2022 United States elections

> *Midterm elections in the United States of America*
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## 2022 United States midterm election

A screenshot of the New York Times map of the 2022 Senate elections

A screenshot of the New York Times map of the 2022 House elections

The **2022 United States elections** (dubbed as ***"the red wave that wasn't"***) were American midterm elections during the term of Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden (2021-2025; unless reelected), These elections were held in the United States on Tuesday, November 8, 2022, to elect primarily the 118th United States Congress. The election was held during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the midst of inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and worldwide inflation.

In the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, the Democratic Party did lose its trifecta (a trifecta is a situation in which one party controls the executive and a bicameral legislature simultaneously) by losing control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but with that said, the Republicans had an underwhelming than expected midterm election, barely winning the house by only a narrow 5-seat majority while the Democrats increased its control of the U.S. Senate by only a seat and gained ground in state governments across the country, making this a relatively successful midterm for President Biden by bucking historical trends. Biden is the first Democratic President since President Kennedy in his sole midterm just 60 years ago to gain Senate seats but lose House seats and the first President since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1934 midterms to see every Senator of his party get reelected and see his party not lose any ground in state governments. 2022 was a good midterm year for a president since 2002 under President Bush, and the 118th U.S. Congress will be similar to the 107th U.S. Congress with a Democratic Senate of 51-49 and a Republican House of 222-213, however one difference is 107 had a Republican president and 118 had a Democrat in the White House.

The 2022 midterm elections has become a cautionary tale of what an American opposition party should not do in a midterm election. Midterms are often favorable to the opposition party, but the Republicans of 2022 have made several mistakes, such as embracing Donald Trump's 2020 election lies and downplayed the resultant January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, as well as supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, and ran right-wing extremists in swing races who were promoted by Trump in the GOP primaries. In a midterm election where a Republican wave was widely expected due to inflation and Biden's unpopularity, Republicans stumbled in the U.S. Senate and lost ground in state governments while barely winning control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Following the election, Trump faced a near-universal backlash from an annoyed and frustrated Republican Party, while Trump's loyalists blamed the Republican establishment, but Trump was getting more of the blame than the party as a whole from the mainstream. Sensing a weakened Trump, potential Republican candidates for the nomination for President begin to sharpen their knives and prepare themselves for a presidential bid, especially Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who won his reelection in a landslide amidst disastrous Republican performances nationwide, this frightened Trump that he stood his ground to announce that he would be running for President as previously planned but at a bad time for him, Trump did this to scare away potential primary challengers, but it was ineffective and the party was less enthusiastic for his bid for obvious reasons.

On the Democratic side with Biden, having defied history and expectations as he oversaw a very strangely successful midterm election, Biden was allowed a peaceful and quiet holiday season and his dissenters in the Democratic Party no longer see a point in challenging the incumbent who had a successful midterm election. As a result, potential major primary challengers laid down their arms and surrendered the Democratic nomination to Biden long before the primary season for 2024 even began. The Democratic Party openly conceded that Biden has the nomination in his grasp even if he faces token primary challengers, ultimately being inexperienced and fringe Democrats, Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Biden defeats both Williamson and Kennedy by landslide margins in pre-election polls.

## Background

In the United States, its head of state is the President and the advice and consent of the President is the United States Congress, America's national legislature divided by a House of Representatives and a Senate.

Midterm elections (so named because the President's term is four years and election cycles nationwide for Congress are held per two years) are a referendum on the President, at least culturally, and so often, the President's party loses a dramatic number of seats. This was precisely shown in midterm elections under President Barack Obama, where in 2010, he infamously lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 Senate seats, and in 2014 following his reelection in 2012, Obama lost seats again, losing 13 seats in the House of Representatives and an even more dramatic, 9 seats in the Senate.

However, not all Presidents suffer midterm defeats. It is rare for a President to defeat an opposition party in a midterm. In 2002, President George W. Bush gained seats in Congress; in 1998, President Bill Clinton avoided congressional seat losses; in 1978, President Jimmy Carter maintained control of Congress despite seat losses; in 1962, President John F. Kennedy kept seat losses so dramatically low that he easily kept control of Congress; in 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt picked up seats.

As of 2022, the most recent midterm election where the President got creamed was 2018 under President Donald Trump, when he lost 41 seats in the House of Representatives while picking up just a couple of seats in the Senate, he still lost in important Senate seats, they were successfully held by Democrats in these Senate seats in swing states, the Senate seat gains were in devotedly Republican states.

