Results of the United States’ midterm elections are still pouring in across the country, as an unprecedented voter turnout aims to reshape the government at stratospheres large and small. The temptation is to find some sort of grand unifying narrative that ties all these hundreds of elections together into one big story, but in this case, there just may not be any there there.
No matter your political party, yesterday’s elections probably gave you a few things to celebrate and a few disappointments. Republicans held fast against gubernatorial challenges in places like Florida, Georgia and Texas, which will encourage conservatives who found old GOP bulwarks to be uncharacteristically vulnerable. But Democrats flipped the House of Representatives, which will create no small number of headaches for President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Some new amendments promise to create shockwaves in the future. Florida passed Amendment 4, which will restore the voting rights to citizens convicted of some felonies after they’ve served their time. This will restore the right to vote to over a million felons in Florida. Meanwhile in Massachusetts, Ayanna Pressley became the state’s first black congresswoman.
As Vox points out, the huge rightwing victory in 2010 led to Republican control over how voting districts were drawn, leading to a swash of gerrymandering that has paid off for Trump and his party in big ways. But Democratic victories will likely lead to some very different voting lines in the near future. Sho while there may not be any big takeaway from this 2018 midterm election, the consequences nevertheless promise to reverberate in seismic ways going forward.