In the recent election, results were not what had been anticipated, based on prior midterm elections. Writing for City Journal, Jeffrey H. Anderson does a deep dive into the numbers to understand why the odd outcome happened. The whole column is interesting but I particularly enjoyed this bit.
The more years voters spent in school, the more apt they were to vote Democratic; the more money they made, the more apt they were to vote Republican. Thus, for Republicans, the sweet spot would seem to be the relatively affluent tradesman who didn’t go to college (a plumber, for example); and for Democrats, the grossly underpaid adjunct professor whose degrees fill up most of the wall space in the tiny apartment he can barely afford.
Anderson's two archetypical voters occupy different life spaces, that is certain ... both physically and ideologically. As a retired professor, I side with the plumber, who is actually a contributing member of society.
I also like this data point which I’ve not seen reported elsewhere:
A pair of numbers leaps out of the exit polling: 32 percent of voters said that they cast their House vote to “oppose” President Joe Biden, while 28 percent said they cast their House vote to “oppose” former President Donald Trump. In other words, for every eight votes cast against Biden, all but one was negated by a vote cast against Trump. This is surely unprecedented in a midterm election.
In other words, if Trump hadn’t been making noises about another try for a second term, the red wave of Biden revulsion would have rolled. Maybe so, or it could be Democrats putting an anti-Trump spin on votes they’d have cast anyway.
