Gary Peters did not want this job. The Senator from Michigan had just won a bruising re-election battle in 2020 by less than a percentage point, in a crucial battleground state. It was why he wanted to focus exclusively on his work on Capitol Hill and take some time away from the trail. Yet that was also why his colleagues wanted him to chair the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in a year when Democrats were expected to take a beating.

After some cajoling from the Democratic leadership, Peters, 63, accepted the offer last year to run the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm for the 2022 midterm cycle. There was too much at stake, the soft-spoken legislator tells TIME. “This election was so important.”
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Historically, the party in power usually takes a shellacking during a President’s first midterms. Bill Clinton lost 52 House seats and 8 Senate seats in 1994. Barack Obama lost 63 House seats and 6 Senate seats in 2010. Many pundits expected the Democrats to suffer a similar defeat in 2022. Instead, Democrats are maintaining their Senate majority—even flipping a seat in Pennsylvania with John Fetterman’s victory over Mehmet Oz—and losing the House by only a narrow margin.

To break down what went right for the Democrats, TIME recently caught up with Peters, who’s known in Washington as more of a work-horse than a show-horse, about how the Democrats prevailed this year, what their game-plan is for winning Georgia’s Dec. 6 run-off, and what enduring lessons he thinks this election holds for his party going into next one.

What do you attribute most to the Democrats’ success in keeping the Senate and flipping Pennsylvania?

I think the number one reason was the quality of our candidates. There was a clear contrast between Democratic incumbents and candidates running for the U.S. Senate and their Republican opponents. Democratic candidates were experienced people of character. Our incumbents had delivered for people in their state in a tangible way.

And they were running against Republicans who were very extreme on issues. They were out of touch when it came to a major issue for Americans, which was reproductive freedom. They did not believe that there should be exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. Most of them were election deniers as well. That’s not something that the American people support. It was clear in this election that candidates matter.

What’s your game plan for winning the Georgia run-off?

The game plan for the runoff is a very robust ground game. At this point, voters in Georgia know the candidates. Raphael Warnock is a man of character, a man of experience, a man who has delivered for the people of Georgia, in tangible ways, versus a Republican candidate that even Republicans have called highly flawed. I think the choice is very clear for the people of Georgia. And now it’s our job to make sure people who support Raphael Warnock show up. We will be helping the Warnock campaign run the kind of robust ground campaign necessary to win an election dependent on voter turnout.

Read more: Warnock and Walker Close Out Georgia Race With Competing Visions of Faith

A lot of Republicans tried to out-Trump each other to win the primaries. Pundits suspected at the time that this might turn out to be an act of self-sabotage. Do you think that these candidates alienated a lot of moderates and independents in the general election by doing that?

The candidates worked very hard to get Donald Trump’s endorsement. That seemed to be the thing that they were most interested in getting in the primaries. And they worked very hard to win over Trump supporters. So we had Trump’s hand-picked candidates running in these races. That may work in a primary, but it clearly does not work in a general election.

National Democrats embarked on a risky strategy to boost far-right Republicans in the primaries who they thought would be easier to beat in the general election. It was a bit of a gamble, but it seems to have paid off. Can you tell me about that?

We didn’t do that at the DS. We did not do that. We were not involved in supporting and spending money supporting candidates in Republican primaries. I simply did not engage in that at all.

But do you think it worked out for your colleagues who did do that?

I’ll be frank with you. I don’t want to comment on that, because I’m not sure what exact races they did that for and what were the results. I just know from a Senate perspective, that was not a game that I wanted to play or the DSCC wanted to play. We were totally focused on making sure we were supporting our Democratic candidates.

My number one focus as the chair of the DSCC was to bring incumbents back. That was first and foremost on my mind. I knew that when our incumbents won re-election, that would give us 50 votes, and we would be able to retain the majority. Then we went on offense. We did not get involved in Democratic primaries either. We let the strongest candidate emerge from the Democratic primary.

So what was the DSCC’s main strategy for winning these races?

We were active during the primaries in terms of building our ground operation. And that was really the other key to a big part of our success. We had very robust ground game and ground operations. It was probably the first time in modern history at the DSCC—and this was a strategic decision that we made—that we put more money into the ground campaign than we did into our independent expenditures, which were television and other media.

