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Where we stand after an unusual election night · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Wednesday, November 9th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is “Apple News Today.” For this morning-after-the-midterms show, I'm joined by my colleague, Gideon Resnick, who's been covering the midterms for us over the last few weeks. Hey, Gideon.
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  Gideon Resnick, Narrating: Hey, Shumita. How’s it going?
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  Basu: [LAUGHS] I am okay. I know that you are Team No Sleep, you stayed up all-night watching results come in. And, I should say, we're talking about the state of play as of 10 a.m. Eastern, and there's still a lot that we don't know.
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  Resnick: Yeah, I mean, you know, we knew that going in, right? It's long been expected that we'd wake up this morning and there would be a lot of outstanding races and that is certainly true. So, no one should be surprised by that. What we should be surprised by is that, as of early this morning, we really cannot say for certain which party will take control of the Senate or even the House. And that is pretty remarkable given what we were seeing just a few days ago.
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  Basu: Yeah, and it’s also become clear that the so-called "red wave" of Republican victories didn't really materialize.
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  Resnick: Yeah, absolutely. And you can look at previous midterms for examples of what, you know, waves tend to look like. Republicans lost 40 House seats during Trump's midterms, Democrats lost about 63 under Obama in 2010, 52 under Bill Clinton in 1994. So, these represented relatively big backlashes to the party and president in power. And what we can say right now is that doesn't appear to be happening here at all.
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  Basu: Okay, so let's talk about where Democrats did well. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Josh Shapiro beat Doug Mastriano in the governor's race. John Fetterman defeated Mehmet Oz to flip that Senate seat in Pennsylvania, which was a huge pick up for Democrats. Here's a little bit of Fetterman's victory speech from last night…
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  [START THE INDEPENDENT ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  John Fetterman: We held the line. I never expected that we were gonna turn these red counties blue, but we did what we needed to do.
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  [END THE INDEPENDENT ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Resnick: Yeah, and as you said, flipping this seat is a critical part of the Democratic effort to keep the Senate. And Pennsylvania was also a state where Biden actually campaigned, which was relatively rare this cycle. Obama went there as well. So, this was big. This was a big push from the Democratic party. Some others the Democrats were talking about throughout the evening: a bunch of candidates that were considered in danger in House seats ended up defending those seats, I'm thinking of people like Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia. These were House seats that were really targeted by the Republican Party as potential pickups, and when Republicans were looking at the national outlook throughout the evening, their chances of flipping a lot of these seats were really dwindling.
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  Basu: Yeah, and I'll add to your list with some Democratic incumbent governors who managed to hold on to their seats. The "AP" called the race for Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Gretchen Whitmer held on in Michigan, and Kathy Hochul ended up winning in New York.
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  Resnick: Right, and there was definitely a lot of conversation about that Hochul race. She did end up winning by a relatively small margin. There may be some trouble for down ballot Democrats there, but more on that in the days ahead. Democrats are breathing [LAUGHS] some sigh of relief, I suppose.
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  Basu: Okay, let's move on to where Republicans did well. Governor Greg Abbott held on in Texas, defeating Beto O'Rourke. Governor Brian Kemp beat Stacey Abrams in Georgia. And Republicans had a big night in Florida. Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist in the governor's race by a wide margin. Marco Rubio beat Val Demings in the Senate race. Now, neither of those are big surprises, but I mean, Gideon, you and I are old enough to remember when Florida used to be seen as swing state, and these days it's pretty solidly red, right?
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  Resnick: Yeah, I mean, I think that's an understatement, if anything. You know, both of these incumbents, as you said, were favorite to win, but I think the margins here were really surprising to people. DeSantis, for one, may win by nearly 20 points once all the votes are counted. And one place in Florida that a lot of political analysts are pointing to is Miami-Dade County. So, in 2016, at the presidential level, Hillary Clinton won around 63% of the vote there. That is how blue that county once was. It was what gave Democrats a fighting chance, sometimes an opportunity to win the state. So, this year, DeSantis is on track to win it by a double-digit margin. So, that is a really significant shift, and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if, down the line, Democrats think more seriously about how much time and money they are really willing to invest in the state of Florida in the future.
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  Basu: Let's stay with Ron DeSantis for a minute here. Of course he is widely considered the front-runner to challenge Trump for the party's nomination in 2024. Here's a little bit of his victory speech from last night…
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  [START FOX BUSINESS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Ron DeSantis: After four years, the people have delivered their verdict. Freedom is here to stay.
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  [CROWD CHEERING AND CHANTING]
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  [END FOX BUSINESS ARCHIVAL CLIP]
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  Yeah, so what the crowd is cheering there is "Two more years!" Two more years, not four.
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  Resnick: Yeah, very noticeable, right? Clearly some appetite to see DeSantis run for higher office. And again, all of this is happening while Trump is reportedly, you know, talking about his own 2024 bid and pretty openly going after Desantis in a notable way recently, nicknaming him "Ron DeSanctimonous," for example, saying other things even worse I won't repeat here. So, there seems to be a pretty clear rivalry already underway there.
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  Basu: I'm hearing a lot of talk. Already people are quick to want to understand how Trump's endorsements affected different candidates. Where did he help? Where did he hurt? So, what are we seeing from Trump-endorsed candidates. How did they do last night?
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  Resnick: Yeah, it looks kind of decidedly mixed at the moment. Some lost in major races, others lagged behind expectations. There are quite a few outstanding key races that I would personally like to see how candidates perform in to, kind of, fully assess this, I’m thinking of a state like Arizona. But for now, you know, a lot of what you’re hearing, as you alluded to Shumita, is there are people calling it a bad night for Trump and sort of questioning his potency in the party. So, we'll see how much that actually matters going forward.
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  Basu: Now, that being said, Trump's presence was felt on the campaign trail. A lot of Republican candidates were repeating his lies about the 2020 election. And “The Washington Post” has been doing a close job of tracking this. Nearly 300 Republican election deniers ran, and a majority of them won their races.
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  Resnick: Yeah, it is pretty remarkable every time we talk about these numbers. But you know, one thing I was sort of keeping in mind looking at this is a lot of these races weren't really so competitive, so it’s not so surprising that so many of them have won. But you know, one of the bigger points to make is what Trump wanted from last night, in some respects, was to have election deniers win races where they would have direct control over the outcome of future elections. And, as of now, that doesn't seem to have worked out for him. You know, for example, Tudor Dixon lost her run for governor in Michigan, Doug Mastriano, as we mentioned earlier, lost in Pennsylvania. So, it'll be really interesting to see what happens in places like Arizona and Nevada with some of their other key races. But I think that's an important thing to keep in mind as we think about all of this.
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  Basu: Real quick, let's check in on abortion on the ballot. Kentucky voters rejected an anti-abortion measure, which is a big deal in a solidly red state. Also, Vermont, California and Michigan voters put abortion rights into their constitutions, so a lot of people went to the polls and stood up for abortion rights.
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  Now, let's touch on some of the other notable story lines from last night. There were a lot of firsts. Maryland elected its first Black governor, Army veteran Wes Moore, who's a Democrat. Former White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, was elected as Arkansas' first female governor. And in Massachusetts, State Attorney General Maura Healy, a Democrat, not only became the first woman to lead the state, but she's also the first openly lesbian candidate elected governor in the country.
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  Resnick: Okay, I have one more quick one for you, Shumita.
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  Basu: Yeah, go for it.
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  Resnick: Okay, so Gen Z is now officially a part of Congress. Democrat Maxwell Frost, who is 25 years old, won his House race in Florida. Definitely led me to ask some questions about what I was doing at 25. [LAUGHS] It was not getting elected to Congress, but that is quite wild.
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  Basu: Okay Gideon, as we wrap here, I feel like there are two questions that people probably have on their minds this morning. One is "So when will know all the results?" And the second is "How come the predictions about a red wave didn't really come true?"
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  Resnick: Yeah, both are completely fair. So, first on the results question. You know, some of these races, like House races in California, for example, they're going to take weeks, not days, so even if we know relatively soon which party may control the House, we won't know by how much for quite some time. So again, patience is key there. And for the Senate, people that were familiar with this in 2020, well, it seems like there could potentially be a repeat. It may once again come down to a December runoff if Georgia goes the way many are now predicting based on how tight that race is.
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  Basu: And I should just remind people that we have these results coming in on the “Apple News app." We have a nice-looking widget that we'll keep on updating as more races get called.
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  Resnick: Yeah, definitely check that out. And, you know, one more thing, Shumita, to your second question, it still really is too early to say, you know, who got what right and wrong in terms of predicting this election. But we do have some polling on what people said actually mattered to them after they voted. So, about three in ten voters said inflation was their top issue. That was closely followed by abortion. Most voters that ranked inflation first supported Republican candidates. Most that ranked abortion first supported Democrats. Only about one in ten voters chose crime, immigration or gun policy as their most important issue. So, this really, overall, was just a pretty unprecedented midterm election in terms of all of the different things that voters were considering.
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  Basu: Gideon Resnick, “Apple News Today” editor, thank you so much for joining me.
• 0:39
  Resnick: Yeah, thank you!
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  Basu: Before I let you go, a few non-election stories we're following today. WNBA star Brittney Griner is being transferred to a penal colony in Russia, her lawyers say. She was recently sentenced to nine years in prison for carrying vape cartridges in what the U.S. calls a wrongful detention.
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  Tropical Storm Nicole is close to hurricane strength. It's moving through the Caribbean and expected to make landfall on Florida's least coast tonight or early Thursday.
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  And there's a winner in the record-breaking $2 billion dollar Powerball jackpot. The winning ticket was sold at a gas station in Southern California and whoever bought it hasn't come forward yet.
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  You can find more election coverage and other stories in the Apple News app. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
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