How did the Republicans win the Senate when the Democrats got millions more votes?
- Senate electoral process means although Democrats received more overall votes for the Senate than Republicans, that does not translate to more seats
- Mixed result undermined Democratic hopes of a blue wave in an election billed as a referendum on Trump
The 2018 US midterm elections brought significant gains for Democrats, who retook the House of Representatives and snatched several governorships from the grip of Republicans.
But some were left questioning why Democrats suffered a series of setbacks that prevented the party from picking up even more seats and, perhaps most consequentially, left the US Senate in Republican hands.
Among the most eye-catching was a statistic showing Democrats led Republicans by more than 12 million votes in Senate races, and yet still suffered losses on the night and failed to win a majority of seats in the chamber.
The obvious discrepancy between votes cast and seats won renewed some frustration on the left with an electoral system they complained gives an advantage to conservative-leaning states.
But constitutional law experts said more pressing concerns for Democrats could be found in a combination of gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics that might have prevented them from winning an even larger majority in the House and some key statewide elections.
“The rise of minority rule in America is now unmistakable,” said Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University.
“Especially with a sitting president who won a majority in the electoral college [in 2016] while receiving roughly 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, and a Supreme Court five of whose nine justices were nominated by Republican presidents who collectively received fewer popular votes than their Democratic opponents and were confirmed by Senates similarly skewed.”