WTF Just Happened?

So, um, what the hell just happened?  

Most observers expected Democrats to have a good night on Tuesday. Almost no one expected them to run the table like they did, including winning the U.S. Senate races in Texas, South Carolina, Kansas, and Missis-freaking-sippi (probably). Or for Roy Cooper to win by almost 20 points in North Carolina. Or to potentially flip six of our state’s congressional districts, the state House with seats to spare, and come within a hair’s breadth of taking the majority in the state Senate. 

It wasn’t a blue fever dream; it was beyond that. It was inexplicable. At least, we couldn’t explain it. So we posed the question to a variety of experts and insiders from across the political spectrum. Here’s what they make of it.

‘The Coalition of the Pissed Off’

I feel like we all just woke up from that party in college and said, “That was a wild night. What on earth did we do?” I think the Coalition of the Pissed Off got together and spoke with a single voice. This was a change election, an anti-establishment election. It’s not that people were fired up about Democratic candidates or Democratic policies, but they were uber pissed off at the Republicans.

In some ways, last night was the American public reasserting power and control. The last few [election] cycles have been, frankly, pretty boring. If you knew how a certain district or city or county or state voted for president, you could predict how they’re going to vote in the next election almost 100% of the time. 

That’s not how it’s supposed to work. It’s supposed to work where the people attribute blame and credit based on what they see and observe. And with some of these split outcomes we saw last night, that suggests the American people were doing just that.

— Chris Cooper, Western Carolina University political scientist

‘Anger Management’

I’ve been clear for over a year on this. Midterm elections are about anger management, failed expectations, and mathematical adjustments to turnout. There was no ideological shift in the voting universe, just adjustments in who voted and who did not. 

The GOP turnout gap was driven by the shift of money away from North Carolina in the U.S. Senate race. The surge in unaffiliated voters was a product of the president’s failure to address the economic promises he made, and the Democratic voter surge was driven by their anger toward the president.

— Paul Shumaker, Republican strategist

‘Act On It’

Not only is it a rejection of the Trump administration, but it’s also that people are hurting—prices at the pump, prices in the grocery store, the cost of housing—and very little is being done about that. In fact, if you look at the policies coming out of D.C., I think it’s only exacerbated that. And then contrast that—this is where I think the kicker is. People are like, “Why am I getting blamed for it?” 

People want Congress to do their job, which is, “If you think tariffs are bad, do something, say something, act on it. If you believe I’m paying too much for gasoline, do something about it.” I think people see [lawmakers] act swiftly when it comes to redrawing districts, or they see the president act swiftly when it comes to building a ballroom at the White House. But they don’t see any action on the rising cost of health care, which, by the way, went up again this year.

— Brian Lewis, managing partner of New Frame and co-host of the podcast Do Politics Better

‘It Backfired’

I talked to a lot of people who were upset about so many things: cost of living, gas prices, an unwanted war, housing and rent costs, workers’ rights, and a state government that has exerted too much harmful control over local governments and has accumulated too much power. The efforts at suppression—like gerrymandering, ending Sunday voting in numerous counties, and closing early voting sites on college campuses—made a lot of people more determined than ever to vote. It backfired.

Finally, people are upset with the cruelty and meanness that characterize the GOP right now. They want officials to care about their communities, not dehumanize and divide and bully citizens by calling them names and threatening to pull federal funds if they don’t vote for them. 

We still have work to do to heal divisions and continue to support the American ideals of equality, liberty, opportunity, and inclusion of the people’s voices in their governance. But I know Republicans and Democrats alike who were heartened by the results last night.

— Jennifer Roberts, former Democratic mayor of Charlotte and senior adviser for the Catawba Center for NC Politics and Public Service

‘Two Verdicts’

I think North Carolina voters delivered two verdicts Tuesday. One was on Donald Trump, but the other was on a Republican legislature that had gotten too comfortable in power. 

Republicans earned their majority by making a case for tax reform and school choice. Somewhere along the way, they started coasting on those successes and putting more energy into power plays than into explaining what they wanted another term to do. A bad national year can explain a lot, but it can’t explain away a beatdown like this.

— Andrew Dunn, former Republican operative and author of Longleaf Politics

‘The Dummymander Turned Dumb’

The No. 1 thing that happened is the Republicans did a redistricting plan that if Democrats ever had an election where they had a 15- to 20-point advantage in North Carolina, the Republicans were going to lose just about everything. That finally came to roost. The dummymander finally turned dumb. 

I’m still surprised that Democrats won all those races, but I actually wrote a Facebook post last week saying this might happen. When you try to draw yourselves an 11-to-3 [congressional] map, you have to spread yourselves too thin. 

I actually think it was very much to the Democratic candidates’ benefit that no one really saw it coming. If Republicans had started spending money in the 9th District and the 14th District and those kinds of places, they probably would have pulled it out. The element of surprise was really a very strong factor that helped get Democrats over the top in some of those congressional races, and also in some of those legislative races that were toward the end of the list of what Democrats could pick up.

[Democrats had] incredible message discipline in North Carolina this year, really just keeping things focused on affordability and not getting distracted by shiny objects and getting off topic. And at the end of the day, there’s not a better present a political party can be given than $4 gas. What I’ve been saying all year is the Democrats just needed to not blow it.

— Tom Jensen, director of Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-aligned firm

‘Big Swings’

Whether it’s the war or whether it’s inflation, there’s just lots of people who were not happy. You had much more enthusiasm on the Democratic side. You also had lots of Republicans who maybe stayed home, but you also had plenty of people locally and elsewhere who voted for Trump in the past and now voted for a Democrat. 

Elections can have big swings, and elections can have consequences. Go to Texas. How long have the Democrats been trying to make Texas blue? With Republicans being fully entrenched in the General Assembly here, people took it for granted. So to see lots of changes, it just really speaks to people’s frustrations with the current administration, and that trickles down. 

— Aaron King, University of North Carolina Wilmington political scientist

‘They Voted for the Other Guys’

A whole bunch of Republican voters did not show up. That much is clear. What people are not realizing is that a whole bunch of them did show up, and they voted for the other guys. 

Everyone’s guess at what the electorate was going to be was a little bit off. Republican turnout did not meet what they thought it was going to be. The unaffiliateds were way higher and broke really heavily toward Democrats. And then the Democrats showed up in all these places where Democrats have no business being, let alone winning a race. But they showed up, and a couple of them won.

— Blair Reeves, founder of progressive advocacy group Carolina Forward

‘What Are You On?’

It was certainly a Democratic tsunami, coupled with a Republican rip current. The lethal combination of the two just created the scenario where a Democrat can win a federal office by nearly 20 points. If anybody had told me in January of this year that that was going to happen, I would say, “What are you on? And can I get some?” 

Democrats and unaffiliateds basically made up three-quarters of early voters. Registered Republicans were only 26%, and that’s their lowest vote share that I can find in early voting since 2004. Any other year, they would be 28%, 30%, 32%. That collapse signaled to me that they had a lot of ground to make up on Election Day, and they just didn’t. The tea leaves point to Republicans not showing up like they normally do, and Democrats saying, “Hey, we’ll take up the slack”—and boy, did they.

— Michael Bitzer, Catawba College political scientist

Additional reporting by Johanna F. Still.