Initial midterm election results are rosier than expected for Democrats, who appear poised to buck historical trends and avoid major losses in Tuesday’s races.
President Joe Biden told reporters ahead of Election Day that he was “optimistic” for Democrats. He hedged that he’s “at all times optimistic,” even within the face of projections that Republicans would take a commanding House majority and will wrest Senate control from Democrats as voters grappled with decades-high inflation. Biden reminded reporters of his confidence in post-election remarks Wednesday on the White House.
“I do know you were somewhat miffed by my obsessive optimism but I felt good through the entire process, I believed we might do positive,” Biden said. “While any seat lost is painful, some good Democrats didn’t win last night, Democrats had a robust night.”
As results are reported across the country Wednesday, it appears Biden was right to be hopeful.
“It’s probably the most successful midterm for a Democratic president probably in history and positively because the Second World War,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies on the Yale School of Management. “They still might lose control of each houses, nevertheless it’s hardly the ‘red wave’ that was being marketed within the media.”
Within the weeks leading as much as Election Day, Biden pleaded with voters to make the midterms a “alternative” for democracy and abortion rights fairly than a “referendum” on his first term. Modern U.S. midterm elections held after a recent administration are almost at all times a rebuke of the party in office, but despite economic concerns and the president’s low approval rankings, Democrats avoided major losses, said Jess O’Connell, a Democratic operative and founding father of NEWCO Strategies.
“While Democrats may ultimately lose the House, it can likely be by much lower than Republicans would want,” O’Connell said. “The outcomes to date don’t seem to be a repudiation of Biden’s presidency, in truth, the other. By all accounts to date, close results like this are really a win for Biden and Democrats given the heavily redistricted maps and economic headwinds they have been navigating coming into these midterms.”
The president completed lots of his campaign guarantees in his first two years in office, even checking off items like capping the worth of insulin that Democrats had tried to perform for years. Under Biden’s watch, Congress passed laws that aimed to handle climate change, provided Covid-19 relief funds and invested $1 trillion in infrastructure.
He also appointed the primary Black woman to the Supreme Court and has been a frontrunner on the world stage amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As well as, through executive motion, Biden pardoned federal offenders convicted of “easy marijuana possession” and made good on his promise to forgive $10,000 value of federal student loan debt for eligible borrowers, though that policy has been held up by legal challenges.
Pundits had predicted these wins can be overshadowed in voters’ minds by economic concerns as inflation, which the White House initially said can be transitory, became entrenched and rose to a four-decade high, pinching pocketbooks and increasing talk of a recession within the near future. The national average price for a gallon of gas was $3.80 on Election Day, in accordance with AAA. That is down from the all time high of $5 set in June, but still above the $3.42 average through the year-earlier period.
Biden acknowledged these issues in his speech Wednesday.
“Voters spoke clearly about their concerns about rising costs and the necessity to get inflation down,” Biden said. “About crime and public safety. They sent a transparent and unmistakable message that they wish to preserve our democracy and protect the proper to decide on on this country.”
Nearly every poll leading as much as Election Day showed voters listing inflation and the economy as their top concerns, but preliminary results show those issues didn’t completely eclipse fears around abortion rights and democracy.
“The story of 2022 is that the [Wade v. Roe abortion] decision did rather a lot to shut the keenness gap we were seeing a 12 months ago,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and publisher of the conservative-leaning publication The Bulwark. “There was a number of Republican enthusiasm which led to a giant turnout and Democrats were in a position to match that largely due to Dobbs Supreme Court decision. From there, it became a dogfight for moderates and swing voters. Ultimately candidate quality really was the decisive factor and abortion is woven into that.”
Longwell said that when she conducted focus groups, certain voters would discuss their concerns concerning the economy, inflation and crime, but they might still go for the Democratic candidate because they were concerned the Republican alternative was too extreme they usually used the candidate’s stance on abortion as justification for his or her decision.
“Yes, persons are down on Biden, they’re down on the economy, they’re saying this stuff at the highest, but once I ask them about what they’re voting on they are saying abortion,” she said. “For Republicans, it is a candidate problem and that is due to Donald Trump.”
While the president’s approval rating fell from a high of 51% in NBC News’ poll in April 2021, Biden sat near where the previous two presidents found themselves at this point of their first term. In probably the most recent NBC News poll released Sunday, Biden’s approval rating stood at 44%, compared with 46% for Donald Trump and 45% for Barack Obama of their final NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls taken before the midterm elections.
Early results, though, show Democrats far outpacing historic trends. Except for former President George W. Bush, the party of each president since former President Bill Clinton has lost between 40 and 60 seats within the House in the next midterm election.
“There is not any rebuke to Biden in any of those numbers. They might have been more triumphant, but no rebuke,” Sonnenfeld said. “The White House must have celebrated the very low unemployment and never have fallen into the trap of getting that defined because the source of inflation because there’s zero data to support that.”
