President Trump's Exaggerated Election Role

A closer look at President Trump's impact on the 2018 election reveals that his claims are exaggerated. He may have been instrumental in pushing Ron Desantis to a narrow victory in the Florida governor's race, and perhaps he made the difference in defeating Joe Donnally in Indiana. Aside from that, he experienced mostly defeat, or did not play a decisive role. Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota had long been considered to be the most endangered Democratic U.S. Senator; also, Claire McCaskill had been put in much the same category as Heitkamp. They may have both lost if Trump had taken no role in their campaigns.  Rick Scott in Florida distanced himself from Trump, and his victory by some 10,000+ votes  out of a total of about 8 million cast may have been reversed if he had more closely embraced Trump.

President Trump put a lot of effort into defeating Jon Tester in Montana: Trump's anger was stoked because he blamed Tester for the defeat of  Trump's personal physician in becoming the head  of the Veteran's Administration. Joe Manchin won a comfortable victory in his re-election bid in West Virginia, despite the rallies that Trump held to support his opponent. Trump-supported Republican candidates for the U.S.Senate from Arizona and Nevada both lost to Democratic candidates, who both entered the campaign without having a high political profile.

Looking at the state races for legislative and executive seats, the Democrats gained seven governorships, and a total of about 370 legislative seats. Some legislative chambers switched from Republican to Democratic control, and the Democrats increased their numbers in other legislative chambers. Although those who have tried to diminish the scope of the Democratic gains have pointed out that the Democrats lost over 900 state legislative seats during the two terms of Barack Obama, to reduce that advantage by well over one third in one election is a significant victory.

In my home state of New Mexico, all five of our representatives in Congress are now Democrats; Democratic majorities in the New Mexico House and Senate were strengthened; and New Mexico now has a Democratic governor.

To cap everything off, President Trump endorsed 75 Republican candidates, and only 28 percent  won. Barack Obama had a significantly higher percentage of his  endorsed candidates winning.

Although Democratic candidates received 8.68 million more votes than their Republican counterparts to this point -- close to the record 8.7 million partisan advantage in the past -- this advantage was not reflected in commensurate seats gained in Congress, largely due to Republican gerrymandering. The advantage due to gerrymandering was more clearly seen in the contests for state legislative seats. In Wisconsin, although Democratic candidates received 200,000 more votes than Republican candidates, the Democrats gained only one House seat. In Pennsylvania, Democratic candidates received 52 percent of the total votes, but less than 50 percent of the seats.