The Democratic Party winning so many votes surprised many people, but the most surprising win was probably in Iowa. Eric Armstrong, who dropped out of the race in September due to health issues, still won a western Iowa legislative district.
He bested his opponent, Republican candidate Keith Jones, by getting 55% of the vote, and vowed to represent the people who voted for him to the best of his ability. “The voters of District 20 sent a clear message about the direction they want for Iowa,” he wrote in a statement. “And I will make sure that message is carried to the Capitol in January.”
Social media is buzzing about the Democrats’ win in Texas and how the traditionally red state finally turned blue. But the win is even more significant in Kansas: there hasn’t been a Democratic senator in the U.S. Senate for 94 years — since 1932. The senator-elect, Reverend Adam Hamilton, defeated Republican incumbent Roger Marshall.
"Across the state of Kansas, there were people who had voted Republican all their lives and yet looked at what was happening in Washington and felt like things were happening there that were cruel, they were immoral, they were corrupt, and policies that were hurting people in our state," he told PBS. "And I think there was a lot of folks who said, this is not OK. This is not who we are."
We already mentioned Texas, but South Carolina experienced a similar win: Dr. Annie Andrews became the first Democrat in the Senate since 1998. What's more, she'll be the first woman elected as senator in South Carolina. The previous senator, Lindsey Graham, held his seat for over two decades before he passed away this summer. His sister, Darline Graham, stepped in to fill his role, but lost by 5 points to Andrews.
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There were even more firsts during these mid-term elections. Abdul El-Sayed became the first in U.S. history to be a muslim elected to the Senate by winning Michigan's open seat. In Montana, Sam Forstag will be the first Democrat in over 30 years to represent the state in the House. In Maine, Troy Jackson ousted a veteran Republican, Susan Collins, who has been in the Senate for almost 30 years.
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The feat that the Democrats were able to achieve this time is pretty impressive — they flipped both the Senate and the House. Since 1954, a party has only done this twice: during the 1994 midterm elections in Republicans' favor, and in 2006, when Democrats flipped both chambers in their favor.
However fun and satisfying it may be for right-wing people to have meltdowns right now, we can't deny that many Democrats felt the same way when Trump won his second term and they were just as disappointed and dejected, probably ridiculing the other camp just as badly. This only goes to show how strong political polarization is in the U.S., and that sometimes people are voting "against something" instead of for the things they believe in.
