The Midterms
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Quote a home and car bundle today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company & Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $779 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. It's 1118 on Election Day, and I am rolling out of bed. It's funny because election mornings for reporting-wise are actually kind of calm.

It's really a waiting game, so mostly I'm going to wait. It is 2.41 p.m. and I'm getting ready to leave my apartment and head to the Times newsroom. I'm just going to like shower first.

It's around 4 o'clock and there has been some growing outrage about machines not working in Maricopa County, the largest county out in Arizona. That has not been confirmed and the election officials have really said that the information Republicans are spreading there is false. But it's been amplified by Carrie Lake. So it's 5:30 and I have crossed New York City and made it to the Times newsroom.

And with just a couple hours until polls close, I think we're really starting to see some clear storylines form. So it's 7 p.m. and that means that polls closed in a number of key states. This means that we'll start to get results, particularly from some House races that we're watching in Virginia and from those really important Senate and governor's races in Florida. I mean, well, I guess Florida, but also Georgia, which is what I meant to say. ♪

So results are coming in and it looks to be a great night for Republicans, at least in Florida. Ron DeSantis is cruising to reelection and Republicans are putting up big numbers in places like Miami-Dade, a bellwether for how the whole state's going to go.

So it's 924, and I think we can pretty much say at this point in the night that neither party is really getting their best case scenario. Republicans, who may have been hoping for a huge victory, haven't really seen the congressional races go the way that they want.

but do have a lot of good signs. So it's 1040, and at this point of the night, we have some really important results. In Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, was able to hold on to re-election. Other threatened Democrats in Virginia and in New England were also able to hold on. I think for a lot of people in the party, they're really taking this as a good sign. So it's 206 in the morning.

And whenever I find my laptop here, I am going to head into the studio at The Times to record The Daily with Michael Barbaro. You know it's election night because it's 2 in the morning and I see dozens of colleagues on the floor making sure the news is delivered.

Hello. How are you? Am I supposed to sit here? You're going to sit there. Okay. Do I have coffee? Is this coffee? I made you a cup of utterly mediocre coffee. It's kind of like a puke color, but I appreciate it. It's the color of caffeine at 2 in the morning. All right. So, Ested. Yes. Good morning. Good morning to you too, Michael. I mean, it is very much the morning. It is 2 a.m.

And this was not, I think it's fair to say, the election was all we were expecting. No, I think that's really fair to say. And I think that it's an election where coming into it, there was a sense that we would have a national story. And I think it became very clear that if there is a national story, it's not the one we expected. Well, let's just rewind the clock for a moment and explain what these expectations were. Heading into this midterm election,

Our understanding was that some form of political repudiation was coming for Democrats for all kinds of reasons, because midterm elections are almost always a rejection of the party in power. We've talked to you about that on the show because polls told us because of issues like historic levels of inflation, Democrats were in trouble and that swing voters were breaking for Republicans. And so the question seemed to be just how big a repudiation would be.

come for the Democrats. Yeah, I mean, that was my question heading into this night. It felt like every single objective measure we really had pointed to the idea that there will be some repudiation for Democrats. Would it be something that felt regional or small or was something that's national and overwhelming? I think the first thing we saw to that point tonight was really the results we saw in Florida. You had Governor Ron DeSantis, obviously a merging figure in the Republican Party, really clean up

in Florida. Marco Rubio marches on the victory. The Latino vote population continues to move toward Republicans. I think that all of those things kind of built together would really push people to say, OK, this is the first kind of signs that that expected wave of repudiation on the Republican side might be coming. But then kind of at the same point of the evening, you really saw results that

forced a gut check on that extrapolation, on that read people were taking from Florida. And for me, the race that really jumped out was the congressional race in Virginia with Democratic incumbent Abigail Spanberger. This was someone who was an intense target of Republicans. This is someone who represented the Democratic clawback in the suburbs that happened in 2018 after Donald Trump was elected. And the thought was, in a Republican wave year, that Republicans

this is a candidate who would go down. Right. This is a seat that Republicans can pick up. Right. And it looked for a while like she was about to go down. And it looked for a while like she was. But the Democratic counties in there really turned out to really deliver Spanberger reelection. And you saw that with a couple of those tight seats that we were looking at on the East Coast line. I think that to me was the first signs that this is not

the midterm environment where Republicans are having a national repudiation of the Democratic Party. Well, just how much of a not wave is the situation in the House? We should say...

