Electoral Dynamics for 2022: The House of Representatives in the Modern Era

Abstract

Politically, the mid-term election of 2022 not only switched partisan control of one of the major branches of American national government but shifted party balance within that government as a whole. Yet analytically, this resulted from a shift in the House of Representatives so minute – 9 seats changed hands in a body of 435 members – that many of the usual tools for dissecting American elections had nothing to say. Which means at a minimum that analysis of this particular contest requires some larger, nested framework for its interpretation. This paper is an attempt to provide one such framework.