The election was widely characterized as a "blue wave" election.[154][155][156][157] At the end of election night, Democratic gains in the House appeared modest and the Democratic candidates trailed in Senate races in Arizona and Montana and looked set to make a net loss of as many as four Senate seats, leading some news outlets to characterize the election as a "split decision" whereas other outlets described it as a "blue wave".[158][159] However, over the next days and weeks, Democrats won several seats in the House and won the Arizona and Montana Senate elections, leading to a re-evaluation of the initial election night analyses.[160][161] One week after the election, Nathaniel Rakich of FiveThirtyEight said the election was "by any historical standard, a blue wave".[154] Two weeks after the election, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote: "There shouldn't be much question about whether 2018 was a wave election. Of course it was a wave".[156] It was third-largest midterm change of seats for either party in the House in the post-Watergate era,[155] and the largest Democratic House gain since 1974.[162] In Ohio and North Carolina, Democrats failed to pick up a single seat despite winning close to half the vote. While Democrats won almost half the vote in Ohio, they only won a quarter of its House elections.