Dems are winning swing voters From Nate Cohn at the NY Times on the 2022 election. Yes, the Republicans turned out as they always do. But something else happened: Ultimately, the Democratic performance depended on something that went far beyond turnout: A segment of swing voters decided to back Democratic candidates in many critical races. For all the talk about turnout, this is what distinguished the 2022 midterms from any other in recent memory. Looking back over 15 years, the party out of power has typically won independent voters by an average margin of 14 points, as a crucial segment of voters either has soured on the president or has acted as a check against the excesses of the party in power. This did not happen in 2022. Every major study — the exit polls, the AP/VoteCast study, the recent Pew study — showed Democrats narrowly won self-identified independent voters, despite an unfavorable national political environment and an older, whiter group of independent voters. A post-election analysis of Times/Siena surveys adjusted to match the final vote count and the validated electorate shows the same thing. It took the Democratic resilience among swing voters together with the Democratic resilience in turnout, especially in the Northern battlegrounds, to nearly allow Democrats to hold the U.S. House. In many crucial states, Democratic candidates for Senate and governor often outright excelled among swing voters, plainly winning over a sliver of voters who probably backed Mr. Trump for president in 2020 and certainly supported Republican