In Defying the Odds, we discuss state and congressional elections as well as the presidential race. Our next book, title TBA, discusses the 2020 results.
Republicans won 28 of the 29 most competitive House races as projected by Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.
From Day One of this cycle, Chairman Emmer made it a priority to recruit the most diverse slateof candidates ever, and now, Republicans are welcoming a record-breaking new member class.Every House Republican candidate who flipped a Democrat-held seat is a woman, a minority,and/or a veteran.Thus far, 13 new Republican women are joining the House Republican Conference next year –breaking the record of nine new women set in 2010. Moreover, six new minorities and 11 newveterans will join House Republicans.Chairman Emmer also established from the outset of this cycle that this election would be achoice between Republicans’ message of freedom versus Democrats’ radical socialist agenda.The results speak for themselves as Democrats failed to have an answer for their socialist agenda. Soon-to-be former Congresswomen Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powellspecifically cited the NRCC’s message tying them to socialism as the reason they lost.
But the most shocking results available thus far make it clear that Trump did far better than polling indicated he would in many suburban battlegrounds, and in others Republican congressional candidates may have benefited from ticket-splitters. Overall, it looks like 2018 was a high-water mark for Democrats — a wave that crested and fell.
Democrats' unexpected losses ranged from districts in Florida and Texas where sliding Latino support proved costly, blue-trending suburbs where affluent voters split their tickets and rural seats in which Trump's GOP roared back last week. In the end, Democrats could end up losing around 10 seats, depending on the final counts in the more than a dozen races yet to be resolved.