It was based on the belief that these were all going to be very close races. And they’re in battleground states; by definition, those are very close races. And the best way to win those races is to have a strong ground operation. That was our strategy from the get-go. We made major investments in the field operation in those states. So then whoever won the primary would be able to have that field operation up and running and ready to go.

Did Democrats also have an advantage by encouraging their voters to cast ballots by mail—thereby increasing their own turnout—whereas Republicans put themselves at a disadvantage by discouraging their supporters from voting by mail?

Voting by mail should not favor one party versus the other because everybody has an equal opportunity to vote by mail. It’s certainly the most convenient way to vote and has broad appeal to people in general, unless they’re told not to vote by mail.

But from a ground campaign or from an organizing perspective, vote by mail is an incredibly powerful tool, because you can reach out to voters who support your candidate, encourage them to vote by mail, and then you’re able to see whether or not they return those ballots. And then, if they haven’t returned those ballots, you keep reminding them that Election Day is coming up, and ask them, “Please send in your ballot.” And if it’s getting too close to the election, “Drop it off at a dropbox provided by the clerk.” But it is a big part of a ground campaign.

What do you think are the biggest takeaways from this election that Democrats need to keep in mind going into the next one?

A major takeaway is to continue to deliver for the American people. It was important for us to show that we were making a difference in people’s lives. For example, look at the Inflation Reduction Act that was passed through Congress. We focused on a number of items, but one in particular that was incredibly important to people was to bring down the price of prescription drugs.

In that legislation, we allow Medicare to negotiate with big drug companies to bring down the price of prescription drugs. It was the right thing to do for the American people, and it also presented a clear contrast with Republicans. Not one Republican voted to bring down the price of prescription drugs for seniors. So when folks went to the polls, they could ask the question: Who was voting to help me and my family? And who was voting for big drug companies and pharmaceuticals? It was a clear contrast. We were able to deliver an important public policy initiative that helps families, and Republicans opposed it.

There were pundits leading up to the election who worried that President Biden’s emphasis on democracy protection wasn’t going to resonate with voters. But it seems like it did.

It was important. We had candidates who were extreme and out of touch with the electorate. The fact that they were election deniers, and were challenging the very foundation of our democracy was a powerful issue, particularly with our base voters. When you’re in a midterm, and you already know there’ll be a drop in turnout, it’s incredibly important to reach out to base voters and get them energized. And when folks realized that part of this election was standing up for the core foundation of democracy, that was a very motivating factor.

Abortion was a huge issue, too. And it was a powerful issue to get voters motivated to go to the polls. So you put those two together: Republicans not only want to undermine democracy, but they also want to take away a fundamental right for women to reproductive freedom. It painted a very clear contrast for voters.

With his announcement that in 2024 he would make another run at the White House, former President Donald Trump made clear his belief that the conditions that once brought him victory still hold true.

Despite a midterm election season that didn’t produce the tidal wave of Republican victories widely predicted, it would be easy to believe that one factor that the political conventional wisdom held as the driving reason people voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020 may remain: “economic anxiety.” Today, with high but possibly slowing inflation, many Americans are definitely anxious about their personal economies.
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But economic anxiety has also proved to be a problematic explanation for the Trump phenomenon. While concern about current and future security is real for some Trump supporters, it can also be a term of artful avoidance, particularly of the racial resentment that research has shown to be a definitive element of voter psychology. The term also lets white voters with ample wealth who voted for Trump push responsibility for what’s happened since onto lower-income white Americans. (Trump won nearly 65% of the white working class in the 2016 general election, but also won about 38% of votes cast by white people with college degrees.)

Read more: Frustrated Women and Hopeful Men: The Gender Gap in Americans’ Moods

Duchess Harris, a professor of American Studies at Macalester College, an expert on 20th-century African American political history and civil rights, thinks a different idea better explains one of the major forces shaping American politics in 2016 and right now. Harris told me before the midterms and in a subsequent conversation a few hours before Trump’s Tuesday announcement that this other idea explains everything from the razor-thin margins in midterm elections to the deep reservoir of confidence Trump maintains about his own prospects in 2024.

That idea is “linked-fate” voting, developed by Evelyn M. Simien, a professor of Political Science and American studies at the University of Connecticut. As Harris explains in the following Q&A, edited for clarity and length, it could be a useful way to understand where American politics might go next.

TIME: Even before the 2016 election, you were talking about why a significant number of white women could be expected to join white men in supporting Donald Trump.

HARRIS: This shouldn’t really have been a surprise. if your fate is linked to white men, if you believe that what you have flows from supporting them, you’re gonna vote with your husband or your dad or your brother. That’s true for most white women, for most women. You’re gonna vote with your community. You’re gonna vote with your church.

What is “linked-fate voting” and why do people need to understand it?

The concept of linked fate is voting for the greater good. Sounds simple, right? [Research shows that] the majority of Black people and the majority of all women do that. But it gets more complicated because of the way that race and gender work in our country. So what it really tends to mean is that women vote in ways that are beneficial for their group. Men vote in ways that are beneficial for themselves.

Oh, that’s deeply interesting.

The data shows that Black men were heading towards the GOP before Obama. And one of the things the GOP was doing, of course, was saying, ‘Democrats have neglected you and taken you for granted’—and ‘We have Colin Powell.’ That’s a very simple, condensed way of putting it, but that’s essentially the argument that was being made. And it was working. Republicans were making gains [election] cycle after cycle, especially with Black and Latino men. Once you get Obama, that brings it all to a halting stop. And then Black men are like, I’m gonna vote for the Black man—which also is still individualism, right? Once Obama’s turn is over, they just went back to what they’ve already been doing, which is voting on what they think is their individual best interest.

Let me put this another way. A lot of Black women didn’t like Hillary. But Hillary got the biggest voting bloc from Black women—94% of black women voted for Hillary. Fifty-two percent of white women voted for Trump [47% in the final verified voter data only available weeks after the election]. What you can say about white women is that they participate in linked fate as well, because their fathers, husbands, brothers, sons might have benefited from Trump. They had reason to think that.

The data is there. That is why Trump won. White women were like, ‘This is good for my husband.’ Men of all races don’t do that. They don’t say, ‘This is what’s best for my wife. This is what’s best for my daughter.’ You can take this back to the 18th century, when Abigail Adams writes [to her husband John Adams [a future president and member of the Continental Congress] in 1776 and says “remember the ladies.”

She asked her husband to keep women in mind while he shaped the new country’s political system, but white woman would not get the vote for another 144 years. You think that same dynamic continues to shape our politics?

Yeah. You got it. And, and in their own way, Black women and white women are also behaving alike too. It’s just that that sense of linked fate to the men in their lives produces very different [election] results. It isn’t just that it feels different. They have, since Black women got the vote in 1965, created different results.

Read more: How the Voting Rights Act Changed the World

If I try to say that, sometimes people are like, you’re just one of those angry Black feminists. And I’m like, listen, you know, look at white women. Look how they voted in 2016 and 2020. Look at what their President did. How’s that working for you? That, in large part, is how we got the Dobbs decision.

This is just like simple psychology. It’s just like the way we’re wired as human beings.

Prior to Obama, if I understood you correctly, there was some visible movement of Black men towards the GOP. How would you describe the primary reasons that was happening prior to 2008?

The Black men who moved to the GOP were clear about the fact that they were pro-life, didn’t support gay marriage. They were coming out of Christian traditions that didn’t uphold what the Democrats were upholding, and they felt like the Democrats took them for granted and just assumed that they would vote for them. And when you scratch the surface, a lot of Black men when you add on top of the social conservatism, were and are fiscally conservative.

By 2020, Trump had boosted his numbers with Black, Latino and Asian voters in small but not at all negligible ways. Given what you have described, what does this tell us about the runoff in Georgia, where there are two Black men, Republican Herschel Walker and Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock, trying to become a U.S. Senator?

I won’t hazard a guess about the outcome but whatever it is, expect somebody to win by just a few votes and expect that same pattern to show up in how Black men vote.

People keep acting like these are sneak attacks. The patterns in the data tell you loud and clear what’s up. Right? People [are] outwardly saying, ‘We like Herschel Walker, we don’t care whose abortion he [allegedly] paid for. We like you better than the guy who’s actually a reverend, even though I’m an evangelical.’ There wasn’t a red wave in the midterms but nobody won by much. We saw a lot of neck-and-neck, like 49% to 51% splits.

