2022 Election Predictions Review: U.S. Senate

Happy Holidays

It has been almost two weeks since the last Senate race was formally decided and I am getting around to formally tallying  up my predictions. 

 

What was a bit more unexpected than the runoff result in Georgia was that later this week,  Senator Kirsten Sinema declared herself to be an "Independent." This seems far more about her positioning for a 2024 Arizona reelection campaign than something that will effect the day to day operations in the short-term, as Democrats maintain control of the Senate. Partisan Democrats have turned their vitriol on Sinema, an  openly agnostic, bisexual, fairly young woman once known for risque fashion choices and unorthodox hair styles on Capitol Hill. She was once sort of the "Madonna of Congress" and now the left looks at her like she is Creulla DeVille. While I see the obvious political posturing involved in her announcement, I feel the need to salute anyone in politics who takes a step to demonstrate just how out of touch both major parties have become.

All things considered, the fact that Republicans actually net lost a Senate seat during the first midterm election of a Democrat President with low job approval is pretty stunning, but that is what happened. I predicted a one seat net gain for Republicans and that was far on the low-end of what many, especially those who considered themselves happy with the Republican Party were anticipating. As I had mentioned on a couple of occasions there were a lot of polls out late in this cycle that wound up being incredibly over-favorable to Republican candidates and they just may have been designed to enter the media and online narrative as much as any scientific snapshot of the race.

 

As Mitch McConnell (who quickly vanquished a challenge to his hold on the Leadership) has stated, candidate quality matters. Republicans lost a handful of winnable races and frankly won a couple (such as Ohio and North Carolina) by a much smaller margin than they should have if not for the nominee. By the same standard, Democrats probably would have won in Wisconsin if they did not have a flawed nominee, who was popular with the party grassroots but a bad fight statewide .

For Republicans though, the common denominator in these bad candidates in winnable places like Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania was Donald Trump. He either recruited or intervened to select all of those eventual nominees and they all lost, when it appears clear that a different Republican could have won. Perhaps Taylor Swift needs to re-do one of her new songs. "Hello Donald. You're the problem. It's You."

Nowhere was this lack of candidate quality more evident than in Georgia where Trump got Herschel Walker into the race for no other reasons than he knew him and he was once a big football star who "liked Trump" and he was black, a "black guy who liked Trump" who could be put up against another black guy. That entire campaign was a disaster but I do give Walker credit for a fairly gracious concession speech. It seems like he was maybe even relieved in a way. Sure, he probably wanted to not lose, but he would not have enjoyed being a U.S. Senator. Walker accepted defeat and told his supporters that the election was about something far bigger than himself and to continue to believe in the "Constitution" and America's elected officials. All of these are things that a defeated Donald Trump would never be able to say.

Here were my final Senate predictions:

Alabama- Safe Republican

Alaska- Likely Republican (Leans Murkowski)

Arizona- Tossup (D)

Arkansas- Safe Republican

California- Safe Democrat

Colorado- Leans Democrat

Connecticut- Likely Democrat

Florida- Leans Republican

Georgia- Tossup (D)

Hawai'i- Safe Democrat

Idaho- Safe Republican

Illinois- Safe Democrat

Indiana- Safe Republican

Iowa- Likely Republican

Kansas- Safe Republican

Kentucky- Likely Republican

Louisiana- Safe Republican (Safe Kennedy)

Maryland- Safe Democrat

Missouri- Likely Republican

Nevada- Tossup (R)

New Hampshire- Tossup (D)

New York- Safe Democrat

North Carolina- Leans Republican

North Dakota- Safe Republican

Ohio- Leans Republican

Oklahoma A- Safe Republican

Oklahoma B- Likely Republican

Oregon- Safe Democrat

Pennsylvania- Tossup (R)

South Carolina- Safe Republican

South Dakota- Safe Republican

Utah- Leans Republican

Vermont- Safe Democrat

Washington- Leans Democrat

Wisconsin- Tossup (R)

 

Despite overstating Republican hopes in New Hampshire especially, as well as Washington. I was only wrong on two races. It should also be pointed out that Florida was the one place statewide where Republicans actually exceeded expectations triggering what will be a months long internet war over Trump vs DeSantis for the right to "own the libs."

 

Nevada- This wound up being very close, but even in death, the Harry Reid Machine pulled off another big win, despite the Governorship flipping to the GOP and having the only incumbent Governor or Senator in the country to seek reelection and not be victorious in 2022.

 

Catherine Cortez Masto won a narrow victory over Republican Adam Laxalt, a once promising conservative figure who held statewide office, but has now lost two statewide races in back to back midterms after a full embrace of Donald Trump. In this race, Republicans did not make the inroads with Latino voters than they had hoped to and putting aside the quirkiness of the Governorship changing, Nevada Republicans vastly under-performed expectations in federal elections.

In my write-up of the Nevada races, I had mentioned the uniqueness of the state having a "None of the Above" option for voters and I said that could possibly make the difference if the race was really close and it would be hard to detect in the polls because it would be equated with undecided voters. That is indeed part of what happened.

Pennsylvania-  I still believe that Senator-Elect John Fetterman, even before his stroke, was a weak candidate and that he probably had the worst debate performance of any candidate in a big race ever. Still the debate did not matter and might have generated sympathy for him. While I wish him well in his recovery,  I still do not see the political (or fashion) appeal of Fetterman. His wife is also likely to generate some headlines on Capitol Hill on the years to come. 

As for Republicans, the candidate who narrowly finished second in the primary was Dave McCormick, whom I believe was far from the best that Keystone State Republicans had to offer, but he probably would have beat Fetterman this year. However, Mr. Trump liked Dr. Oz for reasons such as "he has a show on television just like I did" and for the fact that Oz humored Trump in the 2016 campaign by saying he seemed healthy enough to him. So, Oz got the endorsement, and then lost the general election because he was seen as an elitist out of touch out of stater. The colossal embarrassment running for Governor of the state as a Republican did not help at all either. I knew this contest would be close and like Nevada I went back and forth on my initial prediction of Democrat wins, but chalk this one up as a rare prognostication loss. Not that I am torn up about it.

On October 14, I finished my final Senate "Race of the Day", If I would have just stopped there, I would have predicted every race correctly this cycle. I made the two changes though in favor of Republicans, while maintaining both races were still Tossups, and wound up being wrong, though not nearly as wrong as every conservative pundit (and some liberal ones too) on television. Consistently, I was 33-2 for the third straight cycle.

2022 U.S Senate Results: 33-2 (94%)

Past results:

 

2006: 31-2 (94%)
2008: 34-1 (97%)
2010: 34-3 (92%)
2012: 28-5 (85%)
2014: 36-0 (100%)
2016: 31-3 (91%)

2018: 33-2 (94%) 

2020: 33-2 (94%)