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In an April 2019 campaign speech, Senator Elizabeth Warren lambasted Republicans for massive voter suppression and attempting to rig an election in Georgia and North Carolina, respectively. They know that a durable majority of Americans believes in the promise of America, she told her audience. And they know that if all the votes are counted, well win every time.

Progressives take it as an article of faith that a durable majority of Americans, in Warrens words, would support a left-wing policy agenda, if not for various Republican-sponsored voter-suppression efforts, gerrymandering, and anti-majoritarian institutions like the Senate and the Electoral College. Bernie Sanders echoed this view in 2016 when he said: Democrats win when the voter turnout is high . . . Republicans win when the voter turnout is low.

Republicans, for their part, often seem to agree. In March, President Trump publicly worried that a Democratic proposal to expand absentee and mail-in voting would lead to levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again.

The results of this years election should call this conventional wisdom into question. With a record-high turnout of nearly 160 million voters, the GOP not only held its own but also exceeded expectations at every level. While Donald Trump appears to have lost his reelection bid, he significantly outperformed the landslide losses projected by most polls, as did Republican Senate and House candidates across the country.

With Republicans poised to gain at least six seats in the House and well-positioned to hold on to their Senate majority (pending two Georgia runoffs in early January), the American electorate has once again proved itself significantly more conservative than pollsters and pundits claimed. And while Joe Biden won a comfortable victory in the national popular vote, the GOPs resounding success in down-ballot races has dealt a significant blow to the longstanding myth that a latent majoritarian mandate exists for the progressive agenda.

According to a preponderance of data dating as far back as the 1980s, no consistently identifiable correlation exists between voter turnout and the success of one party over the other. Instead, high voter turnout helps different parties at different times, depending on who turns out (and who doesnt). While some evidence suggests that non-voters lean slightly Democratic, modelling scenarios with full voter participation (100 percent turnout) tend to suggest that they would not have a significant effect on our politics. If everyone voted, wrote political scientist John Sides in 2015, a lot would be the same.

Barack Obamas blowout victory in 2008, which succeeded in turning out large numbers of traditional nonvoters, added fuel to theories on the left about Republican voter suppression. According to this logic, the 2020 elections historic voter turnouthelped along by Democrat-championed initiatives like vote-by-mailshould have led to the GOPs crushing defeat. The problem, of course, is that the wrong people turned out. In Wisconsin, for example, turnout increased by an average of 13 percent in heavily Republican rural counties, compared with only 7 percent in traditionally Democratic areas. Though Biden still eked out a narrow win in the Badger State, Republicans held the legislature, as they did in upset wins in states across the country.

These GOP victories are not solely the result of an energized working-class white electorate. According to New York Times pollster Nate Cohn, Mr. Trump made huge gains in many Hispanic communities across the country, from the agricultural Imperial Valley and the border towns along the Rio Grande to more urban Houston or Philadelphia. The president also doubled his share of the LGBT vote and modestly improved his standing with African-Americans while actually losing support among white men, throwing cold water on another myth about the inevitable leftward drift of a diversifying America.

Many on the left have responded to these facts by trading in their conviction that the vast majority of the country is with them for a profound disdain for the national character. Lets remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it means supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division, Michelle Obama tweeted. Brookings Institution fellow Andre M. Perry was still more blunt: The outsized support Trump has continued to receive exposes Americas soul for what it is. . . . Confronting that part means confronting the nations racism, xenophobia, and classism.

What it doesnt mean, apparently, is confronting progressives own political shortcomings. Democrats lose elections because of voter suppression, bigotry, Russia, disinformation, corporate power, money in politics, third-party candidates, or any number of other factorseverything but the unpopularity of progressive politics.

Nate Hochman (@njhochman) is a senior at Colorado College and a Young Voices associate contributor.

Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

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Myth of the Democratic Majority - City Journal

House Republicans exceeded Election Day expectations, knocking off at least five targeted incumbent Democrats in 2020. While Democrats will maintain a slimmer majority in the House, CBS News projects Democrats are still likely to lose several more races, including two in Florida.

Both parties anticipated that the political environment going into Tuesday's election would expand the House Democratic majority and predicted gains ranging from 5 to 18 seats. But from Miami to New Mexico to Des Moines, Republican congressional candidates outperformed polls and pundits that predicted another "blue wave" that would keep even the most vulnerable House Democrats afloat.

