Official 2022 Congressional Election Results Thread

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I would caution against assuming Smith has definitively lost.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Pima batch = 11,802
Hobbs 7,074 (60%)
Lake 4,728 (40%)

In light of that, it's pretty crazy that Ciscomani actually won this batch.

Yeah, it's not exactly a good sign for Engel that this has happened.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/lxeagle17/status/1591915427977904128

I dislike Gavin Newsom as much as the next guy, but I find this framing unreasonable. Reasons:

1. Nothing is in from California yet. When morons like Wasserman make sweeping judgements about swings from 2020 to the current results, this is because they are morons.

2. One would expect a failing on the part of Democrats to involve losing seats. Democrats were on offense in California during this cycle, as usual. Right now the only seat where Democrats are not favored where you can reasonably say that they should have won is the Antelope Valley seat, and that's because that one is in the death grip of a terrible Democratic candidate. Christy Smith being bad at politics is awfully weak tea from which to concoct a denunciation of the California Democratic Party. I haven't paid terribly close attention to the state legislative results (again, because looking at results at this point is akin to haruspicy), but my understanding is that Democrats are set to gain again in both houses. This was a good election night for California Democrats, as is every election night.

3. You can't run the same campaign every time. Voters remember how overwhelmingly the recall effort last year was rejected. That was just a year ago! Acting like Republicans represented an existential threat to California society once again would be insulting to voters' intelligence. I'm glad we didn't get a barrage of ads about radical right-wing Brian Dahle, someone most California voters have never heard of.

Suffice it to say that I disagree for the most part with everything else that has been said about Gavin Newsom over the last page.

Thanks for posting this.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

How conservative of a campaign did Schweikert run?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

There's nothing slower than traffic in LA. Except there is! It's called CA vote counting...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I can see why this guy is a Republican. But good lord, if he isn't unique...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I see a lot of premature assumptions are being made re: CA house races...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

California: the only place on Earth that the vote counting is slower than the traffic

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Porter wins todays OC batch, 54-46.

She's now back up to 3700 districtwide.

How is she doing in the Asian precincts. Just curious

Irvine is like 45% Asian and a mixture of Chinese, Korean, and South Asian Indian. Porter's seat doesn't really have much of the OC "Vietnamese belt" so frequently commented upon.  But if you want the map, OC county has a tool to break down any race:



Porter is green.

The thought of Porter representing Huntington Beach is still kinda weird to me.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Alaska is not in doubt. The only real question is her margin.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

In my mind the current WA-8 is mostly very affluent, pearl-clutcher Seattle exurbs like Sammamish and Issaquah, although maybe it makes more sense if you consider places like East Renton Highlands? WA-3 will definitely remain the most R of the districts you mentioned through the end of the decade, just because of how much small-town hinterland Western Washington it contains.

Sammamish and to a much lesser extent Issaquah have those types of Romney-Clinton voters, but overall WA-8 has a pretty large base of white working class voters in places like Graham, Granite Falls, Bonney Lake, and Enumclaw. However especially in South King County and Pierce County even these areas are diversifying whether from tech workers or just more diverse workers. These areas have never been that friendly to Democrats so I don't think they have much more ground to lose votes and the newer types of voters moving in can be seen at the precinct level in areas with more new housing developments like Maple Valley, Snoqualmie, and East Renton.

That being said the new WA-08 added so many deep red areas that there will continue to be a strong GOP base for the decade, I just think the polarization is too strong for Democrats to lose unless they have a bad year / Republicans nominate a winning candidate of the Dino Rossi / Reichert mold.

WA-08's partisanship was basically unchanged after redistricting.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So it really ends up at 222-213 with two seats decided by less than 1000 votes, both for Republicans. Once again the GOP gets lucky with close House races (although tbf both sides had their share of narrow wins). McCarthy can't lose more than 4 votes, which tbf I'm sure he'll be able to keep on really critical things. Still, I hope this somewhat defuses the possibility of a debt ceiling standoff or similar shenanigans.

Looks like my prediction of a 221-214 house was almost bang-on correct.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

My cold take is that 2022 was better for Dems than 2018 was on about every level.

New York went from having a Democrat represent Staten Island to Republicans representing Westchester county. Democrats were winning red suburban seats in Oklahoma City, Charleston, Salt Lake City. They went from holding three seats in Iowa to none after this year.

Proof expectations matter almost as much as actual results.

Dems let GOPers think there was a red wave. D voters were scared and turned out, and Rs underestimated how many D voters there would be and might not have put the full effort in.  D expectation management this year was A++.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

My cold take is that 2022 was better for Dems than 2018 was on about every level.

New York went from having a Democrat represent Staten Island to Republicans representing Westchester county. Democrats were winning red suburban seats in Oklahoma City, Charleston, Salt Lake City. They went from holding three seats in Iowa to none after this year.

And Dems won Alaska and WA-03 which went red in 2018, so I don’t understand your point. If it’s to try and paint a picture of 2022 as a red year, that’s a pretty low bar to use Staten Island and gerrymandered seats in OK, UT, and SC as proof.

