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What We Can Take Away from Election Night

Yes, Democrats had a great night:

    • At least 29 House seats flipped.
    • 7 governor seats flipped.
    • 6 legislative chambers flipped, and 7 this cycle.
    • 4 Republican super-majorities in state legislatures broken
    • 3 state Supreme Court seats flipped
    • 1 Senate seat flipped

Oh, and we flipped more than 330 (!) state legislative seats this cycle.

DEMOCRATS EXPANDED THE MAP: The Democratic Party is a 50-state party again. Democrats are organizing everywhere, and we organized everywhere early.  We’ll continue to expand the map in 2019 and 2020.

  • We flipped House seats from upstate New York to Texas to Oklahoma.
  • We took back governors’ mansions from Maine to Kansas to New Mexico.
  • We flipped state legislative chambers from New Hampshire to Colorado.

DIVERSITY WINS:  Democrats believe diversity is a strength.  Just look who we elected last night:

  • The first African American women to represent Massachusetts and Connecticut in Congress
  • The first Muslim women to serve in the House
  • The first Latinas in the House from Texas
  • The first Native American women in the House
  • The first Native American woman elected statewide in Minnesota
  • The first openly gay governor elected in the country

YEAR OF WOMEN: Women are leading the resistance, and they led the Democrats to victory in the House of Representatives and in governorships across the country.  

  • Exit polling shows that Trump has a 39-60 approve-disapprove rating among women.
  • We have flipped a total of 29 House seats – 19 of those by women.
  • We’ve expanded the number of female Democratic governors from two to at least six with wins by Laura Kelly, Janet Mills, Gretchen Whitmer, and Michelle Lujan Grisham.

HEALTHCARE #1 ISSUE:  That’s what our candidates ran on and that’s what they’ll look forward to working on in Congress.

  • Exit polling confirmed that health care is the #1 issue for voters in America, and health care voters went for Democrats by 52 points (75-23).
  • Three states — Utah, Nevada, and Idaho — voted to expand Medicaid.

GAINS FOR REDISTRICTING: Flipping control of governorships and statehouses is critical to our party’s 2020 redistricting strategy, because they are tasked with redrawing a state’s legislative maps.

  • Democrats flipped at least 330 state legislative seats this cycle.
  • Democrats flipped control of 7 governorships in the heartland, the Southwest, and the Northeast.

NEW REALITY FOR TRUMP: The big loser of the midterms is Donald Trump. His unpopularity hurt Republicans up and down the ballot, and Democrats won back voters who were not satisfied with his agenda.

  • Democrats won Senate and governors’ races across the Rust Belt states — Pennsylvania, Michigan, an
  • d Wisconsin — that helped elect Trump president.
  • Trump’s endorsements “meant squat.” At least 32 Trump-backed candidates lost last night.
Categories: 2018 Elections
Data and Research Manager: