Voters line up to cast their ballots at a polling station in Miami, Nov. 8.
Photo:
MARCO BELLO/REUTERS
Midterm elections do little to predict the outcome of the presidential elections that follow them.
Ronald Reagan,
Bill Clinton
and
Barack Obama
all suffered significant midterm losses but went on to win re-election—by 18 points in Mr. Reagan’s case.
But midterm elections do uncover changes in the electorate that reshape the terrain of political competition. As I pointed out last week, the 2022 midterms strongly suggest that for the foreseeable future, Democrats will have to build Electoral College majorities without Florida, Ohio or Texas. There are also signs that Democrats must raise their game to retain the supermajorities of Hispanic, African-American, and Asian voters on which they have relied to counterbalance the Republicans’ large edge among white voters without college degrees.
The erosion of Democratic support among younger Hispanics and African-Americans suggests that past Democratic accomplishments for these groups are producing declining electoral results, which means that appeals to these groups must be more oriented toward the future. While it is too early to pinpoint the cause of declining Asian support for Democrats, anecdotal evidence suggests that perceptions of Democratic weakness on crime and ambivalence about achievement-based admissions to selective high schools and universities are eroding the party’s standing in this rapidly growing group.
There are warning signs as well for Republicans, who underperformed stunningly. Mainstream conservatives did well, but most of the swing-state senatorial and gubernatorial candidates backed by
went down. The voters who made the difference regarded these candidates’ positions on key issues as extreme and were more concerned about addressing current problems than about relitigating the 2020…
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