'Everybody in Washington is pretty shocked': Democrats, GOP grapple with mixed emotions over election

WASHINGTON – Tuesday’s election results put Democrats on a political seesaw – veering from anxiety and despair to guarded optimism over the cliffhanger presidential race – as Republicans emerged from a gloomy pre-election funk to find they had more to cheer about than anticipated.

Operatives in both parties braced for a dramatic shift in power in Washington, as Democratic nominee Joe Biden inched closer to a White House win on Wednesday. But the Democrats' much-hoped-for "blue wave" – and the GOP's much-feared wipeout – never materialized. 

For Democrats, Tuesday night was a pendulum swing from their upbeat, pre-Election Day predictions that envisioned winning control of the Senate and expanding their House majority. In the presidential race, some touted Biden's chances of flipping ruby-red states like Texas and thought he would eke out a victory in President Donald Trump's adopted home state of Florida.

Polls and pundits backed up their optimism, with some labeling Texas a “toss-up” in the presidential race and predicting Democrats could snag at least five new House seats and flip GOP-held Senate seats in Maine, Georgia and maybe even South Carolina, among other targets.

Instead, the presidential race remains too close to call. Trump won Florida, Ohio and other big battlegrounds, although Biden still has a path to snagging 270 electoral votes.

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Meanwhile, in the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi may see her Democratic majority shrink. And Republicans fended off a bevy of strong Democratic challenges in key Senate races, dimming Democrats’ hopes of gaining control of that chamber.

"I was hoping we would sweep to victory with a number of Senate wins,” John Hickenlooper, who gave Democrats a win in Colorado, where he defeated GOP incumbent Sen. Cory Gardner, said on MSNBC Wednesday morning.

Republicans also woke up to a different reality than expected. Trump's path to 270 electoral votes began to narrow substantially when Arizona flipped to Democrats and vote tallies in Wisconsin and Michigan gave Biden an edge in the overall race. But Trump did not get trounced.

And in House and Senate races, the GOP fared far better than expected.

“I think everybody in Washington is pretty shocked,” said John Feehery, a GOP consultant and former congressional aide. Ahead of Tuesday, Republican campaign officials “all uniformly told me that Republicans are going to get wiped out.”

Feehery said GOP strategists were basing their assumptions on two factors: polls showing their candidates losing and fundraising tallies that gave Democrats a huge financial edge. But, Feehery said, the polls were flawed and money mattered less than anticipated.

In key House contests, Republican challengers ousted freshmen Democrats in South Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Carolina, while successfully defending several vulnerable GOP seats in Texas and elsewhere. And early Wednesday, the GOP claimed its biggest prize by knocking off 15-term Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota.

Democrats are still expected to win a handful of GOP-held House seats, including two in North Carolina that were redistricted under court order, so the final party split remains unclear. Democrats currently have a 232-to-197 majority over Republicans in the chamber.

Presidential race between Trump, Biden remains close as battleground states count remaining ballots

Steven S. Smith, an expert on congressional politics at Washington University, said Peterson's loss in Minnesota illustrates two dynamics that played out nationwide: a surprisingly robust Republican turnout and a broader shift away from ticket-splitting. 

"The turnout in favor of Trump spilled over into congressional races all over the country," Smith said. 

He noted that in previous elections, Peterson had been able to win in a very conservative Minnesota district because of his personal connections to his constituents. But Peterson's GOP opponent, former Lt. Gov. Michelle Fischbach, ran TV ads tying the conservative Democrat to Pelosi, a San Francisco liberal long demonized by the right. 

"It was very much a nationalized election even in that kind of remote district," he said. And party affiliation is now a bigger factor for many voters than whether they know and like their own representative.

"The number of districts where the presidential outcome is different than the House outcome is very close to zero," Smith said, while in the 1970s, and '80s, nearly half of House districts had split results.

Trump wins Florida: Gets boost by strong turnout by Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County

In the Senate races, Democrats won two seats held by Republicans: in Colorado and Arizona. But Republicans held off liberal challengers in Iowa, Montana and South Carolina, plus the GOP flipped a Democratic seat in Alabama.

And in Maine, Republican Sen. Susan Collins once seemed doomed to lose, but she beat her Democratic challenger, state House Speaker Sara Gideon.  

"This was a full-scale disappointment for Democrats," said Jessica Taylor, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, "because they had multiple paths to the majority and at this point, virtually all of them have closed."

Taylor said it's too early to say what the driving factors were in Tuesday's outcome, but Democrats now face a "nightmare scenario" of the Senate majority possibly being determined by a run-off election in Georgia, which had two competitive Senate races this cycle. 

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The showdown between incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff is still too close to call. The second contest, pitting incumbent GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler against Raphael Warnock, a Democrat who is the senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, will go to a runoff because no candidate surpassed 50% of the vote total.

As Republicans survey the results, Feehery said one message should be clear: "Trumpism is more popular than Trump."

Many GOP candidates loyal to the president outperformed him on Tuesday, Feehery said, signaling that voters liked the president's populist and disruptive policies more than they liked him.  

"If Trump loses, it's because of his personality," Feehery said. But the GOP is "still Trump’s party even" if he isn't leading it, he said. 

To be sure, Democrats who hoped for a resounding repudiation of Trump's presidency were left dismayed and dispirited on Tuesday as he racked up big wins in a bevy of swing states. His strong showing came amid the COVID-19 crisis, an economic slowdown and voters' disapproval. 

Despite his sometimes inflammatory rhetoric and anti-immigration policies, Trump made inroads with Hispanic voters in key states like Florida.      

In Miami-Dade County alone a strong turnout by largely Republican Cuban-Americans was sufficient to not only boost Trump's statewide standing but also helped GOP candidates win back two U.S. House seats Republicans lost to Democrats in the 2018 midterm election.

Overall, Trump was on track to win Florida by more than three percentage points – a blowout in Florida for statewide races – compared to his 1.2 percentage point margin in 2016. And the improved result was almost entirely due to Miami-Dade County.

"President Trump's message has resonated not just with the country but with the different diverse groups that make our country what it is," said Peter Hatzipetros, a Republican strategist who followed the race closely. "He's been true to his word and I think the Hispanic American community respects that. And I think America respects that."

But some Democrats took solace in Biden's Wisconsin win and relatively good chances of pulling out a victory in Michigan and perhaps other key states are called. And they urged the party faithful not fret that it wasn't a blowout. 

"Campaigns are binary – a win is good and a loss is bad," Doug Rubin, a Democratic consultant, posted on Twitter. "When you win, you get to govern."

Contributing: Christal Hayes, Antonio Fins and Zac Anderson