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Well the Midterms are now done and dusted and the next big election for the US will be the 2020 Presidential Election where House seats will be up again, more Senate seats will be up and Donald Trump will be fighting to secure a 2nd term as President. But for now it is time to reflect on the outcome of the 2018 Midterm Elections, which were a bit of a mix but overral better results for the Democrats as it often is for an opposition party in these elections.
So let’s go back over my predictions I made in my last post and see how well I did…
Governors
I predicted that the Democrats would make as many as 8 Governor pick ups and that the Republicans would hold the rest of their Governors but not make any gains. There were several places here that I was wrong, but overral I was right about the Democrats making a lot of Governor gains.
First of all a number of people thought that the California and Oregon Governor’s had a chance of being flipped but I disagreed with that from the beginning due to just how high support for the Democrats are currently on those two states and in the end with those two elections it was not even close with the rising star Democrat Gavin Newsom in California winning the Governor election with over 1 million votes, Gavin Newsom is someone to watch for 2024+ as he could become a Democrat Presidential contender. There turned out to also be another close Governor race in Connecticut where the GOP very nearly flipped it from the Democrats due to the level of dissatisfaction with the former out-going Democrat Governor, but in the end the Democrats just about managed to hold it as I predicted.
I predicted that the Democrats would flip the Governor in the states of Illinois, Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin and Alaska. I said that the Democrats would take advantage in Alaska of the Independant split to enable them to clinch that Governor election of which I was wrong as in the end the Independant hardly got any votes and the GOP had that as their only Governor gain fairly easily. The race in both Georgia and Iowa was very close and the GOP managed to hold on to them but I did predict that the Florida Governor would not flip to the Democrats which I was correct about, I think that Gillum(D) was just too extreme for many Florida voters, especcially in terms of gun control, again though it was very close and closer still after the chaos of the recount, it is not out of the realm of possibility for it to be flipped in the future by Gillum(D).
I also predicted that the Republicans would hold the Maine and Kansas (Kris Kobach just was not popular enough and too controversial, I reckon GOP would have held it with the incumbent) Governor of which I was wrong but that they would also hold New Hampshire, Maryland, Vermont and Massachusetts Governors in heavily Democrat states due to the Governor’s popularity of which I was correct.
So all in all the Democrats picked up 7 Governors, down from my predicted 8 and the Republicans picked up 1 Governor, up from the zero pick ups I said they would have, I was not too far off.
The Senate
My prediction for the Senate was pretty much spot on, although we have to wait for the run-off election for the Mississippi Special Senate election but the GOP candidate is set to most likely win the seat on the 27th November, although there is some chance of the Democrat candidate instead winning but it is less likely. So all in all, all of my predictions in numbers for the Senate was correct.
The only part I was wrong on is that I didn’t believe that the GOP would lose Arizona and Nevada and I didn’t think that the GOP was going to take the Florida Senate, it seems that the outcome against Andrew Gillum(D) also brought out enough voters to flip the Senate seat, my other predictions were correct though.
The House
The House was always going to the most tricky to predict due to how many seats it has and how both national and local forces and goings on can effect these seats in many different ways, although this year the national emphasis on the Midterms was the overwhelming focus.
I had the GOP holding the House just by one seat but I knew almost immedietly that this would not actually be the outcome by any means, I still thought it would have been closer than it ended up being though, it seems the Democrats over-performed more than I expected they were going to, I was for sure thinking the majority either side would not be more than 10 seats, but the Democrats pulled off a 39 seat flip and ended with a fairly good 33 seat majority in the House.
The Democrats performed very well in California where they flipped a number of seats from the Republicans, as well as that they flipped a number of seats in Illinois, New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia and even flipped seats in a number of heavily Republican states such as Kansas and South Carolina.
I had the Democrats in total picking up 22 seats in my final prediction but they beat this by 17 more seats, meanwhile the Republicans only flipped three seats from the Democrats, although this is a bit better than my prediction where I said they would only flip one seat, Minnesota-8.
So to round it off my prediction for Governor and Senate was close to being perfect with a few inconsistencies and mistakes but my prediction for the House as I suspected it would be was the furthest from being correct with the Democrats very much over-performing.
Now all eyes point towards 2020 where we will see if the GOP are able to re-take the House, whether the Democrats can finally take the Senate and whether Donald Trump can be re-elected for a 2nd term, I can promise I will be all over it when the time comes making my predictions and thoughts on it.
Thank you for reading this and please share it far and wide as it really helps!