CHARLIE COOK:
This may be the most misunderstood election in modern American political history, even given that it came immediately after another misunderstood result in 2022. It was, if anything, a bifurcated election. As horrific as the presidential outcome was for Democrats, those claiming that it was a wipeout haven’t looked very closely at what happened below the top of the ballot, where the extraordinary thing is how ordinary the results were.
In the House, which is a far better barometer of where the country is than the Senate, after zillions of dollars were spent, the net change will be minimal—within a couple seats of the 221-214 majority Republicans held going into the election. Virtually nothing happened (unless you are or work for someone who lost). Republicans will almost certainly have a majority, though a tiny one—probably the tightest margins for the House since the 72nd Congress (1931-33), when they had 218 seats to Democrats' 216 (although Democrats did get to organize the House because of deaths of several Republican members after the election but before the swearing-in took place). The kind of change in the House may well be little more than a rounding error.
Senate races are more representative of the map and calendar than the national mood. With only a third of the seats facing the voters every two years, it matters which third, which states, and which members are up.
...Two years ago, many mistakenly laid Republicans' underperformance at the feet of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade. The Court motivated voters who support abortion rights, the theory goes, and juiced turnout for Democrats. In reality, however, Democrats won 10 million fewer votes for the House than in the previous midterm election, while Republicans won 3.7 million more votes than in 2018. No, 2022 was not about Dobbs—it was about Republicans nominating about two dozen terrible candidates in critical races, election denialism being a fairly common thread. This time, abortion initiatives did fairly well but did not help Democrats up or down the ballot. This issue is neither a silver bullet nor a get-out-of-jail-free card for the party.
Not surprisingly given recent history, swing states and undecided voters did not split down the middle. They broke overwhelmingly in favor of Trump. In terms of the undecided vote, look at the New York Times average of presidential race polls, both national and in swing states. Kamala Harris’s poll average was almost precisely what she ended up winning, which means that Trump won practically all of the undecided votes. At this point, Trump has a majority of the votes counted, with 50.4 percent to 48 percent for Harris. Once all of the votes cast are totaled, mostly in Democratic states on the West Coast, he will likely be just above or below 50 percent. ..."