• Dems retake House. Not a blowout. They needed to flip 23 seats to regain control and got 27-seat pickup (although that number may rise). Still, that stalls any legislative agenda.
Not unusual for the party out of power to do well in midterms.
• Walker lost in Wisconsin by a squeaker. Sad news.
• Cruz won reelection, but by a narrow margin against an empty suit candidate in what's supposed to be a deep red state. Concerning.
• GOP held Senate and picked up 3 seats. Senate more important than House. Trump, McConnell, and Federalist society have effective alliance to steamroll GOP judicial nominees. That will continue.
• Florida now has GOP governor and two GOP senators. Big deal for Trump's reelection bid. Also flips the FL Supreme Court.
• GOP governor in Ohio. Big deal for Trump's reelection bid.
• Brian Kemp ran well among Latinos in GA.
• CA elects female Korean-American candidate.
• CA elects female Korean-American candidate.
• Kavanaugh hearings backfired on Dems in senate races. As one pundit noted, Four of the "Big 5" vulnerable Senate Democrats lose or losing tonight: Donnelly, Heitkamp, McCaskill, Nelson. All four voted against Kavanaugh. The one that did vote for Kavanaugh, Joe Manchin, prevails.
If this election was a referendum on Trump, the Dems underperformed.
"Cruz won reelection, but by a narrow margin against an empty suit candidate in what's supposed to be a deep red state. Concerning."
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this has more to do with Cruz being generally unlikable rather than (say) because Texas is becoming purple. I guess it could be both.
"CA elects female Korean-American candidate."
DeleteI think this was Young Kim. Her district covers northern Orange County, LA, and even parts of San Bernardino. Orange County has always been more conservative. Though to be fair this district is probably more purple.
Importantly, her district has tons of Asian-Americans. In fact, Asian-Americans are a majority population in many parts (if not a majority) of her district. In any case, these are some of the most "Asian" areas of SoCal (e.g. Buena Park, Yorba Linda, Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Rowland Heights). Buena Park and especially Westminster (aka Little Saigon) are largely Vietnamese. Large swathes of her district are part of the 626, bleeding into the SGV, which is a huge Chinese ethnoburb, though many other Asian ethnicities including Koreans are there too. I used to live in the SGV. A lot of my family still live there today.
By the way, the stats may or may not bear this out, but I suspect there are many Asian-Americans in this district who voted for her across party lines. That is, normally they might vote for a Democrat, but because she's Asian, they voted for her. Kind of like how conservative blacks voted for Obama. If so, then race/ethnicity trumped politics or ideology in this case.
DeleteIn Nevada, the republican senator lost. In Arizona, the Republican barely won McCain's seat to a leftist loon. It's pretty clear that Arizona and Texas are going to be flipped because of demographics.
ReplyDeleteCruz got fewer votes in 2018 than he got in 2012 by a couple hundred thousand. I don't think it's entirely demographics. Maybe he is just not a likeable guy.
ReplyDelete