Yesterday, midterm election results started coming out, and while control of the house and senate have not been determined yet, there’s still a lot of takeaways.
- No red wave in the Senate. Coming into the elections, pundits on both sides – republicans and democrats – could agree that the Republican party would gain the house, and most likely the Senate. Now, a day after the elections, that doesn’t seem to be the case. In the Senate Elections, Democrats have flipped the Pennsylvania seat for the first time in 60 years, and incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly in Arizona has a 5 point lead. Furthermore, the Georgia race is headed to a runoff (that Democrat incumbent Raphael Wornock will likely win, considering he won a plurality in the preliminary race.) The only silver lining for Republicans in the Senate is that they have a narrow lead in Nevada. However, this lead could very well evaporate if more mail in ballots come in.
- No resounding Republican victory in the House of Representatives. Coming into the elections, the House was all but confirmed to go to the Republicans, however, the day after the elections, Republicans haven’t won the 218 necessary seats to win yet. While Republicans will still most likely win, it won’t be in the commanding manner people expected. Furthermore, Ultraconservative icon Lauren Bobert of Colorado’s 3rd district was projected to win her race by a large margin, however with 95 percent of the vote in, she is currently losing by 73 votes.
- A real red wave in Florida. Despite these midterm elections being largely disappointing for Republicans, they can look forward to what happened in Florida. There, incumbent governor and possible 2024 Presidential Election candidate Ron DeSantis won his race by almost 20 points, even winning the highly elusive Miami-Dade county. And this result isn’t limited to only the governor’s race: In the Senate Elections, incumbent Republican Marco Rubio also won by 16, also carrying Miami-Dade county. It seems like we could comfortably move Florida from the swing state category, to the red state category.
The takeaway: Pundit’s expected Republican’s to win handly. They didn’t. However, with failure, there’s always a silver lining, and with success, there’s always a place for improvement, as shown in the Florida elections.