After this year’s midterm elections Republicans won big, taking full control of the Senate and the House. There are many factors that led to these results and clearly shows the country’s disapproval of the Obama administration. Polarization, demographics, and strong opposition towards the president definitely contributed to the Republican victory over both houses of Congress and will surely result in gridlock; stalling the country from progressing successfully.
Demographics may have contributed to the enormity of democratic loss in this past election. The populous, liberal, diverse cities that would increase the Democratic vote had one of the lowest voter turnouts, whereas southern states that would vote Republican came out with the highest voter turnout. A vast majority of these southern voters are old, white Republicans. The young students, the post- generational college students, the minorities – these are the ones that share the same political ideologies as the democratic party, but yet they’re the ones that didn’t vote. Voter turnout for the 2014 Midterm elections was the lowest in 70 years – only 36.4% of voting-eligible Americans went out and voted on November 4th; of those voters, 75% were white (Alter, 2014). Liberal states like New York and California had a decrease in voter turnout while Southern states saw an increase, “Democrats were hindered by their inability to persuade members of the coalition that delivered the White House to Mr. Obama — young voters, women and minorities — to turn out at levels seen in presidential elections” (Parker, Weisman, 2014). One reason for the loss of democratic seats in the senate is caused by the decrease of liberal voter turnout. Although there are other underlying factors such as long lines, people’s carelessness and inability to travel to polling areas, or a state’s lack of early voting options – election results