Occam's Razor

I woke up Wednesday morning and wrote my last post thinking the midterms were over. Two days later it’s clear they are not. They are still unfolding. Each passing day suggests that this was indeed a true wave election for Democrats, not the high tide as I suggested on Wednesday.

In that post, I had originally thought Jon Tester had lost his Senate race, but when all the votes were finally counted, it turns out he won convincingly, by nearly 3% of the vote. Similarly, last night in Arizona Kyrsten Sinema pulled ahead of Republican Martha McSally by half a percentage point, or about 600 votes, as absentee ballots were counted. In Florida, just .2% of the vote (or about 18,000 votes) separates Democrat incumbent Bill Nelson from Rick Scott. A recount is likely. But it’s not over in Mississippi either, where a runoff will be held. There were actually two senate elections in the state, one a special election. On the second, two Republicans were on the ballot so these votes were split, but Democrat Mike Espy was only .9% behind front-runner Cindy Hyde-Smith. It’s possible but unlikely that Democrats will flip this deeply red state too. Remember a year ago no one believed that Democrat Doug Jones would win his special election in Alabama either. So the best case for the Senate would be 51R-49D, which would leave the Senate unchanged. As I noted, given the dynamics, just holding on to their 51R-49D minority would have been a major accomplishment for Democrats. Right now a 53R-47D Senate is looking most likely.

In the House, it looks like there will be 230D-205R. I thought a ten-seat majority was most likely, but Democrats look to actually have a 25-seat majority. Without question, the House election was a blue wave. These numbers are all the more surprising considering how deeply gerrymandered these voting districts are. You have to go back to the 1974 election to find Democrats picking up so many seats in one election. The 1974 election of course was just after the crest of Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. And in 1976, as a result of Watergate (and President Ford’s deeply unpopular decision to pardon President Nixon), Democrat Jimmy Carter won the presidency. Given Trump’s decision yesterday to fire Jeff Sessions and install his lackey as Acting Attorney General, history could well repeat itself in 2020. Trump may be destroying the Republican Party. Nixon and Ford only gravely wounded it.

In the governors’ races, it sure looks like Brian Kemp’s win in Georgia is a direct result of voter suppression. Not only did he as secretary of state rigorously cleanse the voter rolls, in some minority precincts voters waited more than four hours to vote. According to the Washington Post:

Another problem was the limited number of voting machines in some locations. More than 1,800 machines sat idle in storage in three of the state’s largest and most heavily Democratic counties. In Fulton County, according to figures provided by elections director Rick Barron, the ratio of machines to registered voters was lower than it had been in 2014, despite predictions that turnout was likely to break records for a midterm election.

It’s also possible that voter suppression was a factor in the Florida governor’s race too, still under dispute but with Republican Ron DeSantis officially ahead by .4% or about 36,000 votes. One thing is clear: since Florida voters approved an amendment granting voting rights to ex-felons, future elections like this will be harder for Republicans to pull off.

In short, this turned out to be a wave election for Democrats using pretty much any metric. Only the U.S. senate races broke for Republicans, which was to be expected since Democrats had to defend 25 of 34 seats. And day-by-day, their win looks less impressive.