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- Franklin, Tennessee election: Voters give mayor a mandate for sanity Tennessean
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Tag Archives: voters
How Young Voters Helped Make Brandon Johnson Chicago’s Next Mayor – Block Club Chicago
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- Matt Paprocki: Brandon Johnson won. Now he needs to unite Chicago with a balanced approach to governance. Chicago Tribune
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Prop 3 voters are ‘participants in murder,’ new Michigan Republican leader says – MLive.com
- Prop 3 voters are ‘participants in murder,’ new Michigan Republican leader says MLive.com
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- Karamo stands by Holocaust tweet issuing no apology despite outage WXYZ-TV Detroit | Channel 7
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Crime is a top issue for Chicago voters. Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson offer sharp contrasts to public safety – Chicago Tribune
- Crime is a top issue for Chicago voters. Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson offer sharp contrasts to public safety Chicago Tribune
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- Labor unions are split on Chicago mayor candidates as powerful IUOE Local 150 backs Paul Vallas Chicago Tribune
- Chicago mayoral election 2023: Poll shows tight race between Paul Vallas, Brandon Johnson as runoff election date approaches WLS-TV
- Chicago Runoff Election 2023: Everything You Need To Know About Voting On (Or Before) April 4 Block Club Chicago
Anti-Abortion Voters Are Turning on Trump Ahead of 2024 Election – Rolling Stone
Two thousand attendees at the National Pro-Life Summit cast their votes on Saturday for their favorite prospective GOP nominee for president in 2024. The winner is: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. It was the first 2024 straw poll conducted among anti-abortion voters, one of the Republican Party’s most loyal voting blocs.
DeSantis banked more than half of the votes cast, 53.73 percent. Former President Donald Trump placed in a distant second with just 19.22 percent. His former deputy, Mike Pence — who has called often for a national ban on abortion — took home roughly eight percent. Those three were followed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, with 1.57 and 1.37 percent, respectively. Everyone else — Kristi Noem, Greg Aboott, Glen Youngkin, Liz Cheney, Larry Hogan, and Tim Scott, in that order — earned less than one percent of ballots cast. About seven percent of the poll’s voters remain undecided on their preferred would-be candidate.
The results are more evidence of what has been a slow and at times bitter breakup between the former president and the anti-abortion movement that embraced his candidacy in 2016 and 2020. “There is a wide variety of candidates the pro-life movement can get behind, and that’s exactly what we intend to do,” Kristan Hawkins, the president of Students for Life, a co-sponsor of the summit, tells Rolling Stone.
The poll’s function is twofold: to take the temperature of a key GOP constituency while igniting a pressure campaign on anyone considering jumping in the race. “We’re in a position as a movement, thanks to a strong pro-life platform that’s been in place by the GOP, to demand action from candidates,” Hawkins explains. “Our candidate surveys ask right up front what they’re willing to do when they say they’re ‘pro-life.’”
“Checking the box and saying you’re ‘pro-life’ isn’t sufficient” in this “new era,” she adds.
Grassroots activists are keeping a close eye on how Republicans champion their demands. At Friday’s March for Life on the National Mall — the first of the post-Roe era — several expressed frustration with the GOP-controlled House. The chamber passed two anti-abortion measures in its first week of legislating, but they were largely symbolic votes meant to telegraph abortion as a top priority of the new Republican majority. GOP lawmakers also failed to include the demand that drew protesters to D.C. this week: a national abortion ban. “They do a lot of talking and not a lot of action,” says Laura Brown, a March for Life attendee from Milwaukee. “I want them to practice what they preach and be brave,” adds Christina Johnson, who traveled from Ohio. “If they’re ‘pro-life,’ they need to mean it when they say it.”
