US Midterms: Republicans predicted a 'Red Tsunami' and got a red splash instead
Kyle Smith
Over the past number of weeks there has been extreme anticipation towards the midterm elections in the US. This is because the elections could decide the fate of many of the policies that President Joe Biden’s administration wanted to implement.
Fox News and other stations were predicting a ‘Red Wave’ or ‘Red Tsunami’, - a large amount of voters electing Republican party members to the House of Representatives and to the Senate. This is due to many reasons; the growing inflation, the pull out of the military from Afghanistan or the increase in crime in some major cities. However, this did not occur. The Democrats managed to grasp a slim majority in the Senate and lost a handful of seats to Republicans in the House.
The Democrats had overperformed by many accounts, and analysts are pointing out to the fact that former president Donald Trump may have been the reason. Voting against Trump, who is seen as a figure of division in the US, was a major reason for such a large turnout of voters for the Democrats. Trump had endorsed numerous candidates from the Republican party, having attended rallies in Pennsylvania. His attendance at these rallies alongside with him hinting at another presidential run scared the more left-wing voters and even moderates into voting for the Democrats.
Another major reason for such a strong stance from the Democrats is the emergence of Generation Z, a young voting demographic which tends to be quite left-leaning. With more and more possible voters from this generation emerging year on year, the future for the Republicans may not look so bright, especially with the rise of social media which helps to spread ideas and information at an immeasurable rate.
Generation Z is far more political compared to other generations at similar time periods in their life, which is undoubtedly partly due to social media and how easy it is to find information on candidates.
“According to the Edison Research National Election Pool exit poll, the national youth vote choice for the U.S. House of Representatives was 63% for Democrats, 35% for Republicans.”
The overwhelming support for the Democrats can be broken down into different categories. White youth votes were quite close whereas 89 per cent of Black youth and 68 per cent of Latino youth voted for a Democratic House candidate. The youth turnout was even stronger in battleground states, research suggests.
The same trend appears in older generations but for the opposite party, with the majority of those aged 50 and above supporting the Republicans over the Democrats. Many people expected Republicans to do well, and understandably so after a glimpse at some of the voting maps which were shown on mainstream media.
On this map there is a considerable amount of red. However much of this is rural communities who tend to vote conservative.
Image courtesy of Karim Douïeb
This is a map of the population and how much each area usually votes for each party, on average the more populated areas vote for the democrats.
Image courtesy of Reuters
With the Democrats controlling the Senate and the Republicans having a slim majority in the House, this puts the Biden administration on a considerably better footing than what was expected.
Featured image courtesy of John Tyson via Unsplash
Kyle Smith is a Culture reporter for The Scoop and a second year Film student at Queen’s University Belfast.