That strategy paid off on Tuesday, as Democrats fared much better than expected in a series of swing House races stretching from Rhode Island to Texas, denying Republicans a quick and large majority in the lower house. parliament provided for in the opinion. polls. Meanwhile, Democrats’ hopes of retaining control of the Senate were boosted after John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, narrowly defeated Donald Trump-backed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz. Pennsylvania is politically pivotal and symbolically important to Biden because he was born and raised in the state. The overall result was that Democrats managed to wrest something of a tie out of contests that seemed destined to give them crushing losses similar to those suffered by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton in their first midterm elections in 2010 and 1994. “Democrats defied history tonight,” said Ben LaBolt, a Democratic strategist and former senior Obama adviser. “The history of Joe Biden’s political career is that people always count on him and he always defies expectations, and these midterms are another example of that,” LaBolt said. Exit polls conducted for US television networks identified inflation as the top concern for voters. Biden has struggled to contain rising prices, with inflation running at 40-year highs for most of the year. The issue helped Republicans, and exit polls showed it was particularly important to them. But abortion came second after conservative Supreme Court justices in June struck down the constitutional right to an abortion. That suggests the issue played a role in limiting the electoral damage for Democrats, energizing their base and winning over surprise and first-time voters. The gender gap in the Pennsylvania race was telling: 57 percent of women voted for Fetterman, while just 43 percent voted for Oz. More broadly, Biden and the Democrats have been successful enough in branding Republicans as “extremist Muggles” — a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — to show that they were over-serving the unpopular and twice-impeached former president and his policies. . Although Republicans appeared to have momentum heading into Election Day as voters focused on their economic concerns, Trump’s re-emergence on the campaign trail alongside prominent candidates and his own strong hints of another run for the presidency in 2024 , would have helped their argument. “The case against Maga Republicans looks somewhat effective,” tweeted Neera Tanden, a senior White House adviser to Biden, as the results came in. The election result will likely spare Democrats and the White House the typical round of recriminations and introspection that would normally follow heavy midterm defeats. It could even leave Biden emboldened to move forward with his intention to campaign for a second term in the White House, which he had left deadlocked until the midterm elections. Recommended “This election is not the blowout that many expected,” said David Gergen, a former adviser to US presidents of both parties and now at Harvard University’s Center for Public Leadership. “Biden may well show up feeling better and say ‘I’m hanging in there.’ If Republicans win both the House and Senate — which remained unclear Wednesday morning with key races yet to be called — it would stymie Democrats’ remaining legislative ambitions and potentially lead to destabilizing clashes that could upset the markets and the economy. Handily re-electing popular Republican governors like Ron DeSantis in Florida, Brian Kemp in Georgia, Greg Abbott in Texas and Mike DeWine in Ohio will also be a reminder to Democrats that the Republican brand has only been partially tarnished by Trump . Many of these are considered viable, even preferred, alternatives in more conservative states. Big gains for Republicans in South Florida, including Hispanics in an area that has previously been a Democratic stronghold, will be of particular concern to Biden and his party. But concerns that Republicans would make big jumps among non-college-educated minorities, including black and Latino voters, were not what Democrats feared, prompting, if anything, laments from the GOP side. Mayra Flores, the House Republican who won her Texas seat in a special election in June and lost it Tuesday, said in a message on Twitter: “The RED WAVE did not happen. Republicans and Independents stayed home. DON’T MISS THE RESULTS IF YOU DIDN’T DO YOUR PART!” Democrats will have their own successes among state-level incumbents, including the re-election of Governors Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Gavin Newsom in California. Harvard University’s Gergen said one of the most important outcomes of the night was that even in a tense and highly polarized political environment — this being the first national election since 2020 and the Jan. 6 attack on Capitol Hill — the very voting process went smoothly. “It was not a night that seemed to threaten our democracy,” he said.