Activists are increasingly unsure Trump, the only Republican to formally declare his candidacy, is willing to further advance their goals, as Saturday’s poll results confirm. Trump, who once identified as pro-choice, fully embraced the anti-abortion movement as a candidate, and appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe. Now, as members of the movement are looking beyond Roe, tension is building between Trump and the evangelical leaders and anti-abortion activists who once supported him. As Stephen Imbarrato, a Catholic priest and a co-founder of Men’s March for Life who attended Friday’s event, puts it, the gulf between the former president and voters who identify as “pro-life” is “getting larger.”
Anti-abortion demonstrators march toward the Supreme Court during the March for Life, on Friday, Jan. 20, 2023.
Alex Brandon/AP
Trump, for his part, has deemed it a “sign of disloyalty” that anti-abortion groups have so far failed to line up quickly behind his campaign. “Nobody has ever done more for [the] right to life than Donald Trump,” he declared during a radio appearance last week. Students for Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA) are two of the prominent groups that have stayed on the sidelines so far, waiting to see which other candidates emerge — and how far those candidates are willing to go to advance the groups’ political goals.
Trump seems to have little appetite for further bans or restrictions. Earlier this month, he laid the blame for Republicans’ disastrous showing in November squarely on “the abortion issue,” which he said, “lost large numbers of voters.” SBA responded with a pointed statement — and, in an early signal of a brewing schism, Pence retweeted it, with a curt “[w]ell said, @SBAProLIfe.” Pence, who has ties to SBA and its president, Marjorie Dannenfelser.
To some in the movement, none of the would-be 2024 hopefuls — including De Santis — go far enough. Imbarrato wants a candidate who believes personhood begins at conception and recognizes that right as enshrined in America’s founding documents. “There’s nobody,” he says. “Not Pence. DeSantis is so strong on other issues, and so weak on abortion — he needs to do something to show he’s serious.”
DeSantis, meanwhile, signed a 15-week abortion ban into Florida law last April and recently suggested he would support a more limited six-week ban. The impact of such a law would be devastating to abortion seekers. Before Dobbs, Florida had one of the highest abortion rates in the country. Now, surrounded on all sides by states that have outlawed the practice, it has become a critical point of access for millions of women across the Southeast. That sort of ban, however, comes much closer to what national anti-abortion leaders seek — not “a weak, European-type of limit,” as Hawkins calls the 15-week ban.
Results of the straw poll show not everyone is disenchanted with Trump, a sentiment echoed by some March for Life attendees on Friday. “He did a lot for life in office.” says Anna Bingman, who traveled from Ohio for Friday’s march, noting Trump’s three appointees to the Supreme Court. A young woman in a “Make America Great Again” says she thinks Trump would still be a champion for abortion bans if he were reelected. “He spoke at a March for Life and he talked about it from the White House,” she explains.
DeSantis may be the early favorite among voters at the National Pro-Life Summit, which may only increase pressure to pass harsher restrictions in Florida. If marchers were certain of anything on Friday it was that the end of Roe was just the beginning — they want to see much, much more. “There’s a portion of it that’s a celebration,” says Brian Gibson, an activist from Minnesota, “but a portion isn’t because abortion remains legal in so many parts of the country.”
George Santos Voters Air Out Their Grievances With ‘Fraud’ Republican’s Lies
Rep.-elect George Santos’ (R-N.Y.) voters told CNN’s Eva McKend that they feel “completely betrayed” by the Republican and weighed in on his litany of lies last week (You can watch voters weigh in on Santos in the clip below).
Santos, who is reportedly facingat least two investigations, has come under fire over falsehoods and several inconsistencies regarding details he shared about his background, such as his education, his connection to Holocaust survivors, the date of his mother’s death, and his work history.
Teodora Choolfaian, a Santos voter, told McKend that she feels “completely betrayed” and no longer supports the candidate due to the controversy.
“George Santos is a fraud,” said Choolfaian, who went to a rally attended by Santos’ former opponent Robert Zimmerman on Thursday.
“The whole persona that he created, the ability to deceive us, is so troubling. This man should not be allowed to be in office. And we all know it. I want to assure you Republicans know it, too.”
