Whether you are a Republican or Democrat, you can find some positives after Tuesday’s historic midterm election which featured a monster voter turnout across the nation.

Nationally, Democrats flipped the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time since 2010 as Republicans tightened their grip on the U.S. Senate.

Democrat Susan Wild handily defeated Marty Nothstein in the newly redrawn 7th Congressional District (Lehigh, Northampton and several townships in southern Monroe County) by about 20,000 votes, even though Nothstein will go to Washington, D.C., immediately after winning the concurrent election to fill the unexpired term of Republican Charlie Dent, who resigned in May. Nothstein will serve for about six weeks until the new House members take their seats in early January.

The former 15th District, which Nothstein won over Wild by about 1,100 votes, included Lehigh and parts of Northampton, Berks, Lebanon and Dauphin counties. The district had been without a member of Congress for about five months.

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey easily outdistanced former Republican Hazleton Mayor and U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, for whom President Donald Trump stumped twice in the Keystone State, but to no avail. In fact, Trump had asked Barletta to run, believing that he had a shot at taking down Casey, son of the former governor of the same name.

Statewide, incumbent Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf easily beat back a challenge from former Republican state Sen. Scott Wagner. Despite his win, Wolf will still have to contend with an all-Republican General Assembly as the GOP easily maintained control of both the state Senate and House. Ever since taking office in 2015, Wolf and the General Assembly have been at odds with one another.

The five local counties in the Times News area voted according to their party registration, with Carbon and Schuylkill giving big edges to Republicans Wagner and Barletta, while Monroe, Northampton and Lehigh voted overwhelmingly for Wolf and Casey. For the first time, Carbon Republicans have outnumbered Democrats in voter registration.

All local state legislators were re-elected. Ten — two in the Senate and eight in the House — were unopposed, and all but one of the others won handily. The exception was in the 16th Senatorial District (part of Lehigh County) where incumbent Republican Pat Browne had his hands full with Democratic challenger Mark Pinsley. In winning 51 percent of the vote, Browne, chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee and self-proclaimed architect of the City of Allentown’s renaissance, beat Pinsley, a South Whitehall Township commissioner, by about 2,600 votes.

With 2018 being proclaimed “year of the woman,” they did not disappoint, picking up four seats — all of them Democrats and all in southeastern Pennsylvania and the Lehigh Valley.

In addition to Wild, Madeleine Dean won the Montgomery County-based 4th District seat, Mary Gay Scanlon won the Delaware County-based 5th Congressional District and Chrissy Houlahan won the Chester County-based 6th Congressional District.

The only other two women running in Pennsylvania Congressional races — Democrats Bibiano Boerio in the 14th District and Susan Boser in the 15th District — were soundly defeated by their Republican opponents.

Aside from the Wild-Nothstein battle in the 7th District, most attention locally centered around the 9th District contest between Republican Dan Meuser and Democrat Denny Wolff.

Most expected a closer race, but Meuser kept the district Republican by winning 60 percent of the vote to Wolff’s 40 percent. They were competing in the newly drawn 9th District which includes Carbon and Schuylkill counties. Barletta was considered the incumbent in this district, but he decided not to run for re-election to concentrate on his bid to unseat Casey for a U.S. Senate seat.

Because of his close association with President Trump, there could be an administration position for Barletta now that the midterms are over and some Trump appointees, who had agreed to serve until after this important election, will be heading for the exits.

The state’s congressional delegation in January will be evenly split at nine each, compared to the present 12-6 edge for Republicans. Democrats flipped the 5th, 6th, 7th and 17th districts, while Republicans flipped the 14th District.

Polling organizations redeemed themselves this election after badly missing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The polls had Wolf and Casey as easy winners in Pennsylvania, predicted the Democrats would take control of the U.S. House and Republicans would retain and possibly improve their numbers in the U.S. Senate.

Democrats have won 221 seats in the House, Republicans, 195, and 19 are still too close to call as of this writing. In the Senate, Republicans, who now lead by two, are leading 51-45 with four seats too close to call.

Two years ago, many polling organizations had Democrat Hillary Clinton carrying Pennsylvania and winning the presidency, but Trump carried key states by small margins, including Pennsylvania, to win the Electoral College, 304 to Clinton’s 277, even though Clinton had about 2.8 million more popular votes.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com