Evening Wrap

A handful of congressional races have finalized since the last time we spoke, leaving Republicans poised to take control of the House of Representatives. And Democrats will retain control of the Senate after notching key victories in Arizona and Nevada that left the party with exactly half of the chamber’s seats. A final seat remains in play in Georgia, where college students are pushing for expanded voting opportunities ahead of a Dec. 6 runoff election.

The closer you look at results from Nov. 8, the more you realize Democrats can’t claim victory – especially where Republicans added to their numbers. Take Wisconsin, where legislative Democrats held off a Republican supermajority in the state Assembly, its lower chamber. While Democratic Gov. Tony Evers won reelection, his ability to withstand veto overrides is precariously thin, the Wisconsin Examiner reports.

I had loosely planned (hoped) to call this the TGIF edition, as in “Thank God It’s Finalized,” which I obviously cannot do because nothing is finalized. (It was a bad title, so it’s fine, though I stand behind the sentiment.) Here’s what we know today: Republicans will probably end up with a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives — as of Friday afternoon, they’d clinched 211 of the 218 seats needed for control — but there are still too many outstanding races to say for sure.

On the whole, the picture hasn’t changed a ton since yesterday. A lot of races remain too close to call, so we’re still waiting to find out which party will control Congress, though I’d bet my afternoon snack that the Democrats lose at least one chamber (probably the House, where Republicans had flipped nine seats as of Thursday afternoon). It could take days or weeks for those results to crystallize.

By the metrics, Democrats should have fared poorly on Election Day. Prices are up, their leader is unpopular, and their messaging was, as usual, a mess. None of this boded well ahead of the midterms, which are almost always a disaster for whichever party holds the White House. It’s no wonder that Republicans expected a bloodbath. But the so-called “red wave” never made it to shore.

Let’s just get the awkward part out of the way: I don’t have any election results for you. Most states will still be voting when this lands in your inbox; once the polls close, officials will tally today’s votes along with a mountain of early and mail-in ballots that, in most places, can’t be processed prior to Election Day. By this evening we may have a sense of who’s faring well, but official results will likely take days.

Let’s start with what we know so far. More than 42 million people have already cast their ballots, significantly more than the 39.1 million who voted early in the 2018 midterms. That doesn’t necessarily mean that overall turnout will be larger — early voting has been on the upswing for years, despite Republicans’ continued attempts to undermine it — but it could portend record participation in states like Georgia, where more residents voted early this year than in any other midterm election.

Let’s start with a hopeful reality check: Amid all the election denial and conspiracy theories and voter intimidation and threats of violence, our election system is — and has always been — secure and trustworthy. It was true in 2016, it was true in 2020, and it’s true now, even if Republicans would prefer that you believe otherwise. If you’re skeptical, try examining the extremely detailed security procedures that govern every step of every election across the country.

Midterm elections typically draw fewer voters than their presidential counterparts. Around 60% of registered voters cast ballots for president, but only 40% participate in off-year contests. There are a lot of reasons for this, but in general, midterm elections are the bridesmaid, never the bride. That could change this year. More than 32 million ballots had been cast in early voting as of Thursday afternoon, which is on pace to match record-breaking turnout in the 2018 midterms. But there are a lot of factors at play, which has made it difficult to forecast turnout with any certainty.

This is typical of the dregs of campaign season, when exhausted staffers and candidates are making their final push to voters after months of … making that exact same push to voters. Absent a late-breaking scandal (that’s a Herschel Walker subtweet), the message doesn’t really change, which means the “last push” is usually just an avalanche of mailers and TV ads that all say the same thing. There’s a reason for the repetition: It works.

Whenever I make an allusion to politics via an introduction about toddlers or bathroom repairs or (bad) food, I’m tempted to explain that it is, in fact, an allusion about politics. But I usually refrain. This is a political newsletter, so you probably get it, and frankly, modern politics very clearly resembles all of those things, for better or worse. (It’s always worse.) Here’s an example: My fun-sized chocolate snacks have left an unpleasant taste in my mouth, similar to the sensation I get from “Don’t Vote” placards that are popping up around Idaho.

Anyone who understands the pain of secondhand embarrassment will shudder at our first tale of the day, in which two GOP candidates in Kansas are tripped up by mortifying gaffes … in their own campaign ads, per the Kansas Reflector. … I realize this may not sound that frightening, so let me put it into perspective for you: As political horror stories go, this is basically “The Shining.”​​