Jewish community leader Jack Mandel, who previously met with Santos and thought of him as a fresh face for the Republican Party, said he would “absolutely not” vote for Santos if the election was tomorrow.
“The Holocaust is something that touches the heart of every Jew and someone that would use that as a talking point, as a vote-getter, I think [it] is wrong.”
One Santos supporter told McKend, however, that the Republican hasn’t done anything legally wrong.
“He admitted he lied, and most Christian people believe in forgiveness. Maybe not forget but move on. Let’s see what happens,” said Tom Zmich.
H/T: Mediaite
Related…
What we know about Georgia voters ahead of Senate runoff
CNN
—
For the past two years, the eyes of the political world keep turning back to Georgia.
And for the second time in two years, voters in this key state will choose their senator in a runoff election, which this time will determine whether Democrats expand on their 50-50 majority.
Early data shows voters are not tired of their civic duty.
Heading into Tuesday’s Senate runoff between Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock and Republican challenger Herschel Walker, nearly 1.5 million Georgians have voted early after only about a week. Black voters have made up nearly a third of the early electorate so far, while more than a quarter of voters so far are under 50.
About 300,000 Georgians have voted early each day this week – setting records for the largest single-day early voting turnout in state history. Early voting for the runoff ended on Friday.
Georgians had only five mandatory days of early voting this year, compared with three weeks during the last runoff and for last month’s general election. All but 22 counties chose not to allow early voting last Saturday and Sunday as well.
Overall, 2022 midterm turnout was slightly up from the 2018 midterms but down more than 21% from the 2020 general election.
While midterm voters typically skew older and Whiter, turnout data from the Georgia secretary of state’s office shows that in 2022, midterm voters in Georgia were older and Whiter than they have been in the past four elections, including the 2018 midterms. Those voters tend to lean Republican. The fact that Warnock not only forced a runoff but also narrowly led Walker in the first round of voting last month suggests he had the support of independent and some Republican voters, political scientists told CNN.
“The key to Warnock was that according to the exit polls, he won the independent vote by a pretty big margin,” said Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta. “And that was enough to pull him through. In the runoff, I think he’ll need to do that as well.”
CNN exit polls of Georgia voters in the November election show that the share of independent voters shrank 4 percentage points compared with 2020. However, independent voters were 24% of the electorate, which Warnock won by 11 points, according to CNN exit polls.
A slightly larger share of White voters and smaller shares of Black, Asian and Latino voters cast their ballots in 2022 compared with Georgia’s previous three midterm elections and runoffs. The share of Black voters was the lowest of any Georgia election since the 2018 midterms.
A CNN exit poll from 2021 showed that Warnock won 93% of Black voters in Georgia’s last runoff election, a 6-point improvement from the general election held in November 2020.
Black voters’ share of Georgia’s electorate increased in the 2021 runoff election when Warnock faced Sen. Kelly Loeffler after neither took a majority of the vote in the 2020 general election. Black voters made up 28% of the Georgia electorate in that runoff, slightly higher than their share in the 2020 general election. Black voter turnout was highest when Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, first ran against now-Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, for governor in 2018.
Voters in the 2022 midterms were also older. Georgians over 50 represented 59% of the electorate this year, a new high since 2018. The share of voters under 30, meanwhile, shrank to 11%, its lowest point since 2018.
Exit polls show Warnock was able this year to sustain the improvements he made in the 2021 runoff election with the youngest voters and those in urban areas. He won 68% of the 18-24 vote in the 2021 runoff – a 16-point improvement over Democrats in the 2020 general election. He also won the support of 67% of urban voters in the 2021 runoff, 4 points more than Democrats’ share in 2020. Warnock won 69% of 18-24 year-olds and 68% of urban voters in last month’s general election.
Last month’s election was unusual in that more than 17,000 Georgians skipped the Senate race at the top of the ballot but did vote for governor.
