 
The 2022 United States elections were held on November 8, 2022, with the exception of absentee balloting. During this U.S. midterm election, which occurred during the term of incumbent president Joe Biden of the Democratic Party, all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate were contested to determine the 118th United States Congress. Thirty-nine state and territorial U.S. gubernatorial elections, as well as numerous state and local elections, were also contested. This was the first election affected by the 2022 redistricting that followed the 2020 census. The Republican Party ended unified Democratic control of Congress and the presidency by winning a majority in the House of Representatives while Democrats expanded their Senate majority.
Midterm elections typically see the incumbent president's party lose a substantial number of seats, but Democrats outperformed the historical trend and a widely anticipated red wave did not materialize. Republicans narrowly won the House due to their overperformance in the nation's four largest states: Texas, Florida, New York and California. Democrats increased their seats in the Senate by one, as they won races in critical battleground states, where voters rejected Donald Trump-aligned Republican candidates. This was the fifth election cycle in history in which the president's party gained Senate seats and simultaneously lost House seats in a midterm, along with 1914, 1962, 1970, and 2018.
The Democratic Party's strength in state-level and senatorial elections was unexpected, as well as historic. They won a net gain of two seats in the gubernatorial elections, flipping the governorships in Arizona, Maryland, and Massachusetts; conversely, Republicans flipped Nevada's governorship. In the state legislative elections, Democrats flipped both chambers of the Michigan Legislature, the Minnesota Senate, and the Pennsylvania House, and achieved a coalition government in the Alaska Senate. As a result of these legislative and gubernatorial results, Democrats gained government trifectas in Michigan for the first time since 1985, and in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minnesota for the first time since 2015. 2022 is the first midterm since 1934 in which the president's party did not lose any state legislative chambers or incumbent senators. It was also the first midterm since 1986 in which either party achieved a net gain of governorships while holding the presidency, and the first since 1934 in which the Democrats did so under a Democratic president. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida—previously considered one of the nation's most contested swing states—won reelection in a landslide, as did Senator Marco Rubio. More generally, Florida was one of the only states where some evidence of the predicted 'red wave' materialized.
Six referendums to preserve or expand abortion access uniformly won, including in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, and Montana, as did those increasing the minimum wage (Nebraska, Nevada, and Washington, D.C.) and expanding Medicaid coverage (South Dakota), while Maryland and Missouri became the latest states to legalize recreational cannabis. Voters in Nevada also approved ranked voting over first-past-the-post, while those in Illinois and Tennessee approved a state constitutional right to collectively bargain and a right-to-work law, respectively.
Issues that favored Democrats included significant concern over perceived extremism and threats to democracy among many Trump-endorsed Republican candidates, the unpopularity of the Supreme Court's "Dobbs" decision on abortion that reversed "Roe v. Wade", the weariness of a potential Trump 2024 campaign, and backlash over the January 6 United States Capitol attack. Candidate quality played a major role, particularly in the Senate, as many Republican candidates became embroiled in scandals during the campaign that led to underperformances in key races. General turnout and turnout among voters aged 18–29, who are a strongly Democratic constituency, were the second-highest (after 2018) of any midterm since the 1970 U.S. elections. The elections maintained demographic trends that began in 2012, in which Republicans made gains among the working class, especially White people. Republicans continued their trend since 2016 of making gains among minorities, including Latinos. Democrats continued their trend of improved performance among White college-educated voters. Democratic overperformance in these elections are considered to have played a factor in the party's defeat in 2024, with its results misinterpreted as support for President Joe Biden's initial bid for re-election.
Background.
After the 2020 elections, Democrats had a federal trifecta for the first time since the 111th United States Congress in 2011. This gave them a relatively straightforward path to enacting legislation, but the presence of more centrist or conservative Democrats, namely Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, meant that most of the more expansive and often more progressive legislation was blocked. In the White House, Joe Biden started his term out with positive approval ratings, particularly for his response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, although at about 54 percent it was the lowest approval rating (other than Donald Trump) of a president's first 100 days since 1953, reflecting the country's growing partisanship.
By mid-2021, as the year progressed with the SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant and the Fall of Kabul, and as key legislation stalled, Biden and Democrats lost popularity and suffered electoral losses, including an upset loss in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, which were widely characterized as a red wave election and as a prelude to the 2022 midterms. In addition, the incumbent president almost always loses seats in Congress and often at least one chamber or overall control, in particular since the post-war period.
Going into 2022, Republicans capitalized on high inflation, crime, and gas prices, and gained a substantial lead in the election climate towards 2022 results similar to the red wave of 2010. The overturning of "Roe v. Wade" by the Supreme Court of the United States in the June 2022 "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" decision led to a spike in Democratic voters' fervor, which narrowed the gap despite Biden's underwater approval ratings, amid better-than-expected election results during this period; this led some observers to wonder whether the 2022 midterms could break the incumbent president's losses and reflect the 1998 United States elections, as well as the 2002 United States elections, both of which showed increased support for the incumbent president, amid the impeachment of Bill Clinton (1998) and the aftermath of the September 11 attacks (2002). By October, Republicans regained a substantial margin in pre-election polls, which led to widespread predictions for a red wave election in favor of Republicans, including the possibility of flipping some blue seats in Southern California under those circumstances, though polls remained within the margin of error.
