Cliff’s Note:
Democrats flipped 34 House seats that Trump carried in 2024 (so far). Matt Robison called the wave back in April, and in today’s Midterm HQ he shows where it came from.
Behind the paywall: the answer to what every Dem should be asking: Did fed-up Republicans stay home, or did some vote for us? His numbers have the answer, and it determines what we do next.
Upgrade for the full story and more, like access to the full interviews from our Election Day 12-hour live and the Insider section with what I’m hearing behind the scenes.
—Cliff
The Topline: a stunning result we saw coming, but not quite THIS
I want to start with a confession: the 2000 election was my fault.
Back then, I was the chair of the Harvard Kennedy School Democrats. On election night, I organized a watch party, and when Florida was called for Al Gore, I did the natural thing: I snuck out for a champagne run. Walking back in the room with a crate in my arms 45 minutes later, the looks on 80 or so Democrats’ faces wiped the smile off my own. Florida had, of course, been taken back out of the win column, and soon after, it was shaded red on our TV screens. The rest was history.
Now, do I really think I personally jinxed the entire election? Mmmm…no. Not really. If you’ve read Midterm HQ here or on my Substack Worth Knowing, you know just how obsessively I rely on evidence, facts, and just plain math. But still, in the rest of my active career in politics—including 10 years as a senior congressional staffer and multiple runs atop congressional campaigns—I never lost that inner kernel of suspicion that maybe, just maybe, it was a good idea to keep an eye on karma.
Throughout this year, I stuck with the evidence. As far back as April, when Cook Political Report was saying the Republicans were ahead, I was saying that Democrats were the “solid favorites.” Last week, I reiterated what a huge result I thought Democrats were about to have. The numbers showed a bell curve of outcomes—with the likeliest being a bunch of legislative chamber flips, a majority of governors, 235 seats in the House, and 51 or 52 in the Senate—but with a small polling error having a big impact on the Senate. So I predicted that result.
But was there still that tiny voice echoing from 26 years ago saying maybe I shouldn’t mess with cosmic forces? Probably. Which is why I felt compelled to also prepare everybody for the high likelihood that this election wouldn’t really be over on November 4.
The end result is that I feel mostly vindicated (kudos to Cliff Schecter and Dave Schuster, who took the most bullish line on the Senate number). And I’ve never been happier to be wrong in my prediction that we were in for a dark and difficult November like we had in 2020.
At the end of the day, it was a glorious outcome. Not because of the partisan victory, but because of what it says about America. A friend of mine—a Republican who has been disgusted with Donald Trump but doesn’t love Democrats—texted me on Wednesday to say how proud this election made them feel to be an American. To see democracy turn everything upside down without a shot fired. This is still an incredible thing about the U.S. Other countries have copied it. We invented it. And we should never stop being proud of it and amazed by it, in the same way I felt proud and amazed every single day that I went to work in congress and looked at the Capitol dome.
But what about the Spider-Man question?