“We aren’t entirely sure, but it is highly likely that those voters are probably Republicans,” said Amy Steigerwalt, a political science professor at Georgia State University.
There were also Kemp voters this year who crossed the aisle to vote for Warnock and then voted for the rest of the Republican ticket, Steigerwalt said. Kemp received 2.1 million votes, roughly 200,000 more than Walker.
The big question for this runoff is how Walker does when he runs on his own and without a chance of Republicans regaining control of the Senate, Abramowitz told CNN.
Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl sentenced to 500 hours registering voters
Ohio prosecutors in October 2020 charged right-wing operatives Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl with telecommunications fraud in connection with the scheme, and two years later, the two men pleaded guilty.
Now, they have their punishment: They must spend 500 hours helping register people to vote.
Judge John Sutula in Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court also sentenced Burkman and Wohl to two years of probation, fines of $2,500 each and electronic monitoring from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. for six months, according to the county prosecutor’s office.
“I think it’s a despicable thing that you guys have done,” the judge said on Tuesday, comparing the robocall scam to efforts to suppress Southern Black voters in the 1960s, Cleveland.com reported.
Burkman, 56, and Wohl, 24, staged several irreverent stunts to add to the stream of disinformation that bombarded Americans in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election. In addition to the robocalls, the pair called a news conference promising to produce a sexual assault accuser against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, though the alleged accuser never showed. They allegedly recruited young Republican men to make false sexual assault claims against then-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. They staged a fake FBI raid on Burkman’s Arlington, Va., home that briefly fooled The Washington Post.
“These two individuals attempted to disrupt the foundation of our democracy,” a spokesperson for the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office wrote to The Post on Wednesday. “Their sentence of two years’ probation and 500 hours of community work service at a voter-registration drive is appropriate.”
An attorney for Wohl declined to comment to The Post but told CNN that he was “pleased with the outcome” and that Wohl is “generally remorseful.” An attorney for Burkman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, Wohl said he wanted “to express my absolute regret and shame over all of this,” Cleveland.com reported. Burkman said he “would just echo Mr. Wohl’s sentiment,” according to the outlet.
Burkman and Wohl were charged after a wave of roughly 85,000 robocalls targeted voters in Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois in 2020.
The calls falsely warned recipients that the personal information of those who registered to vote by mail would be shared with police, credit card companies and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Voters were told not to be “finessed into giving your private information to the man.”
Michigan’s attorney general first brought felony charges of intimidating voters, conspiring to violate election law and using a computer to commit a crime against the pair in October 2020. Dave Yost, the Ohio attorney general, investigated Burkman and Wohl before referring them to the Cuyahoga County prosecutor the same month, he said in a statement. New York’s attorney general joined a lawsuit against the pair started by various civil rights organizations in May 2021.
The attorneys general alleged that the robocalling operation targeted minority communities to suppress their voting power.
The cases against Burkman and Wohl in Michigan and New York are ongoing. Besides the penalties issued in Ohio, Burkman and Wohl may also face a historic $5 million fine from the Federal Communications Commission for making robocalls to cellphones without people’s consent.
Georgia voters headed to the polls Saturday for Senate runoff
The secretary of state’s office reported that at least 70,000 people voted Saturday. The first Saturday of early voting for the general election drew 79,682 people, more than double the 2018 number. Early voting will continue through Friday.
Those taking advantage of Saturday voting included college students visiting home for Thanksgiving, police officers and ambulance workers with busy work schedules, lifelong voters who make it a point to always cast their ballots on the first day they are allowed, and retirees just seeking an escape from holiday guests.
“We got a house full of company. This gave me a good excuse to get out for a little,” said Bill Chapel, a Walker supporter from Bartow County, who said he typically votes early.
Chapel said he hopes that Saturday voting ends up helping Walker more than Warnock, who filed the lawsuit that resulted in the polls here being open a day earlier than had been planned by state elections officials. Democrats have organized more around the Saturday early vote and have promoted the option this past week more than Republicans.
