In 2020, President Biden won the election. Cue revealing celebration. But, in politics, it never stops. So what’s next?
What’s New?:
While it may appear that the Democrats did incredibly well in this election cycle, they were expected to win the Virginia race. Also in the New Jersey race, Phil Murphy was expected to win by at least 8% of the vote, but he just won by a mere 2.5%. So, what went wrong for Democrats? Well, with the poorly executed withdrawal from Afghanistan, and not being able to come through on any major priorities promised in the 2020 election, Democrats lost a lot of independent voters and women voters. This could be dangerous for democrats going into the 2022 election where they need to hold every seat they have and probably win more if they want to keep the majority.
Political 1, 2, 3s:
With the Democrats taking the heat for the first time in 4 years, all Republicans have to do is point out what Democrats have done wrong. Plus, with the Democrats’ majority in the senate so slim, just getting one Democrat to say no to a bill would sink it. For the first time in a while, there is light for the Republican Party. This is usual for the party that doesn’t control the White House/Senate. Only four times has the sitting president’s party won seats in the house in a midterm election, and only once have they won seats in both the house and senate. This happened in 2002 when Republicans won 8 seats in the house, and 1 seat in the senate.
What’s next?
In 2022, there are 32 Senate seats up for election in 32 different states. While 5 Republican candidates will not be seeking re-election, all the Democrats will be, which could be something that Dems could exploit to lead them to victory.
Currently, 11 Democratic seats look pretty safe, while 17 of the Republican seats look safe.* Currently, 6 seats look like a toss-up:
Ron Johnson (R) in Wisconsin who won by just 3.4 percentage points last time he was elected
A vacant seat previously held by a Republican (Senator Burr) in NC
A vacant seat previously held by a Republican (Senator Toomey) in PA
Mark Kelly (D) in Arizona who won a special election in 2020 by just 2.4 percentage points
Raphael Warnock (D) in Georgia who won a special election and a runoff in 2020/21 by 2.1 percentage points
Maggie Hassan (D) in New Hampshire who won her 2017 election by 0.1 percentage points
You can find more at United States Senate elections, 2022.
*Infrastructure bill now law
**All observations made by judging the current political state, current polling data, and historical trends
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