Do you wonder why the Red Wave predicted in the 2022 midterm election did not occur? And are you a true politics maven? What follows presumes you answered “yes” to both questions.
RealClearPolitics has a long, fine-grained analysis that reaches a conclusion answering the first question. Spoiler alert: there are no easy answers, but here is James E. Campbell’s conclusion.
The last-minute nosedive of Republican fortunes was not about a change in the grand fundamentals of democratic elections. It was not about national conditions or issues, or about candidate quality or internal party divisions, and not about either Biden or Trump. The expectations of a Republican wave reflected public opinion, but their surprising fall from those expectations was not about public opinion at all. It was about the campaign system – the combined elements of mobilization-friendly and early mail-in balloting, large campaign organizations to gather the votes, and an enormous amount of money, all coming together for one party focused on a number of politically important races in competitive states. In many ways, it might be characterized as a 21st century incarnation of the machine politics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Republicans in 2022 were caught flat-footed in securing reasonable limits to easy/early mail-in voting and were badly outspent by Democrats who used the rules and their resources for rounding up enough votes in the right places to block the red wave.
Campbell also believes Democrats were able to get people not included in the much-polled category “likely voters” to nevertheless vote, and such low-information, low-likelihood individuals voted heavily for Democrats. Thus he explains why the polling failed to predict the vote in 8 key states he identifies as the “breakwater” to the predicted Red Wave.
