By Janet Kopenhaver, AWPA Director of Government Affairs

In February, I went on record at the AWPA Annual Meeting with predictions about what we might expect to happen in the November elections. I even prognosticated about what the gains and losses would be for each party. So how well did I do? Let’s dig into the numbers.

First, what steered this year’s election? The biggest takeaway was that suburban voters wanted to send a message to the president by electing more Democrats to represent them in the House. However, the GOP base and Trump supporters succeeded in several Senate races whose states went to the president in 2016 (i.e., Indiana, Missouri and North Dakota). Also, women voters played a big role (especially those with a college education) which resulted in a record number of women to be sworn in during January 2019. One final note – it has been noted that voters were seeking a divided government in order to have a checks and balances situation between the Congress and the White House.

Read Janet’s full break down of the election results here to see how accurate she was.