Since the election on Tuesday, Nov. 8, the power has once again changed hands in Congress. Republicans are on track to win both the House and the Senate, but not by as big of a majority as predicted.
Representing Iowa in the Senate, Chuck Grassley beat Mike Franken 56.1% to 43.9%. This was Grassley’s narrowest victory since first taking office in 1980 after defeating John Culver 53.5% to 45.5%. Grassley will be joining Republican Joni Ernst, who has been in that office since the 2014 election.
Representing Iowa in the U.S. House, Republicans once again swept the offices after defeating the lone Democrat representative from District 3. Representing District 1, Mariannette Miller-Meeks defeated Christina Bohannan 53.5% to 46.5%. From District 2, Ashley Hinson defeated Liz Mathis 54.1% to 45.9%. Representing District 3, Zach Nunn defeated incumbent Cindy Axne 50.3% to 49.7%. Finally, from Sioux County’s district, District 4, Randy Feenstra defended his position after defeating Ryan Melton 67.4% to 30.4%.
Governor Kim Reynolds kept her position after defeating Deidra DeJear 58.1% to 39.5%. Overall, U.S. elections have shown Republicans to be taking far fewer seats than initially projected. At the time of this article, there are four more seats to be called in the Senate, and Republicans lead Democrats 48-46. In Georgia, a runoff is scheduled on Dec. 6 for the second straight cycle. Nevada, Alaska and Arizona have yet to be called. Nevada and Alaska are leaning red while Arizona is projected to go blue. Another important result occurred in Pennsylvania where John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz 50.8% to 46.8%.
In the House, there are 37 seats left to be called, and Republicans are leading Democrats 209 – 189. The New York Times, among other newspapers, projected a “Red Wave,” a term used when the opposing party takes significant seats from the president’s party during the midterm election. “Blue Wave” is used for the same purpose when a Republican is in the presidency. It was projected that Republicans would take 40-50 seats in the House, but current results project that Republicans may only win 15-20 seats for a total of 224 seats. This would be the weakest performance by an opposing party in a midterm election since 2002.
Theorists have predicted a few reasons why the Red Wave is not proving to be as successful as originally projected. First, many of Donald Trump’s endorsed candidates lost, leading some to believe that the public may want to move on from Trump. Second, some are sick of candidates running on denying the 2020 election results. Finally, the public may stress social issues more than the economy, which was a top Republican issue during this cycle.
