At midnight on the East Coast on Wednesday, Steve Kornacki of MSNBC raised the possibility that the Democrats might keep the House. A few minutes later the NBC House model updated:
NBC has a new model for the house pic.twitter.com/04k9z1XMEO
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 9, 2022
The NBC decision desk also confirmed that the results of the election would not be known overnight, but there are some things that were clearly at work.
First, exit polling showed that abortion was a motivating factor. It was an issue in polling too, when people were asked what motivated them to go to the polls. It was also an issue when people said the economy was a reason, because abortion is an economic issue.
Second, just like 2018, the youth vote was huge. I look forward to reading those breakdowns over the next few days.
Third, if the House remains close, or if the Democrats hold the House, it’s going to be very difficult for the Democratic Party to knock Biden off the top of the ticket.
Fourth, if the Republicans hold the House by 10 or fewer seats, they are going to have a hard time organizing to do anything, and it opens the possibility that the lesser MAGA or swing state representatives work with the Democrats to pass legislation. And as I was drafting this, I saw this:
Several House GOP sources tell CBS after midnight tonight that they are now increasingly worried that if GOP wins a narrow House majority, it'll be utter chaos for McCarthy/leadership team. Rep. MTG & her allies would have much more sway in a tight GOP House, the sources predict.
— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 9, 2022
Fifth, not only were the legit polls wrong because they didn’t account for the huge voter registration numbers from women and young people and their attendant enthusiasm, during the last 2 weeks of the campaigns there was a flood of polls from legit pollsters that were sponsored by a bunch of right wing groups and withheld all cross tab data from public scrutiny.
Sixth, we have a failed media which exists only to bleat out horse race analogies and “DEMS IN DISARRAY!” which took those polls at face value, and this includes poll aggregators like 538 and Real Clear Politics.
I made some predictions about the election’s outcome here, and in another venue specified that the Democrats would add 2 Senate sets and that the Republicans would gain 10 or fewer House seats. Let’s see how things play out this week.
In the meantime, the Democrats–and the nation–appear to have dodged a huge bullet.
Breathe, everyone.