Midterm Elections 2022: Results, analysis and highlights from key races

Turns out, a sense of imminent danger gets people to take action. 

Heading into this midterm election, 70% of Americans told pollsters they considered American democracy “at risk.” Biden placed democracy firmly on the ballot, but Democrats and Republicans differed on how that risk came about.

The immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade had Democrats and independent women motivated to vote. Something about rights you’ve taken for granted being under attack became motivating. 

The ongoing, unfounded conspiracy about stolen elections took over Republican Party narratives, with several election deniers running for office. But in the wake of no “red wave,” right-wing activist Roger Stone and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones opined online that the rampant belief in rigged elections may have caused Trump’s base to give up on voting entirely.

We are seeing a part of the electorate vote harder: Voters younger than 45 turned out in record numbers for Democrats. Independents, who historically go double digits away from the party that has the White House, also voted for Democrats. Black women and men voted more than 90% for Democrats. This is the winning coalition for Democrats, should they wish to grab it.

If Republicans found fears about crime an effective messaging topic this election season, they have New York City Mayor Eric Adams to thank. 

A former police captain, Adams campaigned in 2021 on helping New Yorkers feel safe walking around the city again, a crime-is-a-problem narrative that dominated right-wing media outlets. Adams vowed to “deploy more police officers in the streets and subways,” using his first major policy address as mayor to bring back a controversial undercover gun task force with “boots on the ground, on every block in the city.”

Images of police out in force in the big city, arresting people in the subways, flooded cable television. 

Based on the rhetoric from New York City Hall and Fox News, you would never know that murder rates were higher in so-called red states than blue. Murders increased five times more in Houston than in NYC. And while there is no evidence that bail reform leads to higher crime rates, voters have come to support criminal justice reform with “releasing criminals.”

In a polarized, anxious political climate, preying on people’s fears about crime will continue to be a winning message for Republicans — with many Democrats joining forces.

Zooey Zephyr just became Montana’s first out trans person elected to the Montana state Legislature and joined the incredibly rare ranks of out trans elected officials.

For context, out of 7,383 state legislators across the country, only 8 — or 0.1% — are trans, vastly underrepresenting trans and gender non-conforming populations. Around 1.6% of adults, overall, and 5% of young adults identify as nonbinary or transgender, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

In a tweet today, Zephyr described a moving moment she shared with a flight attendant, whose son is trans, after learning she won her race.

In the post, Zephyr explained that despite the extraordinary assault on trans people, both rhetorically and legislatively, she believes the advancement of trans rights and representation would prevail precisely because of the humanity she shared with the flight attendant in that moment.

Zephyr said the flight attendant explained the beauty of her son’s transition — “how much happier and healthier he is” — and the heartbreak it contained, too, given how socially and politically frightening it is for trans and gender non-conforming individuals. This is something I’ve written about, having recently come out as trans myself. My personal and individual euphoria was rivaled only by intense fears about my physical and emotional safety as trans people have become scapegoats and targets of the right. 

Zephyr concluded: “This is why we’ll win the fight for trans rights. Because we’re not a concept to be debated. We’re your family, your neighbors, your colleagues, & more. & if you don’t think you know us, rest assured — even 30,000’ in the sky — you’re never far from someone who cares about us.”

Democrats losing four U.S. House seats in New York isn’t a red trend, but it’s the one place where the Dems in Disarray narrative has born out. 

Democrats in the state are blaming, in no particular order: 

• Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo for appointing conservative judges who threw out the Democrats’ redistricting map
• State Senate Democrats for not leaving well enough alone, and instead tried to aggressively push for even more Democratic friendly districts, causing an independent mapmaker to settle district lines 
• DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney for choosing to run in his colleague Mondaire Jones’ slightly redrawn district, an area Maloney had never run in before
• Maloney’s choice to continue his power pit two Black progressive House members against each other, with Jones losing to Rep. Jamaal Bowman

The results? Democrats ended up competing in new turf in New York’s 17th Congressional District, as opposed to having a popular Black Democrat incumbent defend his seat. And the architect of Democrats’ efforts to keep the House is now the poster child for what happens when party bosses can’t make room for progressives. 

Derrick Van Orden, a Trump loyalist who rallied outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, won his U.S. House race in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District. Though yesterday was not a great day for Jan. 6 participants (14 of them reportedly ran for office), just one of them winning is a grim reality for America. 

Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL, was at the Ellipse for the pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6 and then made his way toward the Capitol as violence erupted.

Another GOP candidate with ties to Jan. 6 — former Trump adviser Max Miller  — won his U.S. House race in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District. Miller is believed to have met with Trump two days before Jan. 6 to help organize the rally.

Though the political horror of the day was dissected and processed by the exhaustive House Jan. 6 committee hearing, less widely discussed has been the trauma incurred by many members of Congress due to the events of that day. Having Van Orden and Miller as colleagues is both an insult and potentially retraumatizing. 

On the one-year anniversary of the insurrection, the Associated Press devoted a story to the psychological scars inflicted on elected officials. “Vividly they remember the loud, hornet-like buzz of their gas masks,” the AP’s Mary Clare Jalonick wrote. “The explosive crack of tear gas in the hallways outside. The screams of officers telling them to stay down. The thunderous beating on the doors below. Glass shattering as the rioters punched through a window pane. The knobs rattling ominously on the locked doors just a few feet behind them. And most indelibly, the loud clap of a gunshot, reverberating across the cavernous chamber.”

Many politicians called loved ones to say goodbye and were forced to return day in and day out to the site in order to do their jobs, which itself was distressing. 

“Just remember, we’re on the right side of history — if we all die today, another group will come in and certify those ballots,” Rep. Val Demmings, D-Fla., recalled telling her colleague in an interview with AP. 

Van Orden flipped the seat, defeating Democratic state Sen. Brad Pfaff, after Democrat Rep. Ron Kind decided not to run for re-election, while Miller won a safely red seat. Given the uncertainty regarding which party will control the House — and if Van Orden’s win will help achieve the GOP’s goal or if it is ultimately moot — it remains unclear how big of a role the two men will have in legislating. If Democrats are able to retain control, then at least their role will be comparatively diminished. But if Republicans keep control, Van Orden and Miller’s presence would be an even bigger insult to injury… not to mention an irony, given their rejection of the legislative and electoral process.

The latest votes to come in for Nevada’s Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, favored Democrats over Republicans by 2-to-1, which was exactly what Dems were hoping for. This is an encouraging sign for Democratic incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, who barely trails Republican candidate Adam Laxalt and hopes to make up the difference.

The combination of Las Vegas leaning blue and the fact that Democrats are more likely to mail in their ballots gives the party hope. This latest batch of votes is in line with these expectations.

The most recent batch of votes are in from Arizona’s closely watched Maricopa County, where Phoenix is the county seat.

About 62,000 new votes came in, of which 33,842 (or 55%) went to the Democratic incumbent, Sen. Mark Kelly, and 26,521 (or 43%) went to Republican candidate Blake Masters. As Steve Kornacki noted, the results increased Kelly’s small lead: Kelly picked up about 10,000 votes in the past hour and now has about 95,000 more votes than Masters.

In May, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi mourned the disappearance of an old, familiar foe: a respectable and sensible Republican Party.

“I want the Republican Party to take back the party. Take it back to where you were when you cared about a woman’s right to choose and you cared about the environment,” she said. “Here I am, Nancy Pelosi, saying this country needs a strong Republican Party … not a cult.” 

Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat who NBC News projects has won re-election to the House in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, expressed a similar sentiment Wednesday, except she voiced it as a kind of threat: “As much as I want to, I cannot fix the Republican Party. What I can do is, when they put up extreme candidates with extreme views, I can beat them over and over at the ballot box until they decide, as a party, that they must walk another path.”

“As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault,” said President Biden in his “soul of the nation” speech two months ago. “We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.” 

Biden made defense of democracy a centerpiece of his campaign, his time in office, and his closing statement to voters last week. The rude awakening of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol made the American public keenly aware of the lack of awareness of the functioning of our election process. 

Hundreds of Republicans who still refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the last election were on the ballot yesterday — some of them running for secretary of state, the office in each state that determines all local voting rules. Let that sink in: Election deniers were running to control how the rest of us vote.

So far, democracy is holding strong. 

In six battleground states, votes cast for democracy beat back election deniers and conspiracy theorists in key statewide positions. Democrats won the governorships in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Democrats won the secretary of state seats in Michigan and Wisconsin. The Republican governor and secretary of state in Georgia who famously bucked Trump’s conspiracy theories in 2020, refusing calls to change votes, were both re-elected. 

All eyes are now on Arizona and Nevada, two swing states where election deniers are still in the running to run elections.