It is 215 in the morning. A lot is still unresolved. Let's say it again. It is 215 in the morning. But exactly where do things stand at this tender hour in the House? So when we came into tonight, the parameters for what would constitute a Republican wave were probably 25 plus seats. At this point, we're looking at a projection maybe about four or five seats.

And it's also important to look at what seats those are. We're really seeing Republicans make pickups in seats that were just easy wins for them, seats that had been redrawn through gerrymandering, things that were pretty much baked into the cost of tonight. In those competitive seats, in the races in which it was about would they turn out their voters or persuade a more swing or moderate voter, we're not really seeing them have

those good results. Now, Republicans are still favored to flip control of the House of Representatives and really get a foot back into power in Washington. That's still really, really important. Which is a big deal, and we won't get to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But...

The scope of that, the size of that, the mandate of that is so much smaller than what Democrats and Republicans expected coming into this evening. That it has to be one of the first takeaways for anybody is that the Republican strength all across the country, probably just outside of Florida, was way less than the party expected.

So let's talk about why Republicans did not do anywhere near as well in the House as lots of people expected them to do and that they themselves expected themselves to do. Because they had a lot of advantages in this election. Not just all the structural stuff, the gerrymandering, the historical pattern around midterms. They had the economy. Yep. They had, according to polling, crime. Mm-hmm.

So why do they do so poorly? I mean, I should say that that's really a question that we'll get better answers to going forward. Right, with just a few more hours of sleep. With just a few more hours or just like a little more data. But I also think that it comes down to a couple things. I think on the Democratic side,

there's a lot of evidence to say that issues that favor Democrats, people who wanted to protect abortion rights, people who wanted to protect the kind of democratic system or were fearful of what Republicans would do to it, those things did remain motivating factors. And they didn't fade away for issues like inflation or crime and the way that some, I think, projections and punditry kind of a thought that they did over the last month.

But I also think that on the Republican side, there is just an independent question of their brand right now and what Donald Trump has really done to it. And I think that the real place to look for that is not necessarily in turnout among Republicans.

let's say, Trump's base and how they came out for these candidates, but really is on the moderate side. I mean, when you look at what Republicans were hoping to do in the House, that was going to require them taking down people in those suburban districts. They did not meet those targets. And so that, to me, says...

that even among a more moderate candidate who may be keeping a distance from Donald Trump, that kind of stench is still smelly enough that it's turning off some swing voters. And I think that that's going to really fuel some of the questions Republicans have about whether Trumpism is weighing them down.

So behind the Republicans' pretty disappointing midterm here in the House, you're saying, is perhaps an underestimation of Democratic strength on these core issues like abortion and an underestimation of the damage that Donald Trump has done to everyone who campaigns under the Republican banner. Yeah, totally. I think it's a both-and question. Republicans have questions to ask themselves about what Trump has done to them internally and with their own voters. ♪

But I also think we can say that Democrats did have a relative strength that was at least underestimated in the measures we look at going into election. We'll be right back. When it comes to making plans, you are the best.

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- Hello, this is Yuande Kamalefa from New York Times Cooking, and I'm sitting on a blanket with Melissa Clark. - And we're having a picnic using recipes that feature some of our favorite summer produce. Yuande, what'd you bring? - So this is a cucumber agua fresca. It's made with fresh cucumbers, ginger, and lime.

How did you get it so green? I kept the cucumber skins on and pureed the entire thing. It's really easy to put together and it's something that you can do in advance. Oh, it is so refreshing. What'd you bring, Melissa?

Well, strawberries are extra delicious this time of year, so I brought my little strawberry almond cakes. Oh, yum. I roast the strawberries before I mix them into the batter. It helps condense the berries' juices and stops them from leaking all over and getting the crumb too soft. Mmm. You get little pockets of concentrated strawberry flavor. That tastes amazing. Oh, thanks. New York Times Cooking has so many easy recipes to fit your summer plans. Find them all at NYTCooking.com. I have sticky strawberry juice all over my fingers.

So instead, how much was this underestimation of Democratic strength and underestimation of Trump's damage to the Republican Party also the case on Election Day in statewide races for U.S. Senate and for governor's races? Yeah, it was a bad night for Republicans on the House level, but on the Senate and governor level, it was a specifically bad night for Trump Republicans. And I think the state that really proves that is Pennsylvania. That's a state that should be

be a place where Republicans in this environment have a great shot at the Senate and governor level. This is a close state in presidential elections. And in the midterm year with a president with this low of an approval rating, you would expect Republicans to really be in a commanding position on both those things. That's not what we saw.

