The Dig on The Red Wave... errr... The Red Tinkle?

Dig on America

The 2022 United States elections were a set of elections that were primarily (with the exception of absentee balloting) held on November 8, 2022. During this midterm election year, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate were contested. Thirty-nine state and territorial gubernatorial elections, as well as numerous other state and local elections, were contested. The results will determine the 118th United States Congress. This was the first election affected by the 2022 U.S. redistricting that followed the 2020 U.S. census.[1] A predicted red wave election did not materialize, and the race for U.S. Congress control has been closer than expected.[2][3][4]

While midterm elections often see the incumbent president's party lose a significant number of seats in Congress,[5] preliminary results instead saw Democratic Party candidates dramatically overperform these historical trends.[6][7][8] Meanwhile, Republican Party candidates that were backed by Donald Trump or that denied the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election underperformed compared to election analysts' predictions of a more Republican-leaning national environment and Republican expectations.[1][2] Both general turnout and among young voters (18–29) was the second-highest (after 2018) of any midterm since 1970.[9][10]

Issues that favored Democrats included significant concern over extremism and a lack of respect for democratic norms among Republicans, along with abortion rights and a potential Trump 2024 presidential campaign.[3][4][11] The elections continued trends starting in 2012, in which Republicans made gains among the working-class, especially whites but since 2016 also working-class minorities like Hispanics,[12] while Democrats continued to improve among affluent and college-educated whites.[2]

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