Leave your feedback Share Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/analyst-discusses-which-voters-showed-up-and-why-they-cast-their-ballots Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Tumblr Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Transcript As several Republican incumbents lost seats in both the House and the Senate, speculators began discussing what were the reasons underlying the shake-up of power. An analyst discusses who came out to the polls yesterday and why. Read the Full Transcript Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors. RAY SUAREZ: Leaving the polls, Americans gave different reasons for voting the way they did. Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, is here to give us a little insight into what voters had on their minds.And, Andy, let's start with, "Who?" Whose votes gave the Democrats a good day yesterday?ANDREW KOHUT, Pew Center for the People and the Press: The middle of the electorate. This was an election that wasn't predicated — a win that wasn't predicated on the base going one way or the other. It was moderates and independents who went decisively to the Democratic Party, 10 percentage points more for moderates than two years ago, 14 points for independents.So independents, moderates, the middle of the electorate, the non-politicized people, voted decisively Democratic. RAY SUAREZ: But Democratic candidates improved their standing among Democrats and Republicans, too, didn't they? ANDREW KOHUT: True, but Democrats and Republicans pretty much voted for their own constituencies. What the Democrats did was they failed to blunt — they blunted the usual Republican turnout advantage. We saw the race narrowing at the end of last week because Republicans were beginning to wake up. But in the end, the turnout efforts on the part of the Republicans could not overcome the Democratic enthusiasm advantage.