A total of 27 counties conducted Saturday voting, giving greater opportunities to cast a ballot for voters who may be occupied during the week. The participating counties, which include most the state’s major metropolitan areas and several rural counties, ensured that just over half the state’s population had the opportunity to vote on Saturday.
Although Warnock received about 35,000 more votes than Walker in the Nov. 8 general election, he did not meet the 50 percent threshold for an outright win, triggering a runoff and prolonging one of the most expensive Senate races in the midterms. A poll released last week by AARP had Warnock ahead of Walker, 51 percent to 47 percent, within the margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.
Warnock, who won the seat in a special runoff election in January of 2021, is seeking a full, six-year term. If he wins on Dec. 6, Democrats will hold 51 seats in the Senate.
Initially, the Georgia secretary of state said counties would be allowed to hold Saturday voting in runoff elections but reversed course after deciding that a part of Georgia’s election code barring voting two days after a holiday banned Saturday voting under the new compressed timeline for a runoff election mandated by the new law.
Democrats, led by Warnock’s campaign, sued the state, arguing that the policies in question didn’t apply to runoff elections. A judge in Fulton county sided with Warnock, the state Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the case. The state’s Republican attorney general, as well as the state and national Republican parties, lost their appeals in state courts.
In a fundraising email, Walker’s campaign told supporters that the decision to allow Saturday voting “is like coming out after halftime and learning the referees have changed the rules for the rest of the game.”
Then, the decision of whether to hold Saturday voting fell to the counties. In Bartow County, located northwest of Atlanta, the board of elections decided to do so at a single polling location in Cartersville. Walker won the county by 50 points earlier this month.
Peggy Brown, a Democratic member of the Bartow Board of Elections, noted the irony that the two Democrats and one independent on the five-seat board pushed for Saturday voting in the deep-red county while the two Republicans on the board voted against it.
“They didn’t think it was worth the money to do it and that there would not a very good turnout, but I think we’re gonna prove them wrong,” said Brown, as a steady line of voters — both Republicans and Democrats — circled through the polling location at the municipal building.
The additional day of voting cost $1,100, said Brown, and the board was uncertain at first whether they’d have enough workers, given holiday travel and people hosting guests from out of town.
All counties in Georgia are required by the state’s 2021 election law to hold early voting from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the weekdays before a runoff election. Several counties, including many of the state’s most populous, had planned on holding Sunday voting on the weekend before required early voting begins and passed trigger policies to fund Saturday voting if it was found to be legal.
The public debate and litigation over Saturday voting is the latest clash over the state’s election laws, which were overhauled by a controversial 2021 voting law that had a significant effect on policies concerning absentee ballots, runoff elections, early voting and election administrative policy. The 2022 midterms are the first test of the Election Integrity Act, also known as SB 202. How the law interacts with other parts of Georgia’s election code have led to confusion as the law was put into practice.
Some voters said they didn’t want to take any chances by waiting until Election Day to cast their ballot.
“If there are any glitches or anything like that on that day, then you’re kind of, you know, screwed,” said Douglas Edwards, a dentist from Cartersville supporting Warnock. “Today if there’s something we could always come back on Tuesday.”
A number of students cited concerns over their absentee ballots and the ease of Saturday voting aligning with them being home for Thanksgiving.
“I am currently doing an internship out of state, and I didn’t receive my absentee ballot in time to vote for the midterms, which I was quite upset about,” said Katie Poe, a masters student. “I’m in town for the holidays, and voting this Saturday is my only chance to actually vote in person, and maybe vote at all reliably.”
“I’ve had a lot of trouble in the past with absentee voting. It’s kind of disheartening to only be able to vote when I’m here, because it’s so important to me, ” she added.
