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

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:

Of course, the House is elected by individual districts, not a national vote, and Democrats actually lost a seat or two in the Senate. But bragging rights aren't nothing when you control only one half of the three branches of government.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up