"We lost members who shouldn't have lost," Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger said on a Thursday call with the Democratic caucus, first reported by The Washington Post. "Tuesday, from a congressional standpoint, was a failure." CBS News has her leading by over a percentage point with 96% of the vote in. Her opponent Republican Nick Freitas has not yet conceded.

Democrats and Republicans have different theories for their pre-election miscalculations. Some wondered if Trump voters hid their alliances from pollsters and then turned out in high numbers on Election Day. Consistent Republican attack ads on Democrats on socialism and the "defund the police" movement seemed to take a toll on Democrats.

COVID-19 likely cost Democrats, too, when they chose to eschew in-person canvassing for much of the campaign season for safety reasons, while Republicans did not. The GOP-backed Congressional Leadership Fund allocated $10 million towards a "ballot chase" program and more on-the-ground field operations.

Democrats' assessments of districts they thought were in reach may simply have been wrong. And the lack of a third pandemic relief package or the unpopularity of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi among Republicans, independents and progressives may also have hurt some candidates.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had designated at least 47open seats or Republican incumbentsto flip this cycle and grow their caucus. But by Friday, they had picked up just three of those targets. In Texas, which they often referred to as "Ground Zero" for their potential pickups, Democrats are set to lose all ten of their targeted seats.

Congresswoman Cheri Bustos, the Chair of the DCCC, argued on a post-election call with the House Democrat caucus their offensive battlefield forced Republicans to play more defense. But she said she was "furious" with the results and said the committee would be doing a "deep dive" into what happened. She added that "something went wrong here across the entire political world," and she placed much of the blame on faulty polling.

"Our polls, Senate polls, [Governor] polls, Presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modeling and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment that environment never materialized," she said according to a source familiar with the call. Other House strategists said they'd be doing their own audit on the polling in the coming weeks.

"House Democrats to recognize that their socialist agenda is completely out of touch with middle-class voters. They scoffed at the reality that they could do any wrong," National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Michael McAdams said of the DCCC's targeting. But he also pointed out that House Republicans were probably helped by having President Trump at the top of the ticket, and the record number of GOP women and minority recruits was also likely helpful.

Republicans may still pick up more seats, though some competitive races are still too close to call or are waiting for absentee ballots to be counted, including two in New York and four in California. The GOP could still be looking at life in the House minority under a potential Biden-Harris administration, but that gap between the two parties may even drop into single digits.

"I'm not going to lie and say that people aren't sad and devastated," said Pennsylvania Congresswoman Chrissy Houlahan, a freshman member who is close to several of the Democrats who lost their seats.

"But I think that we all need to take solace in the fact that we retained the House and that it looks like that we'll have a historic victory with the vice president. We have to take solace in that and know that each one of us has played a role in that."

But Democrats are still holding onto their majority, a point made by House Speaker Pelosi on Friday. "We did not win every battle in the House, but we won the war," she said at a press conference. "This is not a zero-sum game, somebody's success here is not taking away from your success there." Pelosi also sent a letter to colleagues on Friday asking for their support in her reelection for Speaker of the House.

California Congressman Ami Bera, who helped lead the DCCC's program for vulnerable members, said there needs to be an unblinking "360-degree" look at what messages employed by Republicans ended up being effective if Democrats want to stay in the majority after 2022.

He said "defunding the police" could have damaged vulnerable Democrats, and that the caucus could have talked about its platform as one of reforming rather than defunding the police more effectively.

"'That's what most of us mean," he told CBS News. "But there might be pockets of the caucus that use that language [of defunding the police]. We've got to have a conversation that if you use that language, it might make a good sound bite, but it might put some of your colleagues in a tougher position to get re-elected and it's not going to help us hold onto the majority."

Republicans needed to achieve a net gain of 17 seats to flip the chamber and are currently on track to see a net gain of at least three seats according to CBS News race calls. After recent redistricting created more Democratic districts, Democrats easily flipped North Carolina's 2nd and 6th Districts. They're also about to pick up Georgia's 7th District in the diversifying Atlanta suburbs, a district they lost by 433 votes in 2018.

The GOP saw success in several targeted districts that President Trump won in 2016, as well as in traditionally Democratic areas. Their first flips of the night were in Florida's 26th and 27th Districts in South Florida. Republicans Carlos Gimenez, the Mayor of Miami-Dade County, and Maria Elvira Salazar were able to unseat freshmen Democrats Debbie Murcarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala. The Associated Press has called these races, and the latest CBS News data shows both Republicans leading with virtually all ballots in.

