Nov 17, 2022 4 min read

The predicted “red wave” in this month’s midterm elections was as hyped as Geraldo Rivera’s televised foray into Al Capone’s vaults more than 30 years ago and, like Rivera, Republicans were mostly left empty-handed after all the breathless anticipation.

What exactly happened was the subject of a forum presented by the American Democracy Project at the California campus of Pennsylvania Western University on Tuesday night. Moderated by Jon Delano, politics and money editor at KDKA-TV, panelists were Alan Abramowitz, professor of political science at Emory University and nationally recognized as a leading forecaster of congressional and presidential elections; Louis Jacobson, a political columnist and senior correspondent at PolitiFact; Amber Gaffney, a social psychologist at Humboldt State University in California; and Tony Norman, a columnist for NEXTpittsburgh and a former columnist with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

“This was in many ways a status quo election,” Abramowitz pointed out. “There were few incumbents losing. (Voters) didn’t do much to change things.”

Despite the widespread belief that Democrats would be punished by voters for inflation and the country’s discontented mood, the party will maintain control of the U.S. Senate with 50 seats, and Vice President Kamala Harris acting as a tie-breaking vote. There’s the possibility of the Democrats adding an additional seat in December if incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock wins a runoff election in Georgia. Republicans are forecast to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but only by a couple of seats.

What happened? Panelists believed that the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade and ending the constitutional right to abortion mobilized young voters. They also pointed to a number of less-than-reliable polls that helped foster a media narrative that a wave election was on the way. And, Abramowitz noted, one byproduct of America’s polarized electorate is that elections rarely result in large gains for either party.

“As a result, you don’t get big swings,” he said.

Gaffney said, “There is no doubt that John Fetterman is the next U.S. senator from Pennsylvania because of women.” She said the right to choose an abortion being snatched away mobilized female voters because “you get angry when something is taken away from you. It’s a grievance thing. You make people mad, and people turn out to vote.”

There was also little change in the makeup of the country’s governorships in the midterms, with Nevada being the only state where an incumbent was defeated. Jacobson said that this struck him as being “a little bit of a paradox.” He said, though, that large amounts of federal dollars flowing into the states in COVID-19 relief has kept governors from having to enact perennially unpopular measures like cutting aid to education or raising taxes.

The federal money “tends to take away a lot of things that get governors booted out of office,” Jacobson said.

And even though political predictions and prognostications have continually been upended over the last couple of decades, the panelists nonetheless offered some thoughts on what could unfold in 2024. For instance, Abramowitz believes Republicans will retake the U.S. Senate, thanks to a foribidding map for Democrats that will have them defending 24 seats, including some in red states like Ohio, Montana and West Virginia. But he also thinks Democrats will retake the House, and President Biden will emerge victorious over former President Donald Trump. Jacobson, however, believes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be the GOP presidential nominee, and his opponent will be either Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar or Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown.

However, Norman said, “Nothing is settled, and we might be pleasantly surprised by the outcome. And that’s what makes our democracy very dynamic. I have a lot of hope right now.”