“I’m a college student in school in Boston, and this is pretty much my only opportunity to vote in person. So I had to get out and vote, it’s a long line, but we’re waiting as best we can,” said Catherine McBride, a senior in college from Cobb County visiting home for Thanksgiving.
McBride said she voted absentee earlier in the month in the general election but had to wait two or three weeks for her ballot and was concerned it wouldn’t make it to her in time for the general. So she decided to vote in person Saturday at the Cobb County Board of Elections and Registration polling location in Marietta.
Kavita Kar, a first year student at Stanford University from Marietta voting at the same location, cited similar fears around absentee voting.
“I’m going back to college tomorrow,” Kar said of her decision to vote on Saturday. “For the last election, a lot of my friends didn’t receive their ballots from Cobb County on time.”
Several hundred voters waited in line to vote at the Cobb location on Saturday afternoon, waiting around two hours to cast their ballots. Warnock won Cobb County by 16 points.
Although a Democratic-led effort, Republicans and Democrats alike praised Saturday voting for making it easier to vote around work and travel plans.
“It’s hard to get off during the week when you’re moving dirt,” said Kevin Tomlin, a Republican and heavy equipment operator from Bartow County.
“With my worth schedule, we always vote early,” said Bill Stahl, a police officer from Taylorsville supporting Walker. “It gives everybody a chance to get out. It’s not going to help one particular party.”
“I work for an ambulance company and I do 12 hour days, and this election was really important,” said Delores Flanagan, a Warnock supporter. “So I knew that I wanted to vote at the first opportunity.”
“I normally do absentee voting. But the last time I attempted to do that, it took forever to actually get the ballot, and I was concerned that I might not be able to vote,” Flanagan said of her willingness to wait in the two hour long line to vote in Cobb County.
Sandi Griffin, a Walker supporter from Aragon, noted it was “kind of strange” that each county got to decide if it would do early voting. And so it was kind of hard to keep track of when ours was gonna open up,” she said.
Griffin said she and her husband had made travel plans before the runoff was called, so they welcomed the ability to vote on Saturday. “We’re leaving town, we needed to vote on early voting today and I’m glad they opened it up finally.”
Still, Griffin, a Republican, said she is concerned that the extra day will help Democrats.
“I’m afraid it will. It is a fear, and Sunday also, because then they can bus the church people,” she said.
Voters who spoke with The Washington Post said they’re used to the long lines, and having to return to the polls for a runoff — with Saturday voting just another chance to participate in the seemingly never-ending election season.
“We’ll do it again and again and again,” said Robert Schofer, a Warnock supporter from Kennesaw. “And again.”
Matt Brown contributed to this report.
GOP Gains College-Educated and Minority Voters in Slim House Pickup
In making modest gains in House seats this year, Republicans drew more support from minority and college-educated voters than in other recent elections, chipping away at important pillars of the Democratic coalition in ways that could better position the party for the next election.
Republicans narrowed the Democratic advantage among Latino voters, Black voters and white women with college degrees—important components of the Democratic voter pool—according to AP VoteCast, a large survey of midterm participants. GOP House candidates won a majority of white women in the nation’s suburbs, a swing group that helped power the Democratic Party to its House majority in 2018 and backed President Biden in 2020.
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“The numbers indicate that our party has been more successful than we previously knew in getting voters of color moving to the GOP,’’ said Neil Newhouse, a veteran pollster who led polling for several GOP presidential nominees. “Ever since I got involved in politics more than 40 years ago, that’s been a long-term goal of the party.”
The voter shifts helped Republicans win a majority of House votes nationally, preliminary results show, but weren’t strong enough to bring the party substantial gains in House seats. Republicans have so far lost a net of one seat in the Senate, with the final tally to be decided in Georgia’s runoff election next month. Still, the gain among these groups “tells me that Republicans are potentially well-positioned to win a national election, if we can replicate this,’’ Mr. Newhouse said.
House members-elect following a group photo on the Capitol steps a week after the midterm vote.