Salazar, a former Spanish television newscaster, persistently tied Shalala and Democrats to socialism during the campaign and even in her winning remarks. Republicans say the anti-Socialism message resonates with Cuban-Americans in South Florida, a group that also helped Trump surpass his 2016 margins in the state.

"I will not cower to the mob and when faced with the so-called democratic socialists," she said on election night.

Linking Democrats to socialism and the Green New Deal was a tactic employed by Republican House organizations in districts throughout the campaign. They utilized the "Defund the Police" movement to claim Democrats supported it and to warn that it would only lead to more crime.

David McIntosh, a former Indiana Congressman and current president of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth PAC, said the South Florida swings "were incredible."

"We actually didn't think it'd be possible, it's a heavy Democrat base," he said. "People voted for Trump, but they also voted for the agenda: rejection of socialism, for growing the economy, for limited government."

Republican challengers like Stephanie Bice in Oklahoma and Iowa's Ashley Hinson also played up bipartisan inclinations heading into the final weeks of the campaign.

Nebraska GOP Congressman Don Bacon, who won his metropolitan Omaha seat despite Joe Biden's victory in the district, also used this approach. He prevailed in his rematch with Democrat Kara Eastman, a Democrat who had the backing of both establishment and progressive Democrats. He distilled his winning message into "I've delivered bipartisan results," and "my opponent is a Bernie Sanders Democrat."

"And I thought if I could make that stick in the voter's mind, I would win," he said.

He did.

Kimberly Brown contributed to this report

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Democrats "devastated" and reflective after House GOP exceeds expectations - CBS News

MADISON, Wis. If there is a symbol of the Wisconsin Democratic comeback following the shock of President Trumps 2016 victory and nearly a decade of being beaten into submission by the Republican state legislature, it is Jill Karofsky.

Ms. Karofsky stunned most of Wisconsin, and herself, when in April she won an 11-point victory in a race for a State Supreme Court seat, during an election the states Republicans blocked its Democratic governor from delaying because of the coronavirus pandemic.

I did not see a path for us to win, Justice Karofsky said during a six-mile run on Monday. But when the polls opened April 7, she said, I went for a run and I came home and I looked at my phone and I saw all those brave people voting in Milwaukee. And thats when I started to have a glimmer of hope.

For Wisconsin Democrats, hope has been something in short supply since 2010, when Republicans won control of the states government and began to systematically dismantle a progressive political infrastructure built up over generations.

While Justice Karofskys race was officially nonpartisan, her allies made the battle lines clear the contest was a referendum on Mr. Trump and Republican governance in the state. And her victory, with its surprise margin, provided an important psychological boost to a party beaten down by the states dominant Republicans and still spooked by 2016, when Hillary Clinton, who never visited the state, lost Wisconsin by just 22,748 votes a margin seared into the memory of the states top Democrats.

Only in the final hours of the 2020 campaign, when more than half the states voters had cast pre-Election Day ballots, did Wisconsin Democrats allow themselves to say out loud that they believed former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. would carry the state by a healthy margin when counting was expected to be completed on Wednesday.

It is a bullishness borne of the combination of high turnout in Madison and Milwaukee, signs they had won back some rural Democrats who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, and the feeling that, since 2016, they have finally won more than theyve lost. Democrats also believe that a recent statewide surge in coronavirus cases has helped refocus voters on the presidents handling of the pandemic.

After Mrs. Clintons loss in Wisconsin, Democrats here began organizing from the ground up. The Democratic National Committee and other liberal organizations began in 2017 to make investments in the state that the party neglected during the Obama years. In 2019, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin elected as its chairman Ben Wikler, a veteran Moveon.org organizer who in the last 18 months has raised record sums for the party, bringing in more than twice the funds as his Republican counterparts.

All this took place in the ashes of the devastating 2016 contest, when Democrats were certain of a victory, but disinclined to do much to make one happen.

During that campaign, Mandela Barnes, who would be elected lieutenant governor two years later, asked people to pose with him in photographs for Mrs. Clintons Instagram page. People were like, Ehhh, I dont really know about that. Mr. Barnes said. I was like, Were friends! But also, damn.

But despite the new optimism, after so many searing defeats, there is a sense among voters that nothing is to be taken for granted.

For the past 10 years its been like living with a boot on our necks, said Andy Olsen, a policy advocate for an environmental organization who spent Tuesday morning reminding voters at Madisons Monona Terrace to text three friends to remind them to vote, too. We kept getting knocked down and trying to get back up again. People are cautious about getting their hopes up too much.

