Brian Tyler Cohen, "Lauren Boebert’s 'victory party' before and after she started losing to her opponent
The much-discussed “red wave” never materialized.
Republicans had hoped for a red wave. What they got looked more like purple rain.
Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky:
Joe Biden has had the most successful midterm of any president in 20 years. ... There was no red wave. Instead, Democrats wildly overperformed the usual midterm expectations.
And:
It was a very bad night for Trump.
As Rupar and Berlatsky note, the results of the election are a rebuke to the many pundits in the mainstream media who wanted to carry water for the Republicans by waging fingers at and sharpening knives for the Democrats with claims that the focus on dangers to democracy were overblown.
This is about as rough a night as one could imagine for Donald Trump. The candidates he forced on the GOP did quite poorly.
Ryan Lizza, Eugene Daniels, and Rachael Bade:
There was no massive shift of the Hispanic vote toward the GOP. There was no surge of hidden Trump voters. There was no widespread takeover of deep blue House territory. There was no expansion of the Senate map into New Hampshire, Colorado and Washington, where incumbent Democrats cruised to reelection. The governor of New York won easily.
There was no red wave.
The Michigan Senate just flipped to Democrats for the first time in 40 years, in case you were wondering how the “red wave” is going.
Did you hear the one about Biden's unpopularity will be the story? ...
Anyway, more to come but yes, Dobbs/Roe mattered (a lot), and yes, the kids showed up.
Noting that the red wave was a red trickle, Joyce Vance writes:
And the youth vote! If you live in a state like Alabama and crunch the numbers, you know that a fairly modest uptick in the youth vote is outcome-determinative. But it’s also, historically, been a phantom. This year it wasn’t. Videos showed packed lines at polling places full of college student. Statistics, like those in Wisconsin where the youth vote was said to be up 360% over 2018 even before election day itself, tell the story, as do statistics on 18-29 year olds breaking heavily Democratic.
Matt Iglesias:I just got a text from a Gen Z voter in Michigan who has been in line to vote for more than an hour and predicts he will be there hours more. He has no intention of leaving.
If there is an obvious story from today with results still unknown, it is this: a new generation is picking up the torch of our democracy.
There was no Republican ‘red wave’ after all. And abortion might be the reason why.
Poppy Noor and Gabrielle Canon:
Voters in multiple states passed measures to enshrine the right to abortion during Tuesday’s midterm elections, delivering a rebuke to the crackdown on reproductive freedoms taking place across the US.
In California, Vermont, and Michigan, voters chose to enshrine abortion rights in their state constitutions.
[U]ntil Tuesday, no state constitution explicitly declared such a right.
Brad Dress:
Voters supported abortion rights in all five states with ballot measures regarding access to the procedure in Tuesday's elections.
Fox News commentator Marc Thiessen:
[The election results are] a searing indictment of the Republican Party. That is a searing indictment of the message we have been sending to the voters where they looked at all of that, and looked at Republican alternative and said no thanks.
[The election results call for the GOP] to do a really deep introspection look in the mirror right now because this is an absolute disaster for the Republican Party and we need to turn back.