## Campaign

The Republican Party became the opposition when Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election against incumbent President Donald Trump, but Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost and accused the electoral system of aiding and abetting electoral fraud in favor of the Democratic Party. As a result, Trump and his team decided to try to overturn the election to stay in power, doing so by intentionally dissuading the Republican electorate to trust the U.S. electoral system, this actually backfired because it enabled the Democratic Party to sweep two Senate runoff elections in Georgia that had the ultimate power to tip control of the Senate to either party, both Georgia U.S. Senate seats fell to the Democratic Party, ultimately throwing the U.S. Senate into Democratic control for the first time since Obama was President. In addition, the Democrats maintained control of the House of Representatives, but by a weaker majority, so with a Democratic Presidency on the way, as well as a Democratic Senate and an already existent Democratic House, the Democratic Party would control the White House and both chambers of Congress also for the first time since the two early years of the Obama days. This also made Trump the first President since Herbert Hoover in the early '30s to lose reelection as President and lose his own party their control of Congress in one sole presidential term.

Ultimately, Trump's efforts to have the 2020 election results invalidated by the courts and state governments were getting nowhere, this made his fundamentalist supporters grow pretty impatient as the clock was quickly ticking to the inauguration, all Congress had to do first was to officiate the 2020 electoral results of the electoral college, which showed Biden winning the electoral college by an ironic 306-232 margin, ironic because that was Trump's preliminary score in the electoral college when he was first elected President in 2016, and there's also a bit of karma to Biden's 306 score because Trump touted his 306 score as a landslide to mentally taunt Democrats. In a pursuit of comedic revenge, Democrats called Biden's 306 a landslide to taunt Trump and his supporters back. Trump tried to pressure Mike Pence to deny Biden's electoral college votes its day in Congress to make him President for another term, however Pence cannot actually do it even if he wanted to because of U.S. law, something Trump could not comprehend no matter how many times Pence tried to tell Trump that he actually could not deny Biden's victory. This resulted in a falling out in the relationship between Trump and Pence as President and Vice President. It is rare for a President and Vice President to publicly break up and part ways. Andrew Jackson and John Calhoun broke up over personal matters, and Franklin D. Roosevelt and John Nance Garner broke up over the politics of the New Deal.

Trump gathered a large protesting crowd called Stop The Steal to protest the congressional officialization of Biden's victory on January 6, 2021, but quickly in the day, things went wrong pretty fast. The Stop The Steal demonstration turned into a massive riot that broke into the U.S. Capitol in a desperate attempt to stop Congress from certifying Biden's victory, and Trump intentionally delayed his response in hopes to make Congress cave to his demands, but Congress remained resilient in their defiance to the mob, Vice President Mike Pence took command to call in the U.S. National Guard and Governors of states along the Atlantic Coast send their state national guards to assist Congress over Trump's objections, making this a rare moment that the United States Armed Forces defied the President of the United States and got away with it. The attack on Congress by Trump supporters did nothing to stop a Biden presidency, the rioters were forced to stand down at the presence of national guardsmen, and they were kicked out, giving Congress time to get back to work and do the constitutional business of certifying Biden's victory. Dealing the final blow to Donald Trump's hopes of being President for another term.

January 6, 2021 was especially a bad day for the Republican Party: the Presidency is now gone, they're not going to have the House of Representatives, the Senate had just fell to the Democrats, and they were humiliated in front of the whole country by a riot waged by supporters of their now lame-duck President. Trump would not be getting a second inauguration, instead his actions awarded him a second impeachment by an angry Congress. The second impeachment was so bad for Trump that even some Republicans voted to impeach him, and making matters worse for Trump, there are even Republican supporters of convicting him in the Senate. Trump left office with the worst departing office approval ratings, average polling aggregations showed that 57% of Americans disapproved of Trump as a President, and the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol was a sole factor. Twitter and other social media giants disowned Trump for his actions and the issue of political radicalization became a hot-button topic and concern for the social media industry.

On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden was inaugurated President of the United States along with a Democratic Congress. The January 6th insurrection had also impacted Biden's approval ratings as well, Biden's popularity was above water, well above or around 53% or higher. It went on to collapse in August 2021 when Biden led a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan which was exploited by the Taliban in a swift fashion, and remained low in the midst of economic concerns and that of his age.