
Relatively few Americans were aware of provisions to cap the price of insulin and allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, even though they were individually popular. But, on the whole, the public held Democrats responsible for their pinched wallets, regardless of what the party said or did.Įven the Inflation Reduction Act, the product of 18 months of messy talks on Capitol Hill, landed with a whisper. Some Democrats were more adept than others at feeling voters’ pain in February, a group of vulnerable senators, for instance, urged Mr. And Democrats grasped for a clear, consistent response to Republican attacks.Īcceptance proved harder. Trump, remarked that “boring wins.” Inflation dominated, as Democrats grasped for a response.Īgain and again, voters told pollsters that soaring prices for gasoline, groceries and housing were their No. Tony Evers of Wisconsin, wryly assessing his victory over Tim Michels, a flame-throwing Republican who allied himself with Mr. Josh Shapiro, the attorney general of Pennsylvania, ran ads bolstering State Senator Doug Mastriano in the Republican primary, then steamrollered him in the election on Tuesday.ĭon Bolduc, a Republican challenger who likewise played up Trump’s stolen-election lies, lost a Senate race in New Hampshire that Republicans in Washington once thought winnable. The Democrats’ scorched-earth approach worked in many cases. Once these nominees were cemented, Democrats bombarded voters with messages that portrayed Republicans as too extreme on issues like abortion rights or as opponents of democracy itself. In some races, Democrats even tried steering Republican voters away from more moderate candidates and lifted Trump-aligned conservatives who denied the legitimacy of Joseph R. Democratic governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan positioned themselves as bulwarks of abortion rights, while liberal groups poured hundreds of millions of dollars into ads highlighting the far-right positions many Republicans took to win their primaries. Two months later, when voters in conservative Kansas emphatically rejected a ballot measure to ban abortion, many saw a potential game-changer in the making. Suddenly, Democrats had found an issue to rally their base around. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning a 50-year precedent that many Americans had taken for granted. Then came the Supreme Court’s bombshell decision in Dobbs v. Throughout much of 2021 and the first half of 2022, Republicans appeared poised for shellacking-level gains in Congress and beyond.

“People understand how precarious and precious a thing constitutional democracy is, and they don’t want to lose it.” Abortion put Democrats in the fight. “I think that pundits sometimes project onto the public a crude materialism, where all people care about is pocketbook issues in the narrowest sense,” Mr. An Abortion Destination: North Carolina, where abortion remains legal up to 20 weeks, has become a top destination for people from states where it has been banned or severely restricted since Roe was overturned.In Texas: Five women sued the state over its abortion ban, saying that they were denied the procedure despite grave risks to themselves and their fetuses.In Florida: Florida Republicans introduced parallel bills in the House and in the Senate that would further restrict the state’s abortion ban to six from 15 weeks of pregnancy.The chain’s decision triggered blowback from consumers and politicians California said that it would not renew a multimillion contract with the company.

Walgreens: A few weeks after Republican attorneys general in 21 states threatened legal action against retail pharmacy chains if they dispensed the abortion pill mifepristone, Walgreens said it would not distribute the pill in those states.In a typical midterm election, like 20, turnout drops by about 20 percentage points from a presidential year. The biggest question hanging over Democrats all year was just who, exactly, would show up to vote for them. Here are the lessons of the 2022 midterms so far: The Democratic base showed up.
NYT MIDTERM RESULTS FULL
It will be days before the full results are clear, and possibly weeks. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, even flipped the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County on his way to a rout of Representative Charlie Crist. And some battleground states, like North Carolina, moved further out of Democrats’ reach. There were signs of Republican gains in working-class communities of color. Tuesday was by no means an unalloyed victory for either side, however. “These are battle-hardened veterans who know exactly why they’re in politics.” “The Democratic Party post-Trump is a much tougher, fighting party,” said Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, attributing to sheer grit the victories eked out by colleagues like Abigail Spanberger of Virginia.
