The Unexpected Strength of Democrats in the 2022 Election
The 2022 election results exceeded the expectations of Democrats in ways that few could have anticipated. The party not only secured additional governorships and strengthened their presence in state legislatures but also managed to expand their Senate majority. While they faced challenges in the House, the anticipated “red wave” of Republican victories failed to materialize. In retrospect, this seeming success may have inadvertently set the stage for a potential Democratic wipeout in 2024.
Following the 2022 elections, three significant developments shaped the political landscape. First, the pressure on President Biden to refrain from seeking re-election dissipated, along with the possibility of a formidable primary challenge should he choose to run. Second, Democrats began to embrace a flawed understanding of the electorate’s dynamics. Lastly, the Biden-Harris administration sidestepped the kind of critical post-defeat adjustments that both the Clinton and Obama administrations faced after their respective midterm defeats in 1994 and 2010.
During the 2020 campaign, concerns regarding Biden’s age were prevalent among Democrats, but many found solace in his subtle indications that he might only serve a single term. “Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden stated in 2020. However, by mid-2022, as Biden expressed his intention to run for re-election, unease within the party began to grow. A June 2022 interview by The New York Times with nearly 50 Democratic officials revealed that the president’s age—79 at the time and 82 by the time the victor of the 2024 election would be inaugurated—was a significant concern regarding his political viability.
Public sentiment regarding the Biden administration’s performance was also lukewarm. By October 2022, with widespread frustration over inflation, a Times-Siena poll indicated that Biden’s job approval rating had plummeted to 38 percent, and he was trailing Trump in a hypothetical rematch.
If the Democrats had experienced a substantial defeat in the midterms, the pressure on Biden to fulfill his earlier promise of being a transitional figure would have been overwhelming. Should he have chosen to run again under such circumstances, he would likely have faced serious challengers. However, the Democrats fared better than expected in the elections. The disappointing approval ratings for Biden and the public’s anger over inflation did not translate into losses at the polls. In their first electoral test under Biden, Democrats performed significantly better than they had during the tenures of Clinton or Obama. Consequently, any pressure on Biden to step aside—and the potential for a real primary challenge—vanished.
This outcome gave rise to a new narrative surrounding the electorate, one that was informed by the Democrats’ over-performance in competitive states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, contrasted with their underwhelming results in traditionally safe states such as New York and California. This new understanding posited that there existed two distinct coalitions: the MAGA coalition and the anti-MAGA coalition. While the anti-MAGA coalition was larger, it required activation through the looming threats posed by figures like Donald Trump or the implications of the Dobbs abortion ruling. A series of special election victories in 2023 seemed to validate this emerging theory, as Democrats succeeded in races that, based on Biden’s low approval ratings and the public’s discontent over inflation, they should not have been able to win. The animosity towards Trump within the anti-MAGA coalition had evidently altered the electoral calculus.