Even before the April court election, there were already signs that the states fragile Trump coalition was crumbling. Republican margins in the Milwaukee suburbs dropped precipitously during the 2018 midterm elections, while Democrats clawed back some of the voters Mr. Trump won in 2016, especially in the Fox Valley, a key battleground region of the state.

Without Mrs. Clinton as a foil, many of these voters began to judge Mr. Trump on his own and didnt like the results.

I voted for Trump four years ago out of default, said Ted Schartner, a plasterer from Green Bay who voted for Mr. Biden last Wednesday. I regretted it almost right away. I didnt like the way things were heading.

While voters were coming to terms with a Trump presidency, Wisconsin Democrats found themselves digging out of their collective nadir. Not only was it the first time since 1984 that a Republican had carried the states electoral votes, but Democrats were locked out of state government, gerrymandered into a deep minority in the state legislature and facing a State Supreme Court controlled by conservative justices.

By the time Mr. Trump won the White House, Wisconsinites had already gotten used to the constant partisan warfare that would define his administration.

You go to a gathering of friends and it turns into politics right away, said Roben Haggart, who has served as Minocquas town clerk for 22 years. It always turns into an argument.

Mr. Trumps victory here led to talk that Wisconsin, with its large population of white working-class voters, had become a fixture of the Republican Electoral College map, out of reach for Democratic candidates.

Nov. 7, 2020, 6:28 p.m. ET

The states Democratic infrastructure was in shambles, but little by little voters began to turn against Mr. Trump. In January 2018, a Democrat won a special election to a rural State Senate district Mr. Trump had carried by 17 points. That fall, Democrats rode anger against Mr. Trump to a sweep of the statewide elections, ousting Scott Walker, a two-term governor who had crippled the states public-sector labor unions.

In June 2019, Wisconsin Democrats elected as their state chairman Mr. Wikler, who had moved his family into his childhood home in Madison. Mr. Wikler brought an organizing and fund-raising heft the state had never seen. The Democratic Party of Wisconsin has raised $58.7 million in the last two years, more than twice the haul for the states Republicans.

Trumps win, in a lot of ways, accelerated and pushed forward necessary change within our party, said Alex Lasry, a senior official for Milwaukees pro basketball franchise who is weighing a run for the seat of Ron Johnson, a Republican senator, in 2022. Democrats realized we cant just sit on the sidelines in these off-year elections.

Representative Mark Pocan, a Madison Democrat, said Mr. Bidens campaign and Mr. Wiklers leadership created a dramatically different political landscape than four years ago.

The Biden campaign is 180 degrees different than what we had four years ago, Mr. Pocan said. One important difference: Mr. Biden has visited Wisconsin three times since the primary. The candidate never came post-primary four years ago, we had no resources specifically for Wisconsin or very little resources.

The 2016 contest was marked by a drop in turnout among Black voters in Milwaukee, who are now a key part of Mr. Bidens hopes for a Wisconsin victory.

The Rev. Greg Lewis, the executive director of the Milwaukee Souls to the Polls effort, said the Black electorate in the city had changed, thanks in part to Mr. Trumps presidency. Since 2012, Mr. Lewis said, the money that was absent in 2016 is now flowing to community leaders for get-out-the-vote efforts, just as Black Milwaukeeans have become more engaged in removing Mr. Trump.

These groups werent active four years ago, because we didnt have funding or resources to do any of the things were doing right now, Mr. Lewis said. I just think the Democratic Party didnt come into the community enough to energize and make sure that people were willing to do what needs to be done.

By October, Wisconsins coronavirus spike was among the worst in the country and by far the worst of any presidential battleground state. The presidents approval rating on the pandemic in Wisconsin had fallen from 51 percent in March to just 40 percent, according to a Marquette Law School poll.

Weve got people that are supposed to be leading the country that have just thrown up their hands and said, theres nothing we can do about this pandemic which is just demonstrably not true, said Kate Walton, an emergency room nurse in Madison who said she voted for Mr. Biden.

One after another, Biden voters across the state in the last week said their votes were motivated primarily by a desire to oust Mr. Trump.

I wouldnt vote for Trump for nothing, even if you paid me all the money he says hes worth, said Terri Konkol, a 58-year-old Milwaukeean who on Saturday voted for Mr. Biden from her wheelchair. She blamed the president for the viruss spread in the state. In our whole lifetimes have we ever had to wear masks?

Rose Goeb, 62, a Milwaukee preschool teacher, voted early for Mr. Biden on one of the first days she could.