So then what is going on here? Why do you think linked-fate voting isn’t a bigger part of the political conversation?

Because people don’t want to acknowledge that we are a nation divided, because we have been socialized to think that we’re not. And I’m like, just because they taught you that elementary school doesn’t mean it’s true.

PHOENIX — The board overseeing a southeastern Arizona county whose Republican leaders had hoped to recount all Election Day ballots on Friday delayed certifying the results of last week’s vote after hearing from a trio of conspiracy theorists who alleged that counting machines were not certified.

The three men, or some combination of them, have filed at least four cases raising similar claims before the Arizona Supreme Court since 2021 seeking to have the state’s 2020 election results thrown out. The court has dismissed all of them for lack of evidence, waiting too long after the election was certified or asking for relief that could not be granted, in increasingly harsh language.
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But Tom Rice, Brian Steiner and Daniel Wood managed to persuade the two Republicans who control the Cochise County board of supervisors that their claims were valid enough for them to delay the certification until a Nov. 28 deadline.

They claimed the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission allowed certifications for testing companies to lapse, and that voided the certifications of vote tabulation equipment used across the state.

That came despite testimony from the state’s elections director that the machines and the testing company were indeed certified.

“The equipment used in Cochise County is properly certified under both federal and state laws and requirements,” state Elections Director Kori Lorick told the board. “The claims that the SLI testing labs were not properly accredited are false.”

The move is the latest drama in the Republican-heavy county in recent weeks, which started when GOP board members Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd voted to have all the ballots in last week’s election counted by hand to determine if the machine counts were accurate.

Crosby also defended a lawsuit he and Judd filed against the county elections director earlier this week seeking to force the hand-count. They dropped the case against Lisa Marra on Wednesday.

“If our presenters’ request is met by the proof that our machines are indeed legally and lawfully accredited, then indeed we should accept the results,” Crosby said. “However, if the machines have not been lawfully certificated, then the converse is also true. We cannot verify this election now.”

Crosby and Judd then voted to delay certification, with Crosby saying he believed Wood, Steiner and Rice needed to be provided proof since they were “the experts.”

Democratic Supervisor Ann English was powerless to overrule them.

The delay potentially jeopardizes state certification, set for Dec. 5, and at least one statewide recount.

Lorick issued a statement after the vote vowing legal action to force the board to accept the results. Under Arizona law the formal election canvass can’t be changed by the elected county boards — their only role is to accept the numbers as they are tallied by their elections departments.

“If they fail to do so, the Secretary (of State) will use all available legal remedies to compel compliance with Arizona law and protect Cochise County voters’ rights to have their votes counted,” Lorick said.

All 15 Arizona counties face the same Nov. 28 deadline, but there is no sign others are considering similar defiance.

Once the state certifies the results Dec. 5, there will be a recount in at least one statewide race.

That contest, between Republican Abraham Hamadeh and Democrat Kris Mayes for attorney general, is so close that a recount is certain. As of Friday night, Mayes was less than 600 votes ahead with fewer ballots remaining to be counted than the margin for a mandatory recount, which will be about 12,500 votes.

“It’s going to be close, and every vote matters,” Mayes said in a brief interview. “And obviously we’re headed into a recount, one way or another.”

One other statewide race also is within the margin for a recount, but incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction Kathy Hoffman conceded to Republican Tom Horne on Thursday. Horne is a former schools chief who served two years as attorney general before losing the 2014 primary. He was more than 9,000 votes ahead on Friday.

Horne criticized Hoffman for embracing progressive teaching and promised to shut down any hint of “critical race theory,” which is not taught in state schools but is a hot-button issue for social conservatives.

Judd had said Wednesday she would move to clear the way for the state recount.

“We’ve had to step back from everything we were trying to do and say, OK, we’ve got to let this play out,” Judd told The Associated Press. “Because it’s the last thing we want to do to get in (Marra’s) way.”

There has been no evidence of widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines in 2020 or during this year’s midterm elections.

Arizona recount laws were changed this year. The previous margin for a mandatory recount was 1/10 of 1%. It is now 0.5%.