.”
It’s an argument former President Barack Obama, who has been floundering for candidates in Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Pennsylvania in recent…
