- by New Deal democrat
Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?
Before I return to my usual economic nerdiness, here’s a few graphs that have stood out to me so far about last night’s election.
First, it looks like Democrats outperformed the polling average by about 1%-2%. That was enough to carry a bunch of “too close to call” races across the finish line. How big a tsunami was it?
Well, Democrats in total outvoted GOPers by about 13%, the biggest such outperformance by either party since 1976:
So the framing that this election would be “2018+” appears vindicated, as well as that the GOP would suffer its worst shellacking since 1974. In that year, Democrats picked up 49 seats, which in modern times was only surpassed by the GOP pickup of 54 seats in 1994. It’s possible that could be surpassed this year, once all the votes are counted, but even if not, it will be a very large increase
Democrats now control every US Senate seat in the Northeast except for 1 in PA, and including the Great Lakes States, the GOP only has one each in OH and WI, as well as both in IN. Further, Democratic dominance in the Senate extends all the way down the Atlantic Coast to the FL State line, as well as the West Coast:
When we include control of State governments, here is the updated map we get:
The GOP is dominant in Appalachia, the lower Mississippi valley, the Gulf Coast, and the Northern tier of thinly populated mountain and high plains States, and almost nowhere else.
The biggest earthquake of all last night has to be Texas, where not only did we pick up the US Senate seat, but also the Governorship, and control of one of the two State Legislative Chambers. There is still work to do to pick up the second chamber, and of course the GOP “dummymander” is in place until we can manage a trifecta, or after the 2030 Census, whichever comes first.
Further, both NC and GA appear to be following VA’s trajectory on the East Coast. Although the NC Congressional “dummymander” backfired, with a majority of Congressional seats now held by Democrats, the state level legislative gerrymanders will still have to be overcome.
And finally, my pet project of Kansas bore fruit last night, with both the US Senate seat flipping Blue, and the Democrat also claiming victory in the Governor’s race. Only the lower House of the state legislature was up for election last night, and while the Democrats didn’t win, they broke the GOP supermajority.
Lastly, the generational shift to Democrats was also apparent last night:
When the younger Democratic cohorts come out to vote, Democrats win. Among older voters, the GOP majority isn’t so much the bulk of Boomers, but rather “generation Jones” and Gen-X, i.e., those people born in the 1960s and early 1970s who formed their core political beliefs during the Carter/Reagan/ GWBush years, and are at their peak propensity to vote now.
