My thoughts: The results in the House were maybe slightly better than I was expecting for the Dems while the results in the Senate were definitely worse than what I was hoping for. I thought the Dems would hold on to Florida and
maybe Montana but it looks like they lost both of those seats. It does appear that they managed to flip the seat in Nevada from R to D though so that's nice.
In Michigan, we had two competitive U.S. House races that flipped from R to D (Michigan 8 and Michigan 11). 11 was an open seat that the R decided not to run again but in 8, the D ousted the incumbent R. Neither of these are my district but they are both just a block or so from my house in different directions. Michigan 8, 9, and 11 are often cited as some of the most gerrymandered in the country and they were designed after the last redistricting to pack all of the Ds into 11 to make that district insanely safe for the Ds (like D +25 or something) so there wouldn't be as many of those pesky Democrat voters left for 8 and 9 to leave them sort of safe R. However, in a world of shifting demographics and suburban voters who just do not like Trump or his party, those were the perfect example of districts that were ripe were flipping. Mi-11 was projected as a pretty safe win this time around for the D but Mi-11 was a toss-up. When I went to bed around 11:30 last night, the R was winning about 51% to 48%, but when I woke up, the Democrat beat the incumbent 51% to 47%.
At the state level, it looks like the Democrats flipped the governor, AG, and Secretary of State. The Dems didn't manage to flip either the state house or the state senate but they did close the margins quite a bit so, if they want to get things signed by the governor, maybe there will be some sort of hint of bipartisanship.
All three proposals on our statewide ballot passed. The one that was grabbing the headlines was marijuana legalization but I think the really important one was Prop 2 which establishes an independent and bipartisan commission to handle the redistricting next time around. I don't think the proposal was perfect (I would have rather the process be handled by the state demographer (which is a professional merit-system type employee of the state) instead of a group chosen by both parties) but this is definitely a huge improvement over the system that is (was?) in place where the party that controls the legislature has all of the control of the redistricting process and they farmed it to the local party machines. Anything that helps to make the districts more competitive and less lopsided is a plus in my book.
Prop 3 on our ballot passed and it makes it easier to vote by absentee ballot (you no longer need an excuse!) and allows for same day voter registration and a few other things. My favorite part of Prop 3 is that it brings back straight ticket voting. I'm going to vote a straight ticket on my next ballot just out of spite!
Locally, a few large cities that were always really safe Republican city councils added a few Democrats but more surprising, it looks like the Board of Commissioners for the county that I work for flipped from a 14-7 R majority to a 11-10 D majority.This might be another example of the Republicans sort of screwing themselves in the last round of redistricting: In 2012, the Republican controlled BoC decided to redistrict in a manner to just get rid of two districts and chop those districts up and combine them in a manner that would pack the R voters into the neighboring districts and spread the D voters around enough to dilute their influence. That backfired this time around when it was in those areas where turnout looks particularly high and the BoC seats flipped from R to D.
Democrats might not have gotten the record setting "blue wave" at the national level that they were hoping for but when you drill down, things look better. In the past few cycles, a lot of these seats in Michigan (state legislatures, local councils and BoCs) would not have been competitive at all and sometimes the D's wouldn't even field a candidate. I haven't looked at much local stuff in other states, but I cannot imagine Michigan was the only place this occurred (I'm particularly interested in Wisconsin's local results). This was the playbook that the Republicans have been so successful with over the past decade+ (start getting competitive local and build experience and momentum from there) while Democrats decided to focus primarily on the higher profile races which left them with a smaller pool of local candidates to grow into better candidates at higher levels. It looks like the Democrats may have finally wised up to how important local and state elections are.
