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Four days on, some House and Senate races have yet to be called. But political scientists say that one of the big, clear winners of the midterms is American democracy itself. NPR's Frank Langfitt reports.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Bright Line Watch is a national survey that asks hundreds of political scientists about the health of American democracy. After Trump took office last year, most scholars saw the U.S. moving swiftly towards some form of authoritarianism. With the president talking up fears of election fraud ahead of the midterms, Bright Line's co-director Brendan Nyhan says there was a lot of concern.
BRENDAN NYHAN: In our pre-election survey of political science experts, it was widely expected that prominent Republicans would deny the legitimacy of the election results.
LANGFITT: As we now know, that didn't happen.
NYHAN: I think the clarity of the result just made it hard to deny. People have this phrase - too big to rig.
LANGFITT: And President Trump, who lied about losing the 2020 election, said he'd accept these results.
NYHAN: It's a remarkable turning point. We've been in the age of Trump for 10 years. The threat to democracy has been acute. It wasn't clear whether he'd be able to subvert this election, but the system held.
LANGFITT: NPR reached out to the White House. Spokeswoman Lauren Biss responded by calling this report, quote, "another completely ridiculous news story by NPR and a perfect example of why the president stopped American taxpayers from subsidizing this fake news outlet. President Trump has done more than any other president to ensure we have free and fair elections." In fact, Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, says the Trump administration tried lots of things to give Republicans an advantage in the midterms.
STEVEN LEVITSKY: It has thrown two dozen pieces of spaghetti at the wall in the form of trying to centralize voter lists and trying to stop or subvert vote by mail. It engaged in an unprecedented national gerrymandering scheme to try to tilt the electoral balance in the house. None of that worked.
LANGFITT: Levitsky credits lawyers who mounted legal challenges and the courts, which often blocked Trump's moves.
LEVITSKY: Critics of the Trump administration, the opposition, Democratic Party, civil society was much more aware of the threat to democracy and was very, very active in combating it.
LANGFITT: Lorinc Redei grew up in Hungary and is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He says the Republican defeat fits a pattern in Europe this year, where ruling parties with autocratic leaders were toppled after failing to address kitchen table issues.
LORINC REDEI: In Hungary, you had falling living standards, high inflation, terrible hospital conditions. Those were the things that brought people out to vote. In Serbia recently, you had failing infrastructure and high unemployment. That's what people were upset about.
LANGFITT: Redei says there's a lesson here.
REDEI: Elections still matter. If there's enough significant public outcry against the government and they go vote, you lose elections.
LANGFITT: None of the scholars NPR spoke with think the threats to American democracy are over. Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth, points out that the blue wave was not driven by political ideals.
NYHAN: To the extent that we can tell, it's far more a repudiation of Donald Trump's management of the economy and the war in Iran, for instance, than it is a repudiation of his attack on democracy.
LANGFITT: Here's Steven Levitsky of Harvard.
LEVITSKY: I see no reason why Trump won't continue to try to engage in authoritarian shenanigans. I think he'll probably be less successful, one, because he's weaker, two, because the Democrats control Congress and will have some levers that they can pull to constrain him.
LANGFITT: And three, Levitsky thinks - some Republicans, for the first time, will begin to defect from the president.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington.
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