Well ok, then just look at the seats won. 235 vs 212. Or the PV, which went from D+7 to R+3.

Relative to expectations, 2022 was better for Dems than 2018 was. But in a vacuum, it’s 2018 and not even close.

Part of it is that Dems have beaten expectations so rarely in recent history.  Since Reagan, 2022, 2012, and 1998 have been the only serious Dem overperformances, whereas they nearly blew 2020 and actually blew 2016, 2014, 2002, and 2000.  2018 and 1996 also weren't quite the Dem landslides they were expected to be.  

Please do let an unlucky senate map fool you. 2018 was a near a Democratic landslide.

First, let's not forget that despite the map stacked against Democrats it was not like Democrats in North Dakota, Indiana, and Missouri far outperformed Trump. Democrats only ed up Florida, and they were not necessarily destined to win Arizona that year. Technically, Arizona wasn't really there yet in 2018.

Second, we had a goldilocks era during the first two years of the Trump administration. Unemployment was low, the great recession was finally a distant, no foreign policy conflicts, and most of Trump's scandals, while very numerous, were not life impacting and in fact so numerous that people just brushed them off. People knew Trump was insane.  If someone like Joe Biden said "grab her by the pussy".. the reaction would be far different because no one would expect that of him.

Third, Democrats path to the house was winning over voters who voted against Trump in 2016 but voted GOP down ballot, while running a progressive enough campaign to turn out Democratic voters. That was a quite a hurdle. But Democrats did it and ended up winning a net gain of 41 seats, even in very downballot Republican areas. We saw in 2020 and 2022 house elections that much of the never trump suburban shift went back to the GOP downballot but not to the extent of pre-Trump.

Fourth, in 2018 Democrats faced an extreme geographic disadvantage in the house and senate which continues to this day but finally easing up a bit.


Basically,  I do believe that 2018 was a strongly Democratic year but there was not a lot of reason to throw out the incumbent party and limited the Democrats ability to incur major gains on the state level. Hence why Democrats could not get OH and IA governor.

2018 is the most underrated out party midterm performance in modern history.


But Democrats did over perform the past two midterms. I am old enough to remember that during the Obama years the meme was "Democrats do not do well in midterms"

That aged liked MILK.

You raise a lot of good points.
Re: IA and OH, I'd note that the Trump administration basically bribed farmers (to oversimplify things a fair bit) to boost their lot in a key election year. That almost certainly did not have decide Ohio (DeWine was a pretty good candidate and Ohio was quite R to begin with), but it might have saved Iowa. Alongside fundamentals helping Rs (trends in 2014 and 2016), it didn't hurt Kim Reynolds in her bid to win a full term.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I would welcome insight into the voter turnout comparing California CD-13 with Colorado CD-3.

It looks like just over 325,000 votes were cast in Colorado CD-3 and around 133,000 votes were cast in California CD-13.  CA CD-13 was generally felt to be a toss-up district while CO CD-3 was likely or safe Republican.  

According to the 2020 census, the average California CD had about 760,350 residents while the average Colorado CD had around 721,714 residents.  

So why were more than 2.4 times as many votes cast in Colorado CD-3 than in California CD-13?   Perhaps one can argue that Boebert's extreme positions and statements drew many more voters out, but there must be more at play here.  I haven't taken the time to compare all California CD turnouts with the same for Colorado (or other states), but I imagine that the California vote totals lag behind several states.

The Central Valley of CA is known for its very low turnout.

A non-minute share of the population is ineligible to vote on basis of lack of citizenship, another large share of the population is ineligible to vote on basis of age, and many are just not interested in voting even if they are eligible. In places like the Central Valley, these three groups, put together, add up to a pretty huge share of the population when combined.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Why did Rs win TX-23 by 17 points?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

NYT literally just making stuff up. Only plausible thing i can think of is that they are going off of their poll that had Titus tied, but that poll was.... clearly wrong since Titus won by 6.

https://twitter.com/zach_solomon1/status/1604969649128341504

There is evidence that there was a drop in Latino turnout and some persuasion of Republican leaning independents if you look at turnout numbers in Latino precincts. Overall Latino voters remained very Democratic leaning in Nevada but they also had numbers closer to 2020 than in previous years combined with low turnout.

Okay, but that's not what they're saying. They're trying to say that the overall Latino vote was either a tossup or GOP leaning which is not true at all.

Quite an insane claim, really.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

https://twitter.com/blockedfreq/status/1605639884835852303

I thought the conventional wisdom was that blacks distrusted Fetterman because of that black jogger incident.

Seems not. Some people do seem to forget that Braddock is like, 3/4 black so Fetterman has a history of reaching out to that community specifically. They may be on different sides of the state but in many ways it's the same meat, different bread. Urban decay, high crime, high poverty, etc. Having a history of combatting that probably appeals to those types of communities.

I doubt many black people ever cared about the jogger incident in real life.