BY PETER MARSH
Voters came out in force to cast their ballots in the election compared to the last midterms.
REUTERS: ANDREW KELLY
The US midterms are almost over.
Key points:
• The Democrats are predicted to win the popular vote
• The party has won control of the House of Representatives
• But Republications have tightened their grip on the Senate
There are a few final races still to be called, but we now know the shape of the US Congress for the next two years.
Republicans held the Senate. Democrats claimed the House.
If you missed all the news from election night, let’s get you up to speed.
Here are five things you need to know about what happened in the 2018 midterm elections.
1. About that ‘blue wave’…
It became pretty clear early in the night that a “blue wave” was never going to materialise for the Democrats in terms of House and Senate seats.
Granted, the consensus among experts in the final weeks started to shift away from the talk of a Democratic sweep (in fact the end result was what most predicted).
Kasie Hunt
✔@kasie
The best summary so far, from a Democratic source, of where we stand:
Red places want to stay red.
Blue places want to stay blue.
Purple places are tight as a tick.
And the fever ain’t breaking.
But If you dig a little deeper and look at the popular vote, you’ll see why that talk of a “blue wave” wasn’t just wishful thinking.
The New York Times predicted the Democrats would win the popular vote by about seven points.
That’s a comparable margin to the midterms of 2010, which were considered a huge victory for Republicans. They picked up 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate.
This year, the Democrats are projected to pick up about 35 seats in the House and could lose seats in the Senate with about the same popular vote margin.
Expect this to come up in the election wash-up, particularly as we move towards 2020.
2. A ‘tremendous success’ on Twitter, but there’s trouble ahead for Trump
Midterms always go badly for the party with the president in the White House.
But these elections were a long way from a disaster for Republicans, so Donald Trump is probably justified in feeling optimistic.
Donald J. Trump
✔@realDonaldTrump
Tremendous success tonight. Thank you to all!
In the cold light of day though, he might reconsider.
Once the new Congress is sworn in next year, the Democrats could use their new powers in the House to launch a barrage of investigations into Mr Trump and the White House.
Manu Raju
✔@mkraju
Dem majority in House won’t be enjoyable for WH. I spoke w two key committee chairs, Elijah Cummings and Jerry Nadler, and they lay out what they want to do: Cummings: Probe voting rights and whether Trump violated emoluments clause. “We probably will” seek Trump tax returns
All the things the Democrats might begin to investigate will make things very uncomfortable for the President as he looks to build his re-election bid for 2020.
3. Some future Democratic stars had a rough night
Two potential governors and one Senate candidate to be precise.
In the Florida governor’s race, Democrat Andrew Gillum lost an absolute nail-biter to Republican Ron DeSantis.
Over in Georgia, it looks like the best Democrat Stacey Abrams can hope for is to force a run-off against Republican Brian Kemp in the gubernatorial contest. That’s despite Oprah getting involved in her campaign in the final days.
And finally, Beto O’Rourke gave Republican incumbent Ted Cruz a big scare in deep red Texas. But not even massive amounts of fundraising was enough to turn the Texas Senate seat blue.
Realistically, Democrats wouldn’t have expected to win all these races.
But losing all three will sting, especially when they were some of the most talked about races in America in the lead-up.
Democratic candidate Rashida Tlaib (centre) was among those who made history by being elected in the midterms.
4. It was a night of many firsts
Here are just a couple:
• In Colorado, Jared Polis was elected as the first openly gay male governor
• Sharice Davids and Debra Haaland are the first Native American women elected to Congress, in Kansas and New Mexico respectively
• Michigan and Minnesota Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar became the first Muslim women elected to Congress
• And Michelle Lujan Grisham is the first Democratic Latina elected governor in the US in New Mexico
5. Americans actually got to the polls
The turnout at the last midterm elections was historically low, with only 36.4 per cent of eligible Americans turning out to vote.
It’s early days still, but that doesn’t look like it’s the case this year.
Nate Cohn
✔@Nate_Cohn
Our current turnout estimate is 114 million votes cast in the House, breaking even our high expectations (we started at 102 iirc) and shattering the turnout of 83 million in 2014
Love him or hate him, it’s clear Americans wanted to have their say one way or another on two years of President Trump.
It will be fascinating to see the demographic data of the high turnout broken down in the coming days and weeks.
We’ll find out if Mr Trump’s final push to get his loyal supporters to the polls worked, or if this was a new wave of voters driven by a dislike of what’s going on in the White House.
Either way, the ABC’s Washington bureau chief Zoe Daniel hits the nail on the head here:
Zoe Daniel
✔@zdaniel
Democrats have the house, Republicans have the Senate. It’s going to be a testy run up to 2020 people.
