Democrats just shattered a 44-year-old midterms turnout record

Nancy Pelosi&#039;s Democrats just shattered a record

(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

published 27 November 2018

Democrats gained as many as 40 House seats in the 2018 midterms, and while that falls short of the 63 seats Republicans flipped in the 2010 election, they beat Republicans this year by the largest margin ever notched by either party in a midterm, NBC News reports. With votes still being counted, Democrats have a national popular vote lead of 8,805,130, beating the previous record, 8.7 million votes, that Democrats set in the 1974 midterms, right after President Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. (In the 2010 red wave, Republicans won 5.8 million more votes than Democrats.) Democrats won 53.1 percent of the 111 million votes cast this election, versus 45.2 percent for Republicans.

Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman, whose own count gives Democrats a national lead of more than 9.1 million votes, has some other data from the midterms (assuming Democrats flip California's 21st Congressional District), including that while Republicans will represent 17 percent fewer House seats in January, they lost only 5 percent of their land area. Also:

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.

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