Photo:
Leah Millis/Reuters
Ruy Teixeira, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, said the shift among Latino voters was particularly noteworthy and extends a move toward the GOP that was a feature of the last two presidential elections. “They lost quite a bit among Latinos, and the swing was significant,” he said.
Many caveats apply in drawing lessons from a midterm election. Far fewer voters participate than in a presidential contest. The voter shifts detected by AP VoteCast varied widely by state and by whether an election had the potential to restrict legalized abortion. Voters’ choices this year might have been driven more by their views of former President
Donald Trump
and of candidates who copied his style of politics, than by their views of the two parties. Mr. Trump is now a declared candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.
The AP VoteCast survey, which included more than 94,000 midterm voters nationwide, found a number of significant shifts in voter preferences:
—Latino voters favored Democratic House candidates by 17 percentage points—giving 56% support to Democrats and 39% to Republicans—a far slimmer lead than the 28-point edge that helped President Biden win in 2020 or the 34-point Democratic advantage in the last midterm elections, in 2018.
—Black voters gave 14% of their support to GOP House candidates, compared with 8% in the elections of two and four years ago.
—White women with college degrees, who had backed Democrats by 19 points in the last midterms and by 21 points in the 2020 presidential election, tipped toward Democrats by a far narrower 6 points this year.
—Republicans won an outright majority of white women in the suburbs, carrying the group by 6 percentage points. Suburban white women had backed Mr. Biden by 5 points, and Democratic House candidates in 2018 by 7 points. Female voters overall, who account for over half the electorate, favored Democrats by a single percentage point, down from 12 points and 15 points in the last two elections, respectively.
Some Democrats cautioned that little could be read into results from a midterm election with special conditions. The fate of legalized abortion was a pressing issue in some states, which helped Democratic candidates, and was less salient in others.
“I’m skeptical, because it wasn’t a national presidential election, and because you have such differences state by state,’’ said Elaine Kamarck, a veteran of the Clinton administration White House who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Analysts said that more data were needed to better understand what the variations among voter groups from state to state meant to the election outcomes. Some early clues suggest that the Latino voter shift boosted the GOP vote share in some House races, even if the shift didn’t produce a victory.
In some Latino-rich House districts in California, Democratic candidates won their elections with far smaller vote margins than the party produced two years earlier. Rep.
Norma Torres
of Southern California, for example, won by 12 points in preliminary results in a district that Mr. Biden carried by 28 points.
Republicans cut into Democratic margins in two heavily Latino House districts in South Texas. Democratic Rep.
Vicente Gonzalez
won re-election by 8 points in a district that Mr. Biden had carried by 15 points, while Republican Monica De La Cruz won in a newly created district by 9 points, which Mr. Trump had carried by 3 points.
In a third South Texas House district, Democratic Rep.
Henry Cuellar
won re-election by a larger margin than Mr. Biden won in 2020.
Carlos Odio, co-founder of Equis Research, a Democratic-aligned firm that focuses on Latino voters, said the Hispanic vote varied significantly by state.
Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D., Texas) celebrating a victory that had a slimmer margin than President Biden’s in 2020.
Photo:
Denise Cathey/Associated Press
“Florida was an unmitigated disaster for Democrats across the board. But it is especially true among Latino voters,’’ he said. Republicans won a majority of the Hispanic vote for the first time since 2006, Mr. Odio said. Republicans carried heavily Latino Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest, “something that was unthinkable in the Obama era,’’ he said.
Republicans boosted their share of voters who don’t have a four-year college degree. They also dominated among white voters in rural areas and small towns, winning a commanding 70% of those voters—producing an advantage of about 40 points—compared with leads of about 30 points two years and four years ago.
The AP VoteCast survey was conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago for The Wall Street Journal, the Associated Press and Fox News.
Write to Aaron Zitner at aaron.zitner@wsj.com and Anthony DeBarros at Anthony.Debarros@wsj.com
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