What the Democrats’ surprising midterm means for the party

The Democratic Party vastly exceeded expectations in Tuesday’s midterm elections, bucking anti-incumbent historical trends and overcoming an unfavorable national political environment. 

Republicans will likely end up controlling the House by a few seats — as opposed to 15 to 20, as most predicted — and Democrats appear to have won control of the Senate, given the victory of incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly in Arizona as well as Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto’s reelection in Nevada. 

Even though inflation is at a 40-year-high and President Biden’s approval rating is near a historic low, his party is on track to have the best midterm performance for a first-term Democratic president since John F. Kennedy lost just four House seats in 1962. 

What explains Democrats’ historic overperformance? 

Democratic messaging on abortion rights and democracy helped the party win in states where both were being threatened by radical Trump-endorsed Republicans. This was the case in Michigan, where Democrats won statewide races against anti-abortion election deniers, flipped control of the state legislature and passed a ballot measure codifying abortion rights.  

However, Democrats fared less well in states — even blue areas — where neither of those issues were on the ballot. The best example is New York, a Democratic stronghold, where Republicans won all but one of the state’s competitive House seats, and incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul’s margin of victory over Republican Lee Zeldin was much narrower than expected. 

This suggests that Democrats’ success was driven by widespread rejection of Donald Trump and Republican extremism vis-à-vis election denialism and hardline abortion stances — rather than by genuine enthusiasm for the Democratic Party. 

This trend is not unique to the 2022 midterms. In the last four national elections, Democrats have run campaigns that were almost exclusively a reaction to Trumpism and the far-right. 

Despite Democrats’ historic showing this year, the party’s winning coalition was incredibly fragile. Establishment Democrats still ran neck-and-neck with far-right extremists who deny the results of the 2020 election in states that President Joe Biden won two years ago, while traditional Republicans won decisive victories. 

In Georgia and New Hampshire, radical Trump-endorsed Senate candidates widely underperformed establishment Republicans running in gubernatorial contests. And while Democrats won the Arizona Senate race, Kelly fought tooth-and-nail to defeat his radical GOP challenger, Blake Masters, and the governor’s race between election-denier Kari Lake and Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s current secretary of State, remains too close to call. 

Though elections in our two-party system generally devolve into a ‘lesser of two evils’ contest, this is not a sustainable path for Democrats. Establishment Republicans are now turning against Donald Trump in the wake of this loss, and looking to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who would be a very formidable general election opponent for Joe Biden or any other Democrat in 2024. 

Put another way, Democrats cannot rely on Donald Trump and his radical agenda to help the party win future elections. Republicans are more trusted to address voters’ main quality-of-life concerns, such as costs and crime. With a more establishment Republican like DeSantis at the helm, the Republican Party could win a decisive victory in 2024 if Democrats fail to adapt. 

Democrats must embrace centrism at the national level and can look to Rep. Abigail Spanberger, who kept her seat in a toss-up suburban district in Virginia, and Laura Kelly, who won the governor’s race in ruby-red Kansas, as models. Likewise, even though moderate Democrat Tim Ryan lost the Ohio Senate race, he vastly overperformed the Democratic gubernatorial candidate. 

Spanberger won by touting her record of bipartisanship and support for law enforcement. And, while Ryan came up short, he gained blue-collar support in Ohio by focusing on kitchen table issues like inflation and bringing manufacturing back to the state. 

Relatedly, Democrats cannot ignore the growing trend of Hispanic voters defecting to the GOP. National exit polls indicate that Democrats won about 60 percent of the Latino vote this cycle, down from 65 percent in 2020 and 71 percent in 2012. In Florida’s Miami-Data county, which was previously a solid blue area, DeSantis won 65 percent of the vote in majority-Latino precincts; in 2018, he lost those precincts by 1 point.  

This is not to say that Democrats’ midterm performance was not commendable — it was. But we should be careful not to overstate their victory, nor to ignore the party’s lingering vulnerabilities.  

In order to be able to defeat non-fringe Republicans in 2024, Democrats should focus on taking a pragmatic approach to policymaking over the next two years that is geared toward achieving wins on the issues voters care most about — costs, crime and the border — rather than realizing progressive pipe-dreams, like the Inflation Reduction Act which the majority of voters don’t even realize is now law. 

What does this look like? Pursuing a grand bargain on immigration reform. Advocating for sensible crime reduction policies. Promoting America’s energy independence. A sound approach to healthcare that holds insurance companies accountable and does not rely solely on the Affordable Care Act and a narrow focus on a niche drug pricing policy. 

The latter is particularly important, given the urgent need to reduce the cost of living and mitigate the current health insurance crisis. The American people are paying more for insurance every year and getting less, and more than 100 million people in America are struggling with medical debt.  

Democrats mustn’t take this win for granted, and should develop a positive, inclusive agenda that is more than a rejection of Trumpism in order to build a winning coalition — comprised of suburban voters, white working-class voters and Hispanic voters — that allows the party to remain politically viable in years to come.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”