We saw Democrat John Fetterman, who himself was the target of a lot of Republican negative advertising, who had a stroke, who had a questionable debate performance, who had a lot of questions about his health. Pennsylvania voters rallied around him. In a big way. In a big way. That was not clear that we were going to have a result on that tonight. Right. So Miminoz lost by a wide margin. By a wide margin. That is a candidate who...

who clearly was very tied to Donald Trump, who had a rally with Donald Trump in the closing stages of his campaign. That's even more so true at the governor level in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Josh Shapiro defeated Doug Mastriano, who was at the Capitol on January 6th. He was, frankly, fairly shellacked for a Republican in Pennsylvania. And so that's a cohesive rejection of Trump Trump ism.

on the ballot in Pennsylvania. Right. To round out that picture, though, I think Georgia is another good example because there you have a Trump-backed Senate candidate in Herschel Walker who aligned really closely with the former president but had scandals of their own. But then you have Governor Brian Kemp who was distant from Donald Trump on the 2020 election but has also just carved out a kind of distinct brand in the state. Not a Trump candidate. Not a Trump candidate. He is

has already secured reelection. And Walker was running further behind him to the point where he's going to have to go to a runoff against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock in the Senate. So again, you have the Trump-aligned candidate performing far worse. And I think for a lot of Republicans, they got all the drawbacks without the benefits, right? Trumpism is

You know, it's going to create scandal. It's going to have bad headlines and all of that stuff. But you're supposed to get those Trump voters on Election Day. They got all of the scandal without that voter really taking them over the top in these races. And that's why you're seeing this kind of landscape across the board, which has challenged Republicans from Georgia to Pennsylvania.

Right. This is known as ticket splitting. And what it tells us is that Republicans went into the polls in Georgia, looked at a candidate for governor who was a Republican, not backed by Trump, and said, I want this person. Many of them said that. And they looked at a candidate for U.S. Senate Republican, Herschel Walker, backed by Trump, and they said, I don't want that candidate. And the decisive difference there is Trump. Yeah. I think like there was some question about whether ticket splitting was still a thing. Right. Whether elections have become so national.

And our politics have become so polarized that all voters cared about was Democrat or Republican. And I think we have some real clarity tonight that that's not true for everybody. You know, politics is not one team versus another team fully just yet. So just give us the bottom line at this hour on where things stand overall with the Senate.

Bottom line, because of the disappointing showing from Republicans, they have lost their best case scenarios to take over the Senate. And for them, it's really going to come down to a couple races that we don't know yet. Nevada and Georgia. That's really their narrow path to flipping the Senate because they've lost out on other opportunities.

So I said, I want to circle back to Florida, because as you told us earlier, that was where early Republican success evaporated. But it was a place where there was Republican success, and therefore it's a bit of an outlier in this election. So what should we make of exactly what happened in Florida on Election Day?

Yeah, I think that's going to be a really key question going forward because it gives us a kind of dual answer to the Trumpism question. On the one hand, you have candidates who embody Donald Trump's messaging succeeding in big numbers among Latino populations in Florida. In Miami-Dade County, Republicans won for the first time in years. I mean, this is continuing a trend that we saw in 2020 that has grown for Republicans where they...

I think, are rightly confident that Florida voters are moving in their direction. But at the same time, that is really happening under a Republican governor in Ron DeSantis, who has increasingly positioned himself as the Republican alternative to Donald Trump. But I think we should kind of pump the brakes a little because for a lot of Republican voters, Trump and DeSantis are not at

at odds just yet. Right. They, in fact, seem like very similar political animals. Yes. DeSantis is a practitioner of Trumpism more than an opponent of it. And I think that might change as 2024 gets closer, as a presidential election starts to crystallize. But that hasn't really happened yet. And so it's going to be interesting to see whether Florida moved in this direction as a response to Donald Trump

Or they've moved in this direction as a response to Ron DeSantis. And I think that you're certainly going to see Ron DeSantis make the case that that happened because of him and that he is a kind of better vessel for Trumpism than its original standard bearer. But I think for voters, though, that's still an open thing that has to be untangled. And these results, I don't think, clearly give us an answer to that yet.

But you're saying we should bank on the idea that in the coming weeks and months, Ron DeSantis will make the case to Republicans that what happened in Florida was a result of him, not Trump. And because it didn't happen outside of Florida, they should see him as a plausible alternative to Trump as the future of the Republican Party. And let's be honest, as a potential Republican nominee for president in 2024. A hundred percent. If you are a Republican who believes

does not want Donald Trump to be the nominee in 2024 and won a conservative alternative. Tonight was a great night. Because Republicans as a whole did not flame out or bottom out. This version of Republicans, the Trump version of Republicans, did not live up to expectations. Now, Donald Trump has survived a lot before.

