A new study of the 2022 midterm elections from Pew Research Center found that Republican voters turned out at higher levels than Democratic ones did. It wasn't exactly a startling revelation given that voters of the party not in power typically outperform their counterparts across the aisle.
"The Pew data shows that a larger percentage of voters who supported Trump in 2020 cast ballots in November than those who backed Biden did," wrote The New York Times in a piece calling the finding a "red flag" for Democrats.
The “red flag” framing was curious from the start. As veteran political journalist John Harwood noted, "Given that Trump's was the out-party in Biden's first mid-term, this is precisely what you'd expect."
Remember the supposed "red tsunami" we were assured would sweep the nation, because history? All those reports were rooted in the baseline presumption that Republican turnout would indeed exceed Democratic turnout, which is basically what Pew is confirming.
The Times piece also embraced a distinctly glass-half-empty view of Democratic performance, asserting that "Democrats maintained control of the Senate, all but one of their governor’s mansions and only narrowly lost the House." Technically it’s all accurate, but Democrats actually picked up one seat in the Senate, netted two governors’ mansions, and blunted what should have been a GOP rout in the House.
Semafor political reporter Benjy Sarlin also took issue with the Times' bent.
"Not sure I'd interpret this as *bad news* for D's," Sarlin tweeted. "If the story is 'D's had a historically good midterm even with an electorate that's likely more R-leaning than a presidential cycle' then that's pretty concerning for R's."
In most cases, that did appear to be the story. For instance, the Times keyed in on three demographics in which Republicans performed better than they had in 2018: women, Latinos, and rural voters. But Democratic underperformance was mainly driven by a drop-off in Democratic turnout (versus persuasion), which is to be expected in a midterm for a party in power.
Latinos still favored Democrats over Republicans in 2022, but by 26 points less than they did in 2018, the highest-turnout midterm election on record. Pew, however, chalked up the differential to "asymmetric changes in voter turnout among Hispanic adults, rather than changing preferences among individual Hispanic voters." In other words, certain groups of Latinos turned out in higher numbers (presumably those more aligned with Republicans) rather than being persuaded to switch their party allegiance.
A similar story played out among women, who favored Democrats by 18 points in 2018 but only 3 points in 2022.
Virtually all of the decline in the Democratic advantage among women is explained by the fact that the 2022 turnout rate for women who voted Republican in 2018 was 8 points higher than the rate for women who voted Democratic that year (84% vs. 76%).
Democrats didn't shed women voters; they simply didn't turn out at the same rate as they did in 2018, when Trump was running the country into the ground. Go figure.
Turnout in 2022 was high, nearly matching the historic turnout rates of 2018. But it was also uneven. Several of the states where turnout increased to the benefit of Democrats were states where abortion was on the ballot, either literally or by virtue of a future governor's veto pen. Specifically, that included the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Importantly, Democrats also did much better among independents than one would expect in a midterm where they held the White House.
For instance, in 2006, 2010, and 2018—all years in which the party out of power netted huge gains in the House—independents voted for that victorious party by anywhere from 12-19 points. But in 2022, Democrats actually won independents by several points (2 points in Edison Research exit polling and 4 points in the AP Votecast survey).
And in battleground states featuring key Senate races independents solidly broke for Democrats by double-digits, favoring Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly over Republican challenger Blake Masters by 16 points, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock over Republican Herschel Walker by 11 points in the Nov. 8 election, and John Fetterman over Republican Mehmet Oz by 20 points.
As Split Ticket's Lakshya Jain tweeted, lower Democratic turnout in 2022 isn’t particularly worrisome because, historically, voters who skip a midterm election usually show up again in presidential years.
"As a party," he added, "you’d much rather win independents in the off year than simply tread water through good base turnout.”
“Not sure I agree with this framing from the NYT," Jain concluded.
Ditto.