Over 60 Million People Voted For Democrats In The Midterms. That's Catastrophic For The GOP

[Soph0571]

But now that the final national midterm election has been called and Democrats have picked up their 40th House seat, we can take a look at the vote totals and do a bit of math. Just how good was the turnout for the Democratic Party and how bad will that be for the GOP going forward?

60 million plus votes. In a midterm. For Democrats. And if you're not already aware of it, Democrats don't vote in midterms which is why Republicans tend to win them.

Still, let's put that 60 million and change in context.

In 2016 Trump "won" with 62,979,636 votes
In 2014 83.2 million voted in total
In 2012 Romney lost with 60,933,504 votes
In 2010 90.9 million voted in total
In 2008 McCain lost with 59,948,323 votes
In other words, we just saw the left vote at almost presidential election level numbers. The right had a boost in numbers, too, reaching over 50 million votes but that's not even close to the increase in turnout on the left. Trump has been claiming that he wasn't on the ballot so Republicans didn't do as well but he spent months telling his base that he was, in fact, on the ballot. And in reality, he very much was. That is a huge problem for the GOP.

[link:https://thedailybanter.com/2018/11/30/midterm-turnout-catastrophe-for-gop/|

Could it be anymore encouraging?

[beachbum bob]

1. we need 75 million to vote in 2020 and have hispanic/latinos double their numbers

THAT WILL HAVE a profound effect in Texas, Florida, Arizona

[OrlandoDem2]

2. Well, our new residents from Puerto Rico didn't vote in FL in the numbers

we had hoped last month. I hope that changes in 2020.

[elocs]

3. Sorry, I don't buy this popular vote hoopla as being meaningful

because that's not how our electoral system works.
Yes, Hillary beat Trump by millions of popular votes but we don't elect our presidents by popular vote. If we only could have moved 100,000 or so of those votes over to Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to win those states. But it's not the total of popular votes from all over the country, but it's where those votes are cast that matters.

It's like the loser of a 7 game World Series claiming, "but we scored more runs".
It's not the total runs scored but the individual games in which they occurred.

[druidity33]

4. That' an excellent analogy. K&R, nt.

[dsc]

5. that is also looking pretty good

In MI Dems won every statewide races and more votes for the state house and senate. In PA we won both the gov and sen races and in WI we won the gov race.

[elocs]

8. Walker lost in WI because you can't gerrymander a statewide election.

Liberal Dane county turned out in huge numbers to defeat Walker while thousands of Republican voters in conservative Waukesha county stayed home. It was a narrow loss for Walker but that huge turnout in Dane county made all the difference. Democrats also won the attorney general's race here as well.

[dsc]

11. yeah but that means we would win WI if we can replicate that

[Garrett78]

24. I'll be quite surprised if our nominee doesn't win MI, PA and WI in 2020.

MI and PA had been won by the Democratic nominee in 6 straight elections prior to '16, and Wisconsin had been won by the Dem nominee in 7 straight elections prior to '16.

2 things that won't be factors in 2016: Comey and a Dem nominee who has been under relentless attack for 3 decades.

There's also the possibility of winning NC, FL, AZ, GA, etc.

Obama's 365 electoral votes of 2008 is possibly within reach.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. The graphic of the tweet date/time doesn't correspond with the actual tweet

but there was another related tweet and response to it that was interesting -

Link to tweet

TEXT
Dave Wasserman
✔
@Redistrict
· Nov 29, 2018

The winning party's margin in votes the past 4 times the House has flipped:

1994: Republicans +6.8%
2006: Democrats + 8.0%
2010: Republicans +6.6%
2018: Democrats +8.4% and countinghttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WxDaxD5az6kdOjJncmGph37z0BPNhV1fNAH_g7IkpC0/edit#gid=0 …
2018 House Popular Vote Tracker

Sheet1 State, CD#, 2018 Cook PVI Score, 2018 Winner, Party, Dem Votes, GOP Votes, Other Votes, Dem%, GOP%, Other%, Dem Margin, 2016 Clinton Margin, Swing vs. 2016 Prez, 2016 Total Votes Cast, Raw...
docs.google.com

Dana Dicer @theDanaDicer

Democrats had 233 seats in '06, 235 now, but the 2018 map is strikingly different. In 2006 there were patches of blue throughout the country. Now? Vast swathes of rural red with islands of blue where a city is (PA, OH, IN, KY, TN, KY, NC, GA, OK, CO, TX, UT) pic.twitter.com/XwWW6qmSCc

7:15 PM - Nov 29, 2018

(smoothing of the Congressional Districts by party)

I had also did a rough count but there are 9 states that have no Republican in Congress and 9 states that have no Democrat in Congress.

[dsc]

12. that is not entirely true

MS blue seat is very rural, just rural black. One of NC's is rural as well Butterfield represents a tiny bit of Durham but the rest of his district is rural black. NM is quite rural as well. And the 3 in Iowa are pretty rural.

[BumRushDaShow]

14. However with the MS district

it includes the city of Jackson, which is the largest city in the state - although only having 167,000, so they had to find about 500,000 or so more people to make up a "district".

