Gingrich Interview: Why the Republican Party Lost the Election by 6 Million More Votes | 2022 midterm elections | Democrats | US midterm elections

[The Epoch Times, Tachwedd 12, 2022](Epoch Times English reporter Eva Fu interview report / compiled by Chen Ting) Former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich (Newt Gingrich) has been in politics for decades, but he has never had one. Get it confused like the 2022 mid-term elections.

On Thursday (November 10), Gingrich, a writer for the English Epoch Times, said: “I have never been so outrageously wrong as this year.”

“It made me challenge every model I knew and realize I had to stop and spend a lot of time thinking about it and trying to put it all together,” he said.

Both parties predict big losses for the Democrats as discontent over inflation, the economy and crime continue to rise. But the expected “red wave” did not happen.

The Senedd is still involved. In the House of Representatives, the Republicans currently hold 211 seats and the Democrats have 200 seats. The Republicans are expected to control the House of Representatives when Congress convenes in the new year, but their influence will be less than originally expected.

Gingrich had previously believed that his party would regain full control of both chambers, but he, like many others, was at a loss as to how to explain the misconceptions.

He pointed to a Cook Political Report vote tally (link) showing that Republicans had a total of about 50.7 million votes in the House on Thursday, nearly 6 million ahead of Democrats.

Gingrich noted that the gap could shrink to 5 million when California’s deep blue vote is fully processed. “But that’s still five million votes,” he said.

“And not getting a lot of seats, it makes you wonder what the hell happened,” he added, “I wonder, where are these votes coming from?”

This is a conundrum that the former speaker has not been able to solve.

problems and inconsistencies

The difference in this election is partly due to the performance of the incumbents. No Republican incumbent lost to a Democratic challenger in the 2020 and 1994 House elections, flipping 13 and 34 Democratic seats, respectively. If the situation is the same, Gingrich said, “We’ll have 6 or 7 more seats than we have now.”

So far in this election round, Republicans have flipped 16 seats, while Democrats have flipped six seats, including Michigan’s 3rd District, New Mexico’s 2nd District, Ohio’s 1st District, North Carolina’s 1st District. Three Republican incumbents lost their seats in the 13th district, the 34th district in Texas and the 13th district in Illinois.

In an exit poll by the National Electoral Fund, around three quarters of voters thought the economy was weak and around the same number were dissatisfied with the way the country was developing.

Just on Election Day, Facebook parent Meta said it would cut 11,000 jobs, reducing its headcount by 13%, which Gingrich noted was also a sign of economic concern.

“But their vote didn’t reflect that,” Gingrich said.

The former speaker said he had trouble reconciling the many contradictions seen in this election, especially the two races for New York governor and Philadelphia senator, which were run by Democrats Kathy Hochul and John Fetterman won.

“How do you get 70 percent of Philadelphians to say crime is their number one problem, yet they vote for Fetterman even though he voted to release killers and put them back on the streets?” he said.

Gingrich added: “In New York City, 70 percent of the voters who voted for the governor thought she was doing nothing to stop crime in New York.”

As of November 11, 96 percent of the votes had been counted, giving Huochu a 5.8 percent victory over Rep. Lee Zeldin.

“It made me wonder what’s going on? What are people thinking?” he said, questioning why people’s attitudes did not match voting patterns.

“I don’t quite understand how the American people rationalize these various contradictions in their heads, and I think it requires us to think a little more about what to do next.”

Remains control of the Senedd

Control of the Senate is in the hands of three key swing states, including Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, which will hold a runoff election on December 6. Republicans need to win at least two of those races to secure a majority. Arizona and Nevada have significant portions of the vote yet to be counted.

On November 11, in Arizona, Democratic Senator Mark Kelly had about 5.7 points more than his Republican opponent, Blake Masters, with 83 percent of the vote already counted.

In Nevada, Republican Adam Laxalt leads incumbent President Catherine Cortez Masto by just 0.1 percent, with 94 percent of the vote already counted.

Gingrich believed Laxalt could beat his opponent, but some questions about the count made him nervous.

“I’m worried about how the count in Nevada will turn out, because they have a tendency to steal votes if they can, so that worries me a little bit,” he said.

“Where Laxalt has done really well tends to run out of votes, and where she (Master) has done quite well tends to have a lot of unvoted votes. It makes you wonder What’s happening.”

As of Nov. 10, Nevada’s two most populous counties, Clark and Washoe, had more than 50,000 and 41,000 mail-in ballots to count, respectively.

Under Nevada rules, all ballots marked before Nov. 8 and submitted to election officials by Nov. 12 can still be counted. Election officials have until Nov. 14 to “improve” those ballots using a process to verify voter identities if that the signatures on mail-in ballots do not match those on file.

a majority is still a majority

Another statistic that Gingrich considers absurd is that voters decided to punish Trump in the 2018 midterm elections, but this time they seem determined to let go of Biden.

Of those who “somewhat disapprove” of a Biden presidency, 49% still voted Democratic, while only 45% voted Republican, according to exit polls. In contrast, 63% of voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Trump in 2018 voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats, in stark contrast.

“I don’t know how much it’s because Biden looks so old and so frail that people don’t hold him personally responsible,” he said. “He’s almost like your uncle. He is such a nice guy. It doesn’t seem to Remember things, the fact that it didn’t seem to have an effect, you can’t be mad about it and blame it.”

It wasn’t the election result Gingrich expected, but he noted that expected Republican control of the House remains a bright spot.

“The Democrats should be very happy that they managed to get away with doing everything,” he said.

“The biggest change in Washington will be Pelosi giving the gift to McCarthy,” he said, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

“Because the speaker is going to go from a very liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican.”

“It’s a black and white issue,” he added, “as my wife, who was chief clerk on the House Agriculture Committee, said to me, ‘No matter how small, the majority is the majority’, change who is” n still the Givel is a very big change because it is going to change every committee.”

Editor in charge: Ye Ziwei