Mid-term Election results.

I don't have too many thoughts about the election that you can't easily find elsewhere. But here a few tentative ones:

1. I said before the election that I thought a Dem House takeover and continued GOP control of the Senate was probably the least bad outcome for the nation. That is indeed the result. We will see if I was right to prefer it.

2. The biggest Democratic gains in the House were among relatively highly educated suburbanites, especially in the so-called Romney-Clinton areas. This reinforces political scientist Lee Drutman's argument that we are gradually moving from a left-right political spectrum to a "cosmopolitan vs. nationalist" one. But we are far from all the way there yet, at least in my view. Whether we continue to move in that direction is one of the most important questions about the future of US politics.

3. It will be interesting to see how Democrats interpret tonight's events. Will it strengthen the hand of the Bernie Sanders leftists or that of comparative moderates? The pattern noted in point 2 should help the latter's narrative. But my view on this matters a lot less than what Dems themselves think.

4. The GOP did better than expected in the Senate, and that matters a great deal for things like judicial nominations and the Dems prospects to regain the Senate in 2020 (when the electoral map will be much more favorable to them). However, it's important to note that, with the notable exception of Florida, all the GOP Senate gains were in heavily red states where they might normally be expected to win more decisively.

5. Trump surely helped the GOP in some states, but on net he's a drag on their chances. The party lost the House by a substantial margin and underperformed in other races despite having a very strong economy and relative peace (in the sense of few US war casualties). Normally, such conditions translate to high presidential popularity that helps the party across the board. Trump has managed to remain unpopular and thus has the opposite kind of effect.