Of Mr. Trump, she said, I made up my mind a long time ago that this man does not have the character or discipline to be president.

And on Tuesday in Madison, among a line of voters waiting to cast ballots when the polls opened at 7 a.m. was Helen Hawley, an artist who was inspired by Senator Bernie Sanders and a fierce desire to remove Mr. Trump.

Its hard to be hopeful about anything right now, said Ms. Hawley, 40. But its better to have hope than to not. Hope is just something I hold onto because its a good idea.

Reid J. Epstein reported from Madison, Wis., and Astead W. Herndon from Milwaukee.

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After 2016 Shock, Wisconsin Democrats Picked Themselves Off the Floor - The New York Times

Republican Stacy Garrity and incumbent Democrat Joe Torsella are waiting to learn who will be the states treasurer come January.

Torsella, considered a potential gubernatorial or U.S. Senate candidate, said his major accomplishments as state treasurer include setting up a scholarship program that begins for children at birth and leading a lawsuit against large Wall Street banks over their bond fees.

The lawsuit resulted in a nearly $400 million settlement over the price fixing claims, money that is being split with other plaintiffs. He has also moved more of the states investments into index funds, putting the state on track to save hundreds of millions of dollars in investment fees in the coming decades.

Torsella, 57, a resident of Flourtown, served as former President Barack Obamas envoy for United Nations management and reform, headed the National Constitution Center, and was former Gov. Ed Rendells choice to serve as chairperson of the Pennsylvania State Board of Education.

Garrity, 56, retired as a colonel in 2016 after 30 years with the Army Reserves. She is vice president of a tungsten smelting plant.

Garrity, who lives in Athens in Bradford County, wants to use the treasury departments leverage to push lawmakers and the governor to limit spending to money that has been formally appropriated by the Legislature and end the executive branchs spending of money outside the pre-approval process.

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Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania, has enough votes to become Americas 46th president: AP

Biden votes pour in from Philly, yet he might have won the election in Pa.'s red counties

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Pa. treasurers race between incumbent Democrat and Republican challenger still up in the air - PennLive

Freshman Democrat U.S. Rep. Susan Wild defended her Lehigh Valley seat against Republican nominee Lisa Scheller, a former Lehigh County commissioner who started a pigment manufacturer for paints, coatings and inks and touted her background as someone recovered from addiction who advocates for people in recovery.

Wild, a prominent lawyer in Allentown, scored a 10-percentage-point thumping of her Republican opponent in 2018s campaign for what was an open seat in Pennsylvanias 7th Congressional District.

Wild declared victory Thursday evening before The Associated Press called the race around midday Friday.

Pennsylvanias 7th includes all of Lehigh and Northampton counties and part of Monroe County. The district is daunting for a Republican. Democrats have a 60,000-voter registration advantage. Schellers fundraising picked up and closed a big campaign cash advantage that Wild had held going into July.

Scheller had led by as much as 27,000 votes late on election night, when day-of votes were counted but many mail-in ballots were yet to be included in these preliminary results. Her lead dwindled to fewer than 5,000 votes by noon on Thursday, and was erased completely that evening, after which Wild quickly claimed victory.

In a live event streamed on social media, the congresswoman thanked those who took the time to vote despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and who put the 2020 election on pace to see the highest voter turnout in the nations history.

Wild anticipated her lead would only grow as more votes were counted, and pledged to represent everyone within the district.

Whether you voted for me or you didnt, I will keep working as hard as I possibly can for you and your family, and I will keep my focus squarely on getting our entire community through this public health and economic crisis, Wild said before laying out a vision for her second term.

Republican Lisa Scheller, candidate for Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District, takes the stage to speak in September at a Women for Trump event with Kimberly Guilfoyle in the Lehigh Valley.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com

Schellers campaign issued a statement Friday calling on voters to reject socialism and west coast values":

"Pennsylvanias Seventh Congressional District does not belong to a party, it belongs to the hard-working people who call this beautiful district home. While we wait for all of the remaining ballots to be counted, one thing is clear: every legal vote matters, and every legal vote must be verified.

"I have learned one main thing during this journey, Pennsylvanians reject socialism and they reject west coast values being brought to our great district. Susan Wild must be held accountable for how she votes in Congress. I look forward to being a large part of that conversation.

This fight to defend the American Dream, our fight, my fight is not over, it has only just begun.

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Wild wins reelection: Lehigh Valley congressional race called for Democrat over GOPs Scheller - lehighvalleylive.com