Nate Cohn: “Many of this cycle’s surprising shifts were foreshadowed in the midterms.”

“The national popular vote for president in 2024 will look eerily similar to the popular vote for U.S. House in 2022. The winner by state will be exactly the same — at least if you take the combined Republican vote in Alaska in 2022. And many of the details will be similar as well, like Republicans’ big gains in Florida and New York.”

“As a result, the 2024 presidential election results by state correlate more closely with the swings from the 2022 midterm election in the U.S. House than with the result of the 2020 presidential election.”

“This is not what anyone would have expected two years ago. Usually, midterms don’t foreshadow the next presidential election.”

Olympic gold medalist and former congressional candidate Marty Nothstein (R) faces charges of stalking and criminal mischief in connection with an incident involving his ex-girlfriend, the Allentown Morning Call reports.

Nothstein had similar charges filed against him in the past.

“Three former campaign workers for U.S. congressional candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner (D) have come forward to allege that, during her last bid for office, the candidate twice made physical contact with her campaign driver,” Willamette Week reports.

“The three allege the situation got so bad that the driver expressed fear of McLeod-Skinner, leading senior campaign staff and advisers to remove the driver from a home where he and McLeod-Skinner were staying Nov. 3, 2022.”

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) told top conservative donors last week that he was rooting against Republicans winning as many House seats as possible during the 2022 midterms, The Messenger reports.

Said Rosendale: “Look, we have shown, OK, with a very small handful of people, six at times, five at times, that we can have tremendous impact in that body and when a lot of people, unfortunately, were voting to have a 270, 280 Republican House, I was praying each evening for a small majority.”

“Donald Trump added a pack of new top South Carolina Republicans to his endorsement list Monday, showcasing his dominance over the two Palmetto State politicians running against him, Sen. Tim Scott and former Gov. Nikki Haley,” The Messenger reports.

A Republican candidate who lost last November’s election for county judge in Texas by more than 18,000 votes has finally given up on a lawsuit challenging the election, the Houston Chronicle reports.

Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “Despite a requirement that congressional districts have roughly identical populations within states, the number of raw votes cast in each district can vary widely, both within a state and across the country.”

“In 2022, there was a nearly 300,000-vote difference between the lowest-turnout district (NY-15 in New York City) and the highest-turnout one (MI-1 in northern Michigan).”

“Republicans won about two-thirds of the districts that cast the most votes (300,000 or more) while Democrats won about two-thirds of the districts that cast the fewest (less than 200,000).”

New York Times: “Even though Democrats held off a widely expected red wave in the 2022 midterm elections, Republican turnout was in fact stronger, and the party energized key demographic groups including women, Latinos and rural voters, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.”

“The report serves as a warning sign for Democrats ahead of the 2024 presidential election, with early polls pointing toward a possible rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump.”

“Though Democrats maintained control of the Senate, all but one of their governor’s mansions and only narrowly lost the House, the Pew data shows that a larger percentage of voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2020 cast ballots in November than those who backed Mr. Biden did. People who had voted in past elections but sat out 2022 were overwhelmingly Democrats.”

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer is suing former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake for defamation, the Arizona Republic reports.

Kari Lake (R) announced that she is once again mounting a legal challenge against her loss in 2022’s Arizona gubernatorial elections, the Daily Beast reports.

Lake says that her team “now have the video” to support claims of misconduct in Maricopa County.

She added: “I will never back down. That election was stolen from the people and there will be no way that I back down from that. I just won’t, because it’s wrong, what happened.”

Cook Political Report: “GenZ/Millennial voters (defined as those between the ages of 18-41), not only turned out at higher levels than they did in 2018, but they were the only age group that increased their support for Democratic candidates from 2018.”

“After 2008, many assumed that Obama’s personal connection with younger voters would transfer to the Democratic Party’s candidates in subsequent elections. That didn’t happen. Instead, what seems to be driving younger voters to the polls isn’t love, but anger. In 2018, Donald Trump’s presence in the White House was a motivating factor for these voters. In 2022, anger over the abortion decision was the most likely catalyst for turnout.”

New York Times: “Denying the results of the 2020 election and casting doubts about the nation’s voting system cost statewide Republican candidates 2.3 to 3.7 percentage points in the midterms last year, according to a new study.”

Politico: “Democrats avoided an electoral wipeout in the 2022 midterms. One way they did so was by reassembling a history-defying coalition of young voters who turned out at rates more commonly seen in presidential elections.”

“The Arizona Supreme Court on Thursday sanctioned attorneys for Kari Lake, the 2022 Republican candidate for governor, ordering them to pay thousands of dollars for repeating ‘unequivocally false’ election claims in court,” NBC News reports.

“Turnout in last year’s midterm elections fell from a century-high point of 50 percent in 2018 to 46.6 percent in 2022, and Census data released Tuesday suggest the drop was concentrated among Black voters, younger voters and college graduates,” the Washington Post reports.

“Black voter turnout dropped by nearly 10 percentage points, from 51.7 percent in 2018 to 42 percent in 2022… White voter turnout slipped by only 1.5 points to 53.4 percent. The 11-point turnout gap between White and Black voters is the largest in any presidential or midterm election since at least 2000.”