It’s a chart day! Data geeks, rejoice, for numbers have arrived.

I promise to make this discussion accessible and even a bit fun. But first, let me set the stage.

It’s been a bit over six months since the midterm elections of 2022, which the GOP by all accounts bungled badly by nominating so many Trump-endorsed, extremist candidates. By the end, the Democrats had increased their numbers in the Senate by one seat and barely lost the House, with a swing of just nine seats, far less than the crushing and historically predicted 30 plus. That left Kevin McCarthy fighting for his political life, cutting deals with the extremists in order to be elected Speaker.

There has been much high-level analysis of what led to the red wave crashing lamely against a sturdy blue wall. It was a result that lonely voices, including myself and election data expert Simon Rosenberg, had been predicting, despite the rash of bad poll numbers. (Those polls, by the way, wound up being wholly manufactured by right-leaning outfits.)

For my part, and based on data on new voter registrations and early voting, I had predicted that women and youth voters would turn out in historically high numbers, especially in battleground states. This would be due largely to the Dobbs decision eliminating the constitutional right to abortion. But I was concerned about low turnout in “safe” blue states where abortion was not on the ballot, and that this could cost us our House majority.

These things wound up being true, but I have been waiting for the numbers to confirm exactly why and by how much. In the days leading up to the election, Targetsmart, an election analytics firm, had reported early voting data generally supportive of these results. But now, a new post-election deep dive report on nationwide voting data by the firm Catalist, appropriately entitled the What Happened analysis, has finally confirmed important figures.

And it’s very good news for Democrats. Let’s take a look at the top line takeaways. Charts charts charts! Read more…