WASHINGTON — The 2022 midterm elections were full of surprises.
Republicans began the year favored to notch big victories, yet they fell short and barely captured control of the House. Democrats defied long odds as the party in power to expand their Senate majority and pick up two governor’s seats.
In swing states, and even some red areas, voters rejected many GOP candidates up and down the ticket, including those endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
And Democrats, despite overperforming in tough areas for the party, melted down spectacularly in one of their strongholds.
Here are some of the most shocking results.
Kari Lake, the charismatic former TV anchor in Arizona’s largest media market, Phoenix, and a protégé of the MAGA brand, was the favorite to become the state’s next governor after a campaign in which she emphatically embraced Trump’s false claims of a stolen election. Lake was widely seen as the election-denying candidate with the best chance to win a statewide race in a key battleground in the 2022 elections. Nearly every poll in the final stretch showed her leading her Democratic opponent, Katie Hobbs, the outgoing Arizona secretary of state, who was facing internal criticism for what some in the party called a lackluster campaign.
Despite it all, Lake lost — by 17,117 votes out of more than 2.5 million.
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