--- title: The 2022 Midterms Show Just How Stuck We Are description: American politics is so calcified that there is little reason for Democrats to assume that the 2022 elections portend success in 2024 canonical: https://time.com/6237216/2022-midterms-us-politics-stuck/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-11-29T11:00:36.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:44:44.443Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The 2022 Midterms Show Just How Stuck We Are og:description: American politics is so calcified that there is little reason for Democrats to assume that the 2022 elections portend success in 2024 og:url: https://time.com/6237216/2022-midterms-us-politics-stuck/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7efe0fee553d0ae0/698a3864929fad0400bf9580/GettyImages-1244639070.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: OPED-FLA-ELECTION-EDITORIAL-OS og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The 2022 Midterms Show Just How Stuck We Are twitter:description: American politics is so calcified that there is little reason for Democrats to assume that the 2022 elections portend success in 2024 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7efe0fee553d0ae0/698a3864929fad0400bf9580/GettyImages-1244639070.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The 2022 Midterms Show Just How Stuck We Are > Sponsored content. 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A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-inside-2026q3/newsletters?i=e356deee-593f-4502-b7cb-4390d72ce297&cr=time-nl-inside-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Surge of Political Violence in the U.S. [Watch (HLS stream): The Surge of Political Violence in the U.S.](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/0MCZx62q.m3u8) (5:31)  _Published 2022-11-15. Reports of politically motivated threats, harassment, and violence are on the rise across the United States. Since 2016, threats against members of Congress have increased ten-fold._ by [John Sides](https://time.com/author/john-sides/), [Michael Tesler](https://time.com/author/michael-tesler/) and [Lynn Vavreck](https://time.com/author/lynn-vavreck/) Nov 29, 2022 11:00 AM UTC  At the end of a long and tumultuous season, however, itâs important to recognize all the people who worked themselves close to exhaustion, and all those who treated this exercise in democracy with the respect, reverence and passion it deserves. At the end of a long and tumultuous season, however, itâs important to recognize all the people who worked themselves close to exhaustion, and all those who treated this exercise in democracy with the respect, reverence and passion it deserves. Jerry Fallstrom-Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service by [John Sides](https://time.com/author/john-sides/), [Michael Tesler](https://time.com/author/michael-tesler/) and [Lynn Vavreck](https://time.com/author/lynn-vavreck/) Nov 29, 2022 11:00 AM UTC The 2022 [midterm elections](https://time.com/6230857/midterm-election-results-2022-latest/) delivered something unexpected: very little changed. On a night when the Democratic Party seemed fated for a shellacking, they held their Senate majority and lost far fewer House seats than many expected. Their experience was the opposite of 2020, when Democrats anticipated a more convincing victory and were [ultimately disappointed](https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2020/11/04/what-blue-wave-490798), even with Joe Biden prevailing over Donald Trump. Despite the different outcomes, both the 2020 and 2022 elections had common features—features that say a lot about contemporary American politics and why it is hard for either party to get the landslide or wave that it wants. Part of the reason is what we call the “calcification” of electoral politics in the U.S. Just as it does in the body, calcification creates rigidity: most voters stick with the party they tend to support because the two parties increasingly differ not only on public policy but on basic values. They offer contrasting visions of what America should be, and who can be American. At the same time, the parties are increasingly close to parity in the [national electorate](https://electionstudies.org/resources/anes-guide/top-tables/?id=22) as well as key districts and states. This means that even the small changes that occur in a calcified politics can shift control of government. With victory almost always within reach, the parties have less incentive to reinvent themselves, even after losing an election. This only produces more calcification, because voters have no reason to reconsider their partisan loyalties if the parties are not changing. Calcification was evident in the remarkable similarity between the 2016 and 2020 election results. Although Biden did just enough better than Hillary Clinton to win, relatively few 2016 voters switched sides four years later. At the state and county levels, the 2020 results were only slightly different than in 2016, even with the sharp rise in turnout. Despite dramatic events in the election year—such as a pandemic and punishing recession—the two parties remained close to parity. A question in 2022 was whether calcification would be as powerful. In midterm elections, at least some voters who supported the president’s party in the previous election may sit out the election altogether. A consequential fraction of voters may even shift their votes, usually to