Campaign.
Primaries.
After suffering losses in 2021, progressives within the Democratic Party saw improved but mixed results in 2022, with both progressives and moderates winning important races. In 2022, Democratic campaign arms aided radical-right candidates in Republican primary elections, believing they would be easier opponents in the general election. Republican primary candidates who had been endorsed by Trump tended to win, with his support being crucial for many, though his percentage was lower than in previous years, largely due to him taking riskier endorsements. Generally, candidates that received Trump's endorsements were on the far right and those who supported his false claims that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Trump issued primary endorsements to 37 candidates who ran in the general elections in November that were rated as competitive by "The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter".
Issues.
Economy.
Voters suffered from historically high consumer prices, gas prices, and interest rates, which Republicans blamed on Biden's and Democratic policies, as well as government spending; Democrats argued that it was linked to the global surge of inflation, the COVID-19 pandemic-related supply chain issues, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The economy, inflation in particular, remained the top issue for voters throughout 2022. According to an October 2022 Monmouth University poll, 82 percent of Americans considered inflation to be an "extremely or very essential issue" for the government to handle, and seven in ten Americans disapproved of Biden's handling of the cost of living rise. It is not clear whether there is a correlation between rise of inflation, particularly the rise of gas prices, and lower presidential approval ratings, which can cause negative election results; some studies suggest that historically it can hurt the incumbent president in terms of election results, but that this got weaker in recent years.
Abortion.
Following the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" that overturned "Roe v. Wade" in June 2022, Democrats outperformed Biden's results in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in several House special elections, with abortion cited as a major contributor to their victories, as many Republican-controlled states passed restrictive abortion laws, including a total or near-total ban on the procedure. Democrats tried to pass a federal law to protect the right to abortion but did not have enough support in the Senate, and abortion was prioritized as an issue for the general elections. Some Democrats, including party strategists and pollsters, were divided on whether this could help them or if focusing on the economy and inflation, as the latter seemed to grow a bigger concern among voters in the fall, was a better strategy. This led some observers, as well as several major news outlets, including among others ABC News, CNN, and NBC News, to question whether their focus on abortion was the best strategy to avoid losses in the midterms and if it had lost significance since spring.
The "Dobbs" ruling made abortion more important for voters, with a rise in support among voters, particularly young women, for Democrats coming after the decision; at least six states had an abortion-related ballot initiative, the most ever in a single year. After "Dobbs", Republicans attempted to pass several anti-abortion laws at the state level where they were not fully banned, including removal of incest and rape exceptions, but suffered from internal division on the issue. Lindsey Graham, who was not up for reelection in 2022, introduced a federal bill to ban abortions after 15 weeks; most Republicans argued that abortion regulations should be left to the states, and Graham's proposal received a mixed response among Republicans. In several states, such as Indiana, South Carolina, and West Virginia, they struggled to pass new state-level bans and restrictions on abortion despite controlling the state legislatures because they could not agree on their restrictions.
Crime and gun violence.
Mass shootings made gun violence and crime more important issues for voters, in particular after the Robb Elementary School shooting in May 2022, which is common in the aftermath of school shootings. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed in June 2022, provided extended gun-safety laws and was touted by Biden and Democrats. Despite this, Republicans maintained a lead among voters who cited crime as a major issue.
Republicans blamed the increase in violent crime and homicides in 2020 and 2021 on progressives and liberals, as well as attempts to "defund the police", a slogan supported by racial justice protesters but eventually rejected by Biden. In a June 2022 Supreme Court decision, the Roberts Court further expanded the right to keep and bear arms in the United States. Democrats pushed for stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, while Republicans sought to protect legal access to guns and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Democracy.
Democrats campaigned on strengthening democratic institutions, having said that Trumpist supporters grew increasingly authoritarian or "semi-fascist", as Biden had called them in August and September 2022, since Trump and many Republicans continue to contest the results of the 2020 presidential election; as recently as September 2022, Trump said he should be reinstated as president. Democrats also argued that Republicans regaining power would harm U.S. governance, citing the many Republican Trump-endorsed candidates who denied the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, which news outlets tracked. As of July 2022, at least 120 Republican candidates endorsed by Trump were 2020 election deniers, a majority of whom ran for the House.
During the party primaries, Republican candidates alleged fraud irrespective of the results; among those who did so and later won the party nomination, Kari Lake said: "We out-voted the fraud." During the general election campaign, Lake refused to say that she would accept the result if she does not win the election, stating that she was "going to win the election, and I will accept that result." Additionally, Republican-controlled states passed laws restricting voting rights or making it harder to vote, as a consequence of Trump's big lie about