The Americans cast their votes for the 2022 Midterm elections on November 8. However, even over two weeks after the elections, the final constitution of the Congress remains to be determined.
The GOP's underwhelming performance in the election wasn't the "thumping" nor the "shellacking" former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had received in the 2006 and 2010 midterms, respectively. But President Joe Biden's party ceded the control of the House to the GOP and, in the process, also lost several key constituents of its voting coalition.
The GOP failed to capitalize on a highly unpopular president’s near-bottom (37%) approval ratings. A bungled pandemic response by the Biden-Harris administration, historic inflation levels, food and energy security issues, and the looming threat of a nuclear war, too, failed to pay dividends for the GOP.
At the same time, Mr. Biden's party couldn't cash in on the perceived anger against the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade or by dangling an unconstitutional dole out of student loan forgiveness just before the elections. Nor did the calculated fear-mongering by the Democrats galvanize their vote bank.
Republicans still have a chance to make it a 50-50 Senate. In a solace to the GOP, they garnered over 4 million more popular votes (54,135,006 votes, according to the Cook Political Report) than the Democrats. They also turn several seats Red in the deep Blue states of New York and California. When writing for these pages, the GOP was one House seat away from the number of seats won by the Democrat majority in the outgoing Congress.
Democracy in Danger?
The Americans were bombarded with the message that the 2022 U.S. Midterm elections would be one of the most consequential in U.S. history. Democracy was also in “danger,” they were told by the President of the United States, no less.
Progressives frequently raise the bogey of "Democracy in danger" and other scare-mongering tactics. Mr. Biden had warned the Americans of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) crowd terming it "the most extreme" group in U.S. history. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, has repeatedly called Mr. Trump supporters "Domestic Terrorists." On covid, Mr. Biden had warned against a “dark winter” in America.
Progressives also whined about gerrymandering by state Republicans. MSNBC host Maria Teresa Kumar claimed that gerrymandering was the factor in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's (and the GOP’s) win in the Midterms.
The elections passed off uneventfully, save some malfunctioning voting machines and long lines that may have robbed many voters of their right to exercise their franchise. For example, voting machines at 70 of 233 polling stations in Maricopa county malfunctioned on election day, prompting the Arizona Attorney General to seek a formal explanation from election officials.
At the same time, gerrymandering isn't a Republican monopoly. Democrat-led gerrymandering has turned several states, such as New York, California, Illinois, etc., into single-party democracies. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called Illinois "a case study in how democrats change the rules to limit political competition and entrench one-party, public-union rule."
A Snail's Pace of Vote Counting
Delay in declaring election results clouds the credibility of the election process. The embarrassingly anemic ballot tabulation pace in some hotly contested seats left many races undecided beyond the third week after the elections.
Multi-day voting, mail-in ballots, same-day voter registration, etc., registration without ID, etc., complicate the tabulation of votes. Some Democrat-ruled states made the one-off unprecedented emergency covid election measures from 2020 permanent. In California, mail-in ballots postmarked by election day are valid even if they arrive a week later. Nevada similarly counts its votes. Alaska, on the other hand, has a ranked-choice voting system. All this adds to the confusion, at the very least.
Arizona law requires mail ballots marked by 7 PM on election day to be counted. But Maricopa county received 290,000 mail ballots. By law, no one can retrieve these ballots before the polls close and until all voters have left the vote center location. "After that, the ballots go through imaging and signature verification. According to the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, "Any signatures that are flagged can be fixed by the voter (or "cured," in elections lingo) until November 16, this coming Wednesday."
By contrast, Florida, a large-population Republican state, counted all 7 million votes within hours of the election closing.
Political Re-alignments
Minority and College-educated (4-year college degree) voters have been the backbone of the Democrat Party's electoral success in the recent past. However, Democrat's further leftward shift in recent years may have ended that streak. In the 2022 Midterms, the GOP increased its vote share among minority and college-educated voters to a level not seen in other recent elections.
Continuing with the trend started by former President Donal Trump, the GOP increased its vote share in most demographic categories. Compared to just four years ago, in 2018, Hispanic and Asian support for the GOP jumped 10 and 17 points, respectively, according to exit polls. While the blacks voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Democrats, "their vote share dropped 4 points since 2018," according to Politico. 14% of Black voters favored the GOP in 2022, compared to just 8% in 2020 and 2018.
A Wall Street Journal survey of nearly 115,000 registered voters revealed that more white women with a college degree supported the GOP in the 2022 Midterms than in the 2018 midterm and 2020 elections. Their votes had gone to the Democrats by 19 points in the last midterms and 21 points in the 2020 presidential election. That preference shrunk to a mere 6 points this year. An outright majority of white suburban women preferred the GOP over the Democrats by six percentage points.
After decades of being considered a loyal Democrat vote bank, Indian Americans, especially Hindu Americans, have started to seek new political allies. Events of the last few months - especially several Democrat lawmakers' support for anti-CAA and anti-Farm bill protests in India and the Teaneck (N.J.) Democrat's resolution comparing many US-based Hindu organizations to foreign hate groups - has given rise to a new Hindu political activism in the U.S. that may pave the way for a new political realignment.
As we analyze the outcome of the 2022 Midterm election, it is clear that the remaining two years of the Biden presidency will be a lame-duck for all practical purposes. The President's agenda would likely be sharply curtailed without GOP support, a support that will be much harder to come by with a GOP-majority legislative body. With Nancy Pelosi not seeking the leadership of the Democrats in the House and Mr. Biden's presidential run in 2024 in doubt, we can not overrule a churn in the Democrat Party leadership.