And with NC-1, which they redrew in 2016, every map I am seeing shows it does include almost all of Durham (but scoots around Raleigh) and almost all of Greenville (and includes the burbs of part of the famed "Research Triangle" ). I.e., it's not snaking around down roads like the earlier map -



And each one of the NM and IA districts have a city providing the overriding population. I think the cartograms of the election give a more realistic picture of the contribution of population to the results vs the geographic depictions of "red areas" (supposedly being "rural Republican" ) vs "blue areas" (supposedly being "urban Democratic" ).

[dsc]

15. Greenville is not a big city

it might have 50k or so. ECU makes it appear bigger than it actually is. Previous iterations of Butterfield's district included black parts of Wilson, Goldsboro, and other more rural black areas. They drew it to include Durham (and apparently more of Durham than I thought) in order to make other districts more GOP. It is hard to keep up with redraws but I thought the latest had cut Durham out of his district.

[Garrett78]

17. Wikipedia on Greenville:

The principal city of the Greenville metropolitan area, and the 10th-most populous city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. Greenville is the health, entertainment, and educational hub of North Carolina's Tidewater and Coastal Plain. The city's official population as of the 2017 United States census estimate is 92,156 residents[3]while the Greenville Metropolitan Area includes 174,263 people.

[BumRushDaShow]

20. I live in a city with a population of almost 1.6 million (Philadelphia)

which is 1/2 the population of the entire state of MS... And my state (PA) has about 3 million more than the state of NC. So all these "cities" in those states are "small" to me. However it's all relative to the total state populations and those urban areas carry the populations that swing elections - particularly in their counties.

MS has a 37% black population, but apparently they don't have enough of a population of voting Democratic whites (need at least 25%) or voting Democratic blacks to throw an election the other way.

NC has a black population of about 22% (where many of the previous residents came here to Philly to live believe it or not - probably the bulk of black Philadelphia came here from NC during the '40s "migration" ), but they have a large non-native population now due to the banking industry settling there, the Research Triangle college area, and snowbirds who fled the north for the Smokies or fled Florida (due to a variety of reasons). So this is what is impacting in there where they actually did go for Obama in 2008 (and I remember when Harvey Gantt was oh so close in his first election for Senator there before a "crack down" happened in that state by the GOP loons).

[Zambero]

7. Losing suburban voters, educated women in particular

Trumpism will leave a lasting mark to the detriment of the GOP, unless and until the party renounces all manner of white nationalism and misogyny-based politics.

[Garrett78]

18. I think they'll just go back to using a dog whistle instead of a bullhorn.

[Zambero]

21. Nowadays the two have reached approximately the same volume

LOUD. In the era of Trump. tactics and propaganda that might have been considered subtle in years past are now quite obvious. They might as well bring back those white robes and hoods. Either way, the hate, insecurity, false claims of superiority, and disdain for the "other" remain the same.

[onenote]

9. It was a big win, but I wouldn't put too much stock in particular numbers

Yes, 60 million plus votes were cast for Democratic candidates for House, more than the number cast in any mid-year election.

But over 50 million votes were cast for Republican candidates, which is the second largest number on record -- six million more than the republicans got in 2010 when they claimed 63 seats.

And if you take California and New York out of the equation since those states are barely competitive anymore, not only does that 60 million shrink, so does the margin of difference between the Republican total and the Democratic total.

The point, which is so obvious that it shouldn't have to be made, is that turnout maters, state by state results matter, and the turnout in the previous election doesn't necessarily tell you anything about the turnout in the next election.

Finally, while the margin between the total Democratic vote and Republican vote was impressive, it was less than the margin in every mid-term from 1970 through 1986.

[bullwinkle428]

13. So IOW, Chump energized the shit out of both sides in the 2018 Midterms. But I think

it still proves the concept that high turnout in general tends to benefit Democrats. I can recall a near-consensus reached in a discussion here at DU following the 2014 Midterms, where it was believed that as a result of gerrymandering, the Democrats would NEVER AGAIN obtain a majority in the House of Representatives. I completely bought into that idea myself.

[Garrett78]

19. The other disheartening reality is...

...that we will have a hard time gaining and maintaining a Senate majority. There are 20+ states that simply don't have a substantial enough metropolitan presence.

And increased urbanization makes it more difficult to draw fair district boundaries. It's easy to concentrate liberals in just a few districts.

Lastly, there seems to be a wishy-washy and largely ignorant subset of voters who simply vote based on the notion that power should go back and forth and that we should always have divided government, no matter how atrocious one party is.

[uponit7771]

10. Well, in 2000 there could've been 15 million democratic babies born before Nov and everyone of them

... voted for democrats in 2018 midterms.

Just thinkin of a way for the Chuck Todd types to spin this ...

This is huge, it looks like it's surpassing the anti Nixon vote

[Rizen]

16. That's great but don't let it go to our heads

We need to work harder than ever for 2020. Get people to vote.

[Scurrilous]

22. K&R

[Demovictory9]

23. kick