Senate poll averages across eight battleground states overstated Republican support heading into the 2022 midterm elections, an examination of projected outcomes and polling shows.

Democrats on average performed about three points better than pre-election RealClearPolitics polling averages, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Republicans may have assumed that pollsters, just like the establishment media, were biased against Republicans and would therefore understate GOP support like pollsters have in the past.

The polls most overstated Republican support in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In New Hampshire, the difference between the projected outcome and the average poll is 8.2 points. In Pennsylvania, it is 3.8 points. In Wisconsin, it is 2.6 points.

In five additional Senate races, Republican candidates’ numbers were also overstated in the polls, as seen in the difference between polling averages and projected outcomes. Those include Ohio (1.4 points), North Carolina (2.6 points), Arizona (5.3 points), Georgia (2.3 points), and Nevada (0.7 points).

Not all voting tabulations are finalized. Nevada and Arizona remain undetermined, and Georgia will head to a runoff. Republicans need to win two out of three to retake the Senate.

Though polling overstated Republican support in the Senate races, House Republican candidates earned nearly six million more votes nationwide than Democrats, overperforming in the generic congressional ballot polling.

The overperformance, however, did not directly translate to a red wave flipping many seats from Democrat to Republican.

Breitbart News’ Joel Pollak reported:

According to the Cook Political Report, as of Thursday morning, November 10, Republicans have won 50,113,534 votes, or 52.3% of the vote, compared to 44,251,768, or 46.2% of the vote. Republicans lead by 6.1%, which is better than their average in “generic congressional ballot” polls, in which the party led by 2.5% in the final RealClearPolitics average before the election. But Republicans have only managed to flip nine seats thus far — likely enough to control the House, but far short of a “wave” result many anticipated.

The mismatch between overall votes cast for Republicans and the actual result reflects the polarized nature of congressional maps. It also reflects the fact that Republican losses against many Democratic incumbents were very narrow. However, it could also suggest that Democrats ran a more effective campaign, concentrating resources where they were needed to defend their vulnerable positions.

In comparison, during the Tea Party “wave” election of 2010, in which Republicans won 63 seats, Republicans won 44,593,666 votes out of 86,784,957 cast, or 51.3%. Democrats won 38,854,459 votes, or 44.8%, meaning that the Republican margin of victory was 6.5%, similar to the margin thus far in 2022. However, the Republicans failed to win the Senate in that race, losing several key races.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.