signal their dissatisfaction with the president. Both are reasons why unpopular presidents’ parties typically struggle only two years after the president’s victory. **_Read More:_** [**_How Democrats Defied History in 2022_**](https://time.com/6231733/midterms-2022-analysis/) A “red wave” seemed possible heading into election day. Based on Biden’s approval rating and the state of the economy, Democrats [were](https://www.mischiefsoffaction.com/post/rough-forecast-democrats) [forecast](https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/forecasting-2022-using-the-fundamentals-the-structural-and-structure-x-models/) to lose 40 seats or more. Indeed, Biden’s 44% approval rating in the [national exit polls](https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/exit-polls/national-results/house) was actually a point lower than both [Obama’s ](https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2010/results/house/exit-polls.html)and [Trump’s](https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/exit-polls) ratings when their parties lost over 60 and 40 House seats, respectively, in the 2010 and 2018 midterms. But in 2022, Democratic candidates excelled at winning over voters who were lukewarm about Biden or even disappointed with his performance. One way to see this is to examine voters who “somewhat disapprove” or “somewhat approve” of the president. --- ### More from TIME --- According to the national exit polls, 67% of people who somewhat disapproved of Obama in 2010 reported voting for the Republican candidate for the U.S. House. In 2018, 63% of people who somewhat disapproved of Trump reported voting for the Democratic House candidate. But in 2022, as The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein [has noted](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/11/midterm-election-results-democrats-avoid-red-wave/672050/), this fraction dropped to 45%. More voters who somewhat disapproved of Biden stuck with the Democrats anyway. A similar difference was visible among people who somewhat approved of the president. In 2010 and 2018, most of these voters voted for the president’s party for Congress, but about 20-25% still defected to the other party. In 2022, almost none of the president’s lukewarm supporters defected: 91% of those who somewhat approved of Biden voted for the Democratic House candidate in the midterm. Why did such a large share of voters who weren’t thrilled with Biden’s performance still support Democratic candidates? It was because longer-term partisan polarization combined with election-year dynamics made the election especially consequential to voters who otherwise could have been tempted to switch sides. One of those election-year dynamics was the Supreme Court majority’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade. Even before this decision, Democrats [prioritized](https://press.princeton.edu/ideas/how-americans-priorities-explain-abortion-politics) opposition to abortion bans over dozens of other political issues. After the decision, the salience of the issue [skyrocketed](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-abortion-is-becoming-a-winning-issue-for-democrats/) among Democratic voters. This may have helped Democrats turn out to vote and vote Democratic. The political scientist Dan Cassino [conducted](https://www.fdu.edu/news/fdu-poll-abortion-concerns-boost-turnout-but-not-democrats-in-nj-races/) a survey experiment that randomized the order in which respondents were asked their view of abortion and whether they were likely to vote in the midterm. He found that merely asking abortion first increased the likelihood that pro-choice respondents said they would vote. Although Democratic turnout likely [lagged](https://twitter.com/davidshor/status/1590358548923682817) Republican turnout, the abortion issue may have kept that difference from being even larger. Another factor that raised the stakes for Democrats was the presence of Trump-backed 2020 election deniers up and down the ballot. A [variety of](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/16/upshot/trump-effect-midterm-election.html) [analyses](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/data-trump-weighed-down-republican-candidates/) [showed](https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/11/17/quantifying-the-trump-effect) [that](https://split-ticket.org/2022/11/20/candidate-quality-cost-statewide-republicans-in-2022/?amp=1) candidates closely aligned with Trump—himself a chronically [unpopular](https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-trump-favorability) and [underperforming](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/11/16/trump-underperform-elections-2024/) candidate—may have lost 5 points on average. In an era of partisan parity, even a few percentage points of vote share can be the difference between winning and losing a seat—and perhaps between a congressional majority or minority. This is a defining characteristic of our politics today: big events may have small political effects, but even small effects can have big consequences. Thus, there is little reason for Democrats to assume that the 2022 elections portend success in 2024\. They will have [more Senate seats](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/10/05/senate-dems-reelection-00060062) to defend. Inflation, although falling, is still high. Biden remains [unpopular](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/). More