So I don't think that's a reason to write him off. But that does mean that he has more political challenges today than he had yesterday. Right. And this result tonight and what it says about Trumpism, it does make me wonder if the Republican Party may be on the cusp of having a conversation with itself. We always talk about it potentially having, which is, you know, is Donald Trump the right person?

And there's now two well-documented major political setbacks for the party. The first was in 2020 when he lost the election. The second, these midterms where the Republicans didn't have the success they were supposed to have. That might give the party lots of grist to ask itself, is it time for Trump to step aside? Yeah. If Republicans didn't take back the House...

I would totally think that is about to explode into the public arena tomorrow. And it will for some candidates. It will for DeRonda Santis. It will for people who want to make that case. But at the same time, if Republicans do take back the House, even with a smaller than expected margin, you still have a Republican caucus gaining power and

that is being driven by Trump-backed legislators, right? The energy, the activism, the money on the small donor side of the Republican Party still resides with Donald Trump and his supporters. Wait, can you explain that to me? Because I want to understand this. If Republicans take back the House by a very small margin...

How does that make Trump Act forces in the Congress more powerful? Because haven't we just seen that those allied with Trump stood in the way of the Republican Party having a big, big victory tonight? So how is it that they would somehow be more empowered in the event of a narrow Republican majority in the House? Yeah, this is an important question. And so let me try to think about how to explain it most clearly. I think it comes back to Trump.

how Congress works, frankly. The party that has the majority in the House has a lot of unilateral power of decision making. And the speaker makes a lot of those choices based off of managing their own party's caucus. And for Republicans, if you have a small advantage over

you have to make sure your party is aligned. And you have to make sure you are appeasing all different parts of them to keep that alignment going. And if you are Kevin McCarthy, who leads House Republicans...

The most popular members of your caucus, the ones who raise the most money, the ones who are on TV the most, the ones who have the most power to make your life difficult, are all people aligned with Trump. Aligned with Donald Trump. I'm thinking

I'm thinking of Marjorie Taylor Greene. I'm thinking of Andy Biggs in Arizona. I'm thinking of Paul Gosar in Arizona. I'm thinking of people who drive the energy and conversation among the Trump base. They still retain that power, even in a small majority that the House caucus would have. It is up to Republican leadership.

to sideline those voices. And I don't think that's something we should take as a definite. If anything, we have seen a year where Republican leaders have increasingly brought those people into the fold. And so at the same time, you have a country that kind of nationally rejected Trumpism in its most explicit forms. The people most associated with those forms could very well use their new powers of the House should they get them

No matter what the country said. Right. You once predicted this very thing in a conversation about the midterms. Instead, I remember that the extreme edges of the Republican Party could be rejected in these midterms and still end up more empowered than before. Absolutely.

So you think there's very little chance that this hypothetical but quite likely narrow Republican majority and its leaders won't ice out the right wing that hurt the party in these midterms? If tonight leads to a Republican party that is open to bipartisan cooperation, then that will be more than a result. That would be a change of heart from Republicans, right? That would go against everything they've said over the last couple of years.

So I just don't think that's likely. I don't think that it's a given that even with the small majority that the Republican House could have, and even with the wide underperformance of the Republican Party,

That definitely leads to a more moderate Republican Party. I think we should check that assumption because the evidence over the last several election cycles has not been that. Well, it's dead. I'm exhausted. You're exhausted. Let's go to bed. Thank you very much. Thank you. I really appreciate it. We'll be right back.

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Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash NYT. oracle.com slash NYT. The Run-Up is reported by me, Astead Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez and Caitlin O'Keefe. It's edited by Frannie Carr-Toth, Larissa Anderson, and Lisa Tobin. This episode was also produced by Rachel Quester, Rob Zipko, Diana Nguyen, and Nina Feldman.

and edited by Paige Cowan and Lisa Chow. It was mixed by Chris Wood and Corey Schreppel, with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Alisha Ba'i Tu. Special thanks to Mahima Chablani and Maddie Maciello. Next week on The Run-Up, where the country goes from here.

AI may be the most important new computer technology ever. But AI needs a lot of processing speed. And that gets expensive fast. Upgrade to the next generation of the cloud: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI. OCI is the single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic.

Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash nyt. oracle.com slash nyt.