Partisan composition[edit]

All 34 Class 3 senators were up for election in 2022; prior to Election Day, Class 3 consisted of 14 Democrats and 20 Republicans, including a seat in California held by an interim appointee up for a special election. Additionally, a special election was held for a Class 2 seat in Oklahoma. Of the senators not up for election, 34 were Democrats, 29 were Republicans, and two were independents who caucused with the Senate Democrats.^[2]


In recent cycles, partisanship in Senate elections has much more closely matched partisanship in presidential elections, and the number of senators representing states won recently by presidential candidates of the opposite party has dwindled. In 2018, Democrats were defending 10 seats in states that Donald Trump won in the 2016 U.S. presidential election,^[h] while Republicans held only one seat in a state that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 (Nevada, which Democrats flipped). In contrast, Democrats in this cycle held no seats in states that Trump won in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, while Republicans were defending only two seats in states Joe Biden won in 2020 (Pennsylvania, which Democrats flipped, and Wisconsin, which Republicans narrowly held).^[2]


Democrats had held a majority in the Senate since January 20, 2021, following the party's twin victories in the run-offs for Georgia's regular and special 2020–2021 Senate elections, and the inauguration of Harris as vice president. While many pundits believed Republicans had a strong chance to flip control of the chamber, a red wave election did not materialize.^[6][7][8] Instead, Democrats performed better than expected in many states, including Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and Ohio.^[2][17][18] In Colorado, where some Republican strategists hoped for a competitive race, Michael Bennet won re-election handily, and in New Hampshire, another hopeful Republican target, Maggie Hassan ran ahead of Biden's 2020 margin in the state.^[17][18] Democrats also beat expectations in Rust Belt states; although Tim Ryan lost in Ohio, his performance in the race had a coattail effect that boosted Democrats in competitive House districts in the state,^[19] and in Pennsylvania, where John Fetterman defeated Trump-endorsee Mehmet Oz, vulnerable House Democrats also benefitted from strong Democratic performance at the top of the ticket.^[20] Fetterman improved upon Biden's 2020 results from white voters without a college degree.^[21] In Georgia's first round, Raphael Warnock improved upon his margin from 2020–2021 and finished first,^[2] before winning by three percentage points in the December runoff.^[22]


Democrats' strong performance has been attributed to, among other factors,^[11] backlash to abortion-rights restrictions following the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade,^[12] negative reaction to Republican extremism and election denialism,^[14][15] better candidate quality among Democrats than Republicans,^[13] and youth turnout and vote splitting in key races.^[23][24] Some Republicans blamed Trump for the party's underwhelming showing, citing the underperformance of candidates he endorsed such as Herschel Walker in Georgia and Oz in Pennsylvania.^[25][26][27] Democrats won full terms in the Class 3 Senate seats in Arizona and Pennsylvania for the first time since the 1962 elections.


The 2022 election cycle was the first time since the 2006 Senate elections that Democrats made net gains in a midterm year, and the 2022 cycle tied with the 1990 elections for the lowest number of party flips, at only one seat each. This was only the third election in U.S. history (after 1914 and 1934) where the opposition party failed to flip any Senate seats. It is the most recent election cycle in which the president's party gained Senate seats and simultaneously lost House seats in a midterm, which also occurred in 1914, 1962, 1970, and 2018; it was the first midterm in which Democrats did so since 1962.^[28] It was a historically good cycle for incumbents;^[29] it was the first time ever since the ratification of the 17th Amendment, which mandated the popular election of U.S. senators, in which no incumbents were defeated for either a primary or general election.^[10][f] Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Ron Johnson (Wisconsin), Mark Kelly (Arizona), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Warnock (Georgia) faced competitive races but were all re-elected.^[2][3]

Several sites and individuals publish predictions of competitive seats. These predictions look at factors such as the strength of the incumbent (if the incumbent is running for re-election) and the other candidates and the state's partisan lean (reflected in part by the state's Cook Partisan Voting Index rating). The predictions assign ratings to each seat, indicating the predicted advantage that a party had in winning that seat. Most election predictors use:

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