fundamentally, calcification and partisan parity portend competitive and narrowly divided elections—not easy victories. Even though it feels good to win, neither party can have much confidence that their hold on power will last that long. ## Transcript It's across the United States. We have been seeing this massive storage of political violence. Harassment attacks intimidation at the public officials will usually only hear about it and prominent cases, like the attack on Paul Pelosi the husband of house Speaker. Nancy Pelosi who was attacked in San Francisco. What we don't really care about is that this is affecting people all the way down to. The local level is affecting federal. Judges is affecting education workers health workers election workers. This growing, except in this happening in both parties and political violence. Experts say that extremely dangerous. Given what we find ourselves now, I spoke to several experts and political violence about what's really driving this. They all mentioned that rhetoric just in general of the last couple of years especially threatened in the presidency of Donald Trump and his supporters. The language of violence is being used more and some some people are taking it literally and seriously, and they also are saying that there's a growing acceptance of political violence as a tool, and they call this partisan. Moral disengagement. What that means, is that more and more people on both sides of the political aisle. See the other party as evil as they see them. As, you know, less human and this justifies, you know, the possible use of force Covering January 6th was such a shocking unprecedented instance of political violence. But speaking to people on the grounds, it really seems like this was a much deeper problem. That wasn't being covered in soap for the last year or two, we really started collecting examples, all across the country to try to get people are good friends of the scope of the problem that it's not just members of Congress or the president who have always been the target of death threats and even a Fascinations in the past. But really that even your your local city council official, or your local retiree who happens to volunteer as an election worker. They are getting targeted. They are getting death threats. One of the biggest Trends we really seeing during the pandemic was people showing up out of people's houses and we saw this in New York where I council member who supported a masks for children under 5 in school during different stages of endemic. And really angry constituents, they were banging on his door, his family was inside that was really scary for them, but that wasn't a one-off. We seen that in a lot of demand was across the country. I spoke to the top health official in Alabama, who ended up having to bring a bulletproof vest to events. Every time you was going to speed with members of the public. That's, that's really done it. And that's a that's a really large escalation in Idaho. We saw this case of a man who was arrested after making violent threats against the mayor of Boise. He was found with bullets that said, diamondclean on that. Much is the name of the mayor including a bunch of other things that made it look like he was serious about actually committing and attacked. And he also belongs to an extremist anti-government group. And the mayor was the very public about the toll that this has taken on her family about the fact that every time, he hears a car pull up outside of her house, she's worried about her safety. And again, this is not an outlier at many of these people think that they are outliers, but it's happening all across the country. The surge in violent threats has targeted members of both parties Congressman Lee, zeldin the Republican nominee for New York. Governor was attacked at a campaign rally this summer by a man with a sharp object George's, Republican Secretary of State, Brad raffensperger got so many death threats. After refusing. Trump allegations of voter fraud that his family had to leave their home and go into hiding another category that never really faced. This up to before is education, officials School, official school board members has been a lot of anger about critical race theory about teaching about friends gender Equity, even about not Banning certain books that they consider it appropriate for children. And that is me school board meetings. There is no ground zero for some very tense of sometimes-violent Confrontation. Massey and now you are marked in many cases. What's happening is that this Avalanche of threats is changing ways that the government doesn't job that these officials do their jobs. And if it's gotten so bad, that the justice department actually had to open a task force in order to really track and try to prosecute some of these death threats. In case, it is against election workers. We spoke to a lot of people on the local level and at the state level, we're having to invest their own resources in securing their homes. Hiring armed, guards that having to install Bullet Proof glass and local government offices. According to recent polls many Americans, expect the situation to get worse with 64% saying the beliefs of political violence will increase going forward. But experts say, the only thing that has proven successful to combat The Surge of violence and targeted harassment. It's our political leaders to denounce it with the 2024 election coming up. 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