With midterm election voting now concluded, it has become obvious to many that the Republican Party did not get the “red wave” that it hoped for.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats flipped a U.S. Senate seat, with Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeating Republican candidate Mehmet Oz, a celebrity surgeon. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania’s attorney general, won the governorship, keeping the seat blue against Doug Mastriano by a wide margin.
Down the ballot, Democratic U.S. Rep. Susan Wild (PA-7) again survived a strong challenge from Republican Lisa Scheller, while Democratic State Sen. Lisa Boscola (SD-18) easily fended off John Merhottein, her Republican opponent.
Government and law professor John Kincaid detailed the historic nature of the election results and their indication of public sentiment toward a more balanced government.
“It’s a mixed bag, so the Democrats sort of won. They certainly exceeded expectations for the midterm election,” Kincaid said. “But it looks like we will have a divided government and I think that’s what the public wants.”
Kincaid added that voters sent the message that they “don’t like the extremes of either party.”
Republicans were widely expected to trounce Democrats at the polls, perhaps even picking up several Senate seats. Despite this, Republicans are slated to narrowly take the House, while Democrats are predicted to keep the Senate race competitive as more votes are counted. Kincaid chalked up the relative rejection of Republicans to the negative impact of former president Donald Trump.
“I think Trump took a thumping in this election,” Kincaid said. “Some of the major candidates that he supported failed to win their elections and that’s going to create a really divisive problem for the Republicans.”
Dimitri Chernozhukov ‘25, president of College Republicans, wrote in an email that his group is hoping for a new future for their party without Trump.
“The consensus in the Lafayette College Republicans is that [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis is the future of the party and we need to dump Trump,” Chernozhukov wrote. “He’s simply ineffective while DeSantis beautifully balanced suburban and rural populist concerns on social policy, while also behaving in a respectable manner.”
President of the College Democrats, Kait Ahern’ 23, whose senior thesis is on the topic of youth voter turnout, emphasized the importance of young college students voting in elections.
“Without the youth vote, Republicans would have likely been handed the victory they had so hoped for in 2022. In battleground states like Pennsylvania, aggregate youth voter turnout was over 30 percent,” Ahern said. “With gen-Z and millennials quickly becoming the largest age group in our electorate, this turnout had a significant impact on the outcome of the election. To put this into the context of Pennsylvania, 70 percent of youth voters supported John Fetterman.”
Kincaid noted the importance of voting, especially in swing states such as Pennsylvania.
“With the number of close elections we are having, it illustrates the importance that every vote really does count,” Kincaid said. “And some of these races are razor thin. It is important to go out and vote. Hopefully, people will recognize that.”
