What Happened in the 2022 elections? In close states Dems did well, and it looks good for 2024

Wanted to give attention to a great analsys by the Catalist group that gives their interpretation on the results of the 2022 elections. Catalist digs into who actually voted in 2022, and then they use that information along with the results from communities to figure out how various demographics voted in those elections.

The What Happened project involves dozens of staff at Catalist across a range of expertise as well as input from partner organizations with deep experience in data related to specific constituency groups. Team members acquire voter file data from all 50 states and Washington, DC, including local and county-level data, as well as precinct-level election results. Data scientists and other technical experts standardize and process these data across the voter file, including running data through record-linkage algorithms and relating commercial, Census and other data back to voter file records. Using precinct-level voting records, survey data and other Catalist data and models, data scientists carefully reconstruct What Happened in a given election based on all available data, building up from the precinct level and down from national results to build a coherent view of the electorate.

And Catalist uses that information to note that 2022 was basically a "split-decision" election. The overall numbers may have indicated a Republican-leaning year, but not in the races that were up for grabs.

...in 2022, there was no national wave in either direction. Instead, Republicans enjoyed an overall advantage nationally, but Democrats outperformed them in highly contested races, where Democratic turnout and support levels were higher.

In the elections for the House of Representatives, Democrats received 49% of the two-way national vote, a 3-point drop compared to the 2020 election results at both the Presidential and House levels. However, in the most heavily-contested House races — those rated by the non-partisan Cook Political Report as Tossup or Lean — Democrats did much better, winning 40 out of 64 House races. Altogether, this resulted in Republicans winning a narrow 9-seat majority in the House, smaller than many expected before the election.

When we examine only the most heavily contested Senate and Gubernatorial elections, Democrats did slightly better (51.0%) than they did in the 2020 Presidential election (50.5%). As a result, Democrats won 13 out of 18 elections that the Cook Political report rated as a Tossup or Lean, keeping control of the Senate and many state houses.

Which leads to a theory of mine about the 2022 elections - if there were high-stakes involved in the election, Dems did much better. And Catalist offers further evidence of this when they explain what fell into the "Tossup/Lean" category, which includes both huge statewide races in Wisconsin.

While there is no perfect definition of heavily contested races, this analysis relies on the final pre-election ratings from the non-partisan Cook Political Report. We define “heavily contested” elections as those which were rated Tossup or Lean for either party. These analyses include data about redistricting, polling, fundraising and on-the-ground reporting and have a strong historical track record.

These races include 64 House races; Senate races in Arizona, Georgia, Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and Gubernatorial races in Arizona, Georgia, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin.

The analysis also breaks down the election results by age, which gives two ominous signs for Republicans. First, GOPs did even worse with younger voters than they did in the 2020 election, as they were gaining 3% nationwide. And those GOP gains with voters over 45 went away in the close races, which featured heavy spending and lots of news exposure.

And many of those contested states had governor's races where the Dobbs decision on abortion was especially relevant, as a GOP win would likely translate into enforced bans on abortion and other reproductive health procedures. And this is where you especially see a divergence among white voters, as white voters (and especially white women) in the swing states turned toward Dems, while non-contested places saw white voters lean more towards the GOP.

Also relevant in Wisconsin and other swing states in 2022 was the memory of attempts by the GOP to overturn the 2020 presidential election in those states,and the prospect that they would use the 2022 elections as the way of gaining the power to overturn the 2024 presidential election. And Catalist says the election denial was a definite loser in those closely-contested states, as Republicans that pushed election denial underperformed compared to how they did nationwide.

But there is one finding in the Catalist research that should be concerning for Democrats, and is especially worrysome in Wisconsin.

Support. Black voters remain the strongest Democratic constituency by race, with support levels exceeding 80% and 90% depending on state. In heavily contested races, Black voters essentially matched their 2020 support levels, with overall support at 92% in 2020 and 91% in 2022. Nationally, however, when accounting for states with no heavily contested elections, Democratic support among Black voters fell, dropping from 91% to 88%.

Turnout. Turnout among Black voters also fell from the past midterm, relative to other groups. While we don’t explicitly estimate the turnout rate due to changes in Census data on eligible voters, we do see that the percent of voters that were Black decreased, both nationally (12% in 2018 to 10% in 2022) and in the most highly contested elections (12% in 2018 to 10% in 2022).

Both of these trends hurt Senate candidate Mandela Barnes (a Black Democrat) in Wisconsin, as areas of the state with sizable Black populations had disappointing turnout (especially in Barnes' hometown of Milwaukee). Catalist adds that we had a larger dropoff in Black support for Dems in Wisconsin than we saw in other closely contested states.

Given that a GOP Wisconsin Election Commissioner applauded voter suppression efforts against Black Milwaukee voters last November, and given that state Republicans are trying to overlord over majority-minority Milwaukee with their shared revenue bill and other big-government handcuffs, maybe Wisconsin Dems should push a little harder on some racial issues and stir up a little (rightful) resentment among Wisconsin's Black voters against the GOP. Not unlike how Wisconsin Republicans try to stir it up with white voters against People of Color, except Dems can have actual facts behind those themes.

These findjng are good signs for Democrats in what is sure to be a high-exposure presidential election in 2024, especially if Donald Trump is the GOP nominee. Trumpiness was definitely on the ballot in many swing states in 2022, and Democrats did as well if not better than they did in 2020. And with another 2 years of young voters joining the electorate along with another 2 years of Silent/Boomer generation voters fading out of the electorate.

A Dem win in 2024 is far from guaranteed, but these Catalist findings from 2022 indicate to me that Republicans are losing voters in the places they need to win them in, and given how MAGA types dominate their primary electorates and constituencies in Congress and statehouses, I don't see how they navigate it without alienating even more of their voters.