Analysis: A non-American’s guide to the 2022 US midterms
For the 2018 midterms, Democrats flipped at least one-quarter of the seats held by the Republicans in the House and the Senate. Two years earlier, Democratic gains were in part due to women voters: In the 1998 midterms, women voters gave Democrats their biggest popular-vote victory since 1982.
In their quest for control of Congress, Democrats hope their party will pick up two dozen seats – more than half of the 435 seats up for re-election in 2020 – and reclaim the majority in both the House and the Senate. If they do so, they will have regained control of Washington, and have taken a historic step back from President Donald Trump.
Here’s the map and the analysis for what is likely to be the most crucial election in Washington history:
The Democratic Party gained 10 seats in the House in the 2018 midterm election, and Republicans picked up four more seats, giving them a majority in the 435-seat House. However, Republicans still needed to capture a net of five seats to win control of the upper chamber. Democrats won 40 seats on Election Day, which left them two seats short of what they needed to win the majority.
Republicans will need to win a net of five seats in the midterm elections scheduled for Nov. 6, including all those above the projection line on the map above. The Democrats will need to win 23 seats to win the majority, assuming they maintain their current performance.
Here’s how the Democrats did in the 2018 midterm elections in the House, and what it means for their effort to win back the majority in 2020:
Democrats won at least one-quarter, or 28, of the seats they needed to win back the majority in the House.
Democrats flipped the seats held by the Republicans in the House, or won them by slim margins of fewer than 0.5 percentage points. The Democrats picked up seats from Tennessee, Maine, North Dakota, Tennessee and California.
Democrats won six of the nine seats they needed