DeSantis Explains Why Republicans Underperformed In 2022 Midterms

On Thursday, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis explained why he believed Republicans underperformed nationally in the 2022 midterm elections while overperforming in his state.

He began by discussing expectations of a “red wave” and how “Florida is a big win. But the rest of the country” did not see a “really good performance from a lot of these Republicans.”

“You know, we assumed we were going to end up with like, 245 House members, we’re at 222 it looks like, which is a huge underperformance,” DeSantis continued. “And so the question is, why did that happen? Because the way these midterms work, someone gets elected to the White House, and then there’s a reaction the other way, that’s what happens almost every two years and especially when people are pessimistic about the direction of the country, have a negative view on Biden, usually those voters are going to want to vote for people that are offering an alternative.”

“And yet some of those voters throughout the country, not in Florida, but throughout the country, even though they disapproved of Biden, even though they disapproved of the direction of the country,” DeSantis said. “They still didn’t want to vote for some of our candidates.”

“So, I don’t think it’s a question of necessarily being divided as a party, I think it’s like, okay, how do you run and win majorities, and I think what we’ve done in Florida is we’ve shown that we’ve exercised leadership, we’ve not kowtowed, we’ve been willing to take on big interests … producing results, and that ends up attracting more people to want to be on your team — and so that was not something that was happening throughout the rest of the country,” he added. “But I think that we really showed, I think, how it’s done in the state of Florida, and if you look about how we performed, no governor, Republican, has ever gotten a higher percentage of the vote in Florida history than we got in 2022.”

WATCH: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) explains why Republicans underperformed in the midtermspic.twitter.com/Shd3itkppP

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) December 2, 2022