Bad news for Trump: 60 million Americans voted against GOP in midterms

Americans made the blue wave a reality by casting more than 60 million votes for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterm election — very close to the number of votes Trump got in the 2016 presidential election.

It was an unprecedented achievement in American politics. Never before has an opposition party come so close to matching the number of votes that the president got two years earlier, according to FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver.

The 60.5 million votes, and counting, for Democrats in House races across America dwarfs the much-ballyhooed Republican takeover of the House in 2010, when the party received 44.8 million votes.

Thanks to this historic blue wave, Democrats retook the majority in the House and managed to hold losses to a minimum in the Senate, where the map heavily favored Republicans this year.

Historically, midterm elections don’t have the same intensity and turnout as presidential elections. But in 2018, voters were motivated to send a strong message to Trump and his enablers.

None of this is good news for Trump’s re-election chances in 2020.

When he ran in 2016, Trump received 62.9 million votes. It’s only thanks to the He also lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes,

The midterm vote against Trump’s party was 96 percent of his 2016 vote — and he wasn’t even on the ballot.

But the election was still clearly a referendum on Trump, with 54 percent of those voting telling pollsters they disapprove of the job he has done.

Voters punished Republicans harshly for standing with Trump and against oversight of his corrupt presidency.

Trump has never had the support of a majority of the American people — and he is disliked now more than ever. Americans simply don’t want to see him serving another term.

Presidential years always have much higher turnout and engagement from voters. If Trump is this unpopular and voters are this mobilized against him in 2018, there’s no telling how much worse it will get for Trump and his supporters in 2020.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.