One Night, Two Presidents

Raymond Ashkenazie ’24

The election on November 8th was nothing like expected according to national polls. Most political pundits and commentators predicted a red wave with Democrats losing control of the House and Senate in large numbers. However, President Biden had the best midterm election in the past two decades.

Democrats have kept control of the Senate and may potentially gain a seat in next month’s Georgia runoff. Senator Raphael Warnock (D) is set to compete in a special election with Herschel Walker reached the threshold needed to win. If Senator Warnock wins, the Democrats will have a 51-49 majority in the Senate and therefore gain a seat in this year’s election. Either way, Democrats will retain a majority. not legitimately elected, though voters seemed to reject that theory. Another trend was voters who voted only on the basis of abortion. Twenty seven percent of voters said that their number one issue when voting for candidates was codifying abortion and expanding abortion access. This election showed that it’s important to keep an open mind and never assume the outcome of an election.

In the House of Representatives, Republicans took a slight majority but have severely underperformed. Midterm elections are supposed to be brutal for the President’s party and a time for the opposition’s party to perform well in the House and Senate.

Democrats are on track to have one of the four best midterms in the last 100 years. Voters tried to correct the trend that has been happening in the last few years and did not vote for Republican extremists. Many of President Donald Trump’s endorsed candidates lost. This was either due to their stances on abortion or on the Janruary 6 insurrection, or for being endoresed by Trump. President Trump weighed heavily in these elections and most of the blame fell on him.

(R) in December because neither of them

Many Republican candidates were also severely unpopular and in many instances believed that President Biden was