GOP gains in 2022 midterms sparked by turnout, not voter defections, report says

Republican gains in the 2022 midterm elections mostly were driven by turnout advantages rather than swing voters switching support, according to a comprehensive report released this week by the Pew Research Center.

Voters who supported Republicans in 2020 and 2018 turned out at a higher rate in '22 than voters who supported Democrats in those years, the report found. Nationally, former President Donald Trump’s voters turned out at a higher rate in 2022 (71%) than did President Joe Biden’s voters (67%). That helped fuel a GOP takeover of the U.S. House.

Republicans also made election gains in New York State, including sweeping all four Long Island congressional seats.

“Shifts in turnout, as opposed to defections, were responsible for most of the changes in vote margins from the 2018 midterms within most subgroups in the population,” Pew concluded.

The same held true when Pew broke down the data for specific categories, such as females and Hispanics.

For example, though Republicans appeared to garner a higher share of the women's vote in 2022 than in recent cycles, what the data show is women who voted GOP in 2018 turned out at a higher rate than women who voted Democratic.

“Virtually all of the decline in the Democratic advantage among women is explained by the fact that the 2022 turnout rate for women who voted Republican in 2018 was 8 points higher than the rate for women who voted Democratic that year (84% vs. 76%),” Pew reported.

The turnout dip for Democrats fits with a larger, often repeating pattern: The party that holds the White House typically suffers a turnout decline in the next midterm election.

It happened to Democrats in '22 and Republicans in '18.

To conduct the study, Pew interviewed 7,041 Americans, tracking their voting behavior through multiple election cycles. Voter turnout in each election was verified by a comparison with official records.

Among other things, the study showed the hardening of party loyalty and turnout of party supporters remains the top factor for winning close elections.

“What the Pew study confirms is what political operatives of both parties have always known and are more intensely focused on than ever: That, with divisions wider and opinions hardened more than seemingly ever before, most elections are about getting out your supporters and not persuading individual voters to switch parties and candidates,” Lawrence Levy, executive dean of suburban studies at Hofstra University, said in an email.

Changing congressional district boundaries and topical issues can impact swing races, he added, “but what hasn’t changed is that the party that put in the hard work of reaching their supporters, tweet by tweet, door knock by door knock — the ones who can better shape the narratives of their campaigns to motivate them — that’s who will win the competitive races.”

Switching support from one party to another was minimal, the study said. “Relatively small shares of voters defected from their partisan affiliation or 2020 presidential vote. Among those who voted for both president in 2020 and for a House representative in 2022, just 6% crossed party lines between elections or voted for third-party candidates in either election.”

In another finding, Pew said white adults voted more consistently than other groups during the study period.

About 43% of whites voted in each of the last three congressional elections ('22, '20 and '18), compared with 27% of blacks, 21% of Asian Americans and 19% of Hispanics.

Hispanics had the highest rate of people who didn’t vote in any of those three election years: 47%.

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy