In much of the country, the Republican Party fell well short of expectations in the 2022 midterms. Flawed GOP nominees in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada and Arizona lost winnable races for U.S. Senate, thus consigning their party to another two years in the minority. Democrats lost their U.S. House majority but only by a sliver of seats. At the state level, Democrats netted two governorships while Republicans lost control of at least five legislative chambers — the Pennsylvania House, the Minnesota Senate, both chambers in Michigan and the Alaska Senate, where a coalition of Democrats and dissident Republicans will take over.
In our state, however, the Republican Party fared far better. Its candidates secured a veto-proof 30-seat supermajority in the North Carolina Senate and a 71-49 majority in the House (one seat shy of a supermajority, though on some issues there will likely be enough votes to override Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto). Ted Budd won the open U.S. Senate seat. Republicans won all six appellate-court races, flipping the partisan balance on the state Supreme Court. The party also appears to have increased its share of county commissioners, sheriffs and school-board members.
North Carolina wasn’t the only state where the election results diverged from the national trend. Republicans in Florida and Iowa, for example, also achieved impressive successes in 2022. The extent to which American politics has been thoroughly nationalized was exaggerated. So was the disappearance of split-ticket voters (who revealed themselves in large numbers in places like Ohio and New Hampshire). Candidate quality, issue selection and the incumbent party’s performance in office still matter a lot.
In the weeks since the election, I’ve been compiling data and listening to thoughtful analysts on both sides of the aisle. Here are some points worth pondering:
Yes, I know exit polls can be fuzzy. But district-level analysis of vote totals appears to confirm the trend. When American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Philip Wallach grouped competitive U.S. House districts by ethnic composition, he found that Republicans tended to fare better in 2022 in places where Hispanics make up a larger share of the electorate.
In the 2022 exit poll, 46% of North Carolina voters described their community as suburban, with 30% saying urban and 24% rural. Budd won the suburban vote by 11 points. By contrast, Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly edged out his Republican challenger among suburban voters. So did the Democratic candidates in Nevada and New Hampshire, while GOP Senate candidates in Georgia and Pennsylvania won their suburbs by margins far too narrow to overcome their big losses in urban counties.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).