April 5th Elections

Nate Anderson and

On April 5, many elections were held across the country for a variety of offices, and if you live on the second floor of the White House you have to be sweating over these results.

Likely the highest office that was put to an election on Tuesday was the special election for California’s 22nd Congressional district. The Representative, Republican Devin Nunes, resigned to become CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group. This suburban district has been trending Democratic for some time now, carrying Bush in 2004 by 68%-31% to narrowly going to Trump by just 51%-46% in 2020.

The election in question was only the first round, with all the candidates from both parties on the ballot and now the top two finishers are going to a runoff. Those top two candidates were unsurprisingly from opposite parties, Connie Conway of the Republican party at 36%, and Lourin Hubbard from the Democratic party at 19%, but what was surprising was how high the Republican vote totals were after combining all of the four GOP candidates’ votes. Adding them up, Republicans got 66.2% of the vote to Democrat’s 33.8%, a 15-point shift from 2020. There have been many election results like this since President Biden’s inauguration, such as Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia, that have pointed to the midterms being a red wave. If shifts like that across the country continue to trend, the GOP would obtain their largest majority since 1928, getting over 250 seats.

In other states, the suburban 45th State House district in Georgia held a special election. In 2020 the Republican won by 10%, in this special election totaling all Republican votes, they win the district by 20%. This is more insignificant of an election, but relevant because Georgia has a very important Senate and Governor race where much of the election will come down to the Atlanta suburbs. If the GOP can do marginally better in the area while retaining the rural Trump voters they should win, and this district proves that they can do much better in Atlanta, even if it may only be in the short term.

In Kenosha, Wisconsin, the Republicans flipped the county executive after decades of Democratic dominance. Kenosha County has been trending Republican, won by Democrats in every Presidential election after 1972 until Donald Trump flipped the county in 2016 and improved on his margin in 2020. Also in Wisconsin, which Joe Biden carried by less than 1%, the Republicans elected a right-wing judge to the 2nd Appeals Court. Wisconsin has a fairly important Senate race in 2022, with incumbent Republican Ron Johnson running for re-election after rescinding his pledge to retire. These elections in Wisconsin are a good sign for his prospects.

Locally elections were held for school board and mayor. Incumbents Tim Richardson and Louis Vondera were both re-elected to the Meramec Valley R-III School Board. In Rockwood, the two left-wing incumbents were narrowly unseated by two conservative challengers. In the Pacific mayoral race, long-time incumbent mayor Herb Adams was defeated 68.5%-31.5% by Heather Filley.

None of these are huge wins by the Republican party, but they do indicate a favorable midterm for them. These shifts point to a wave similar to the size of 1994, when Republicans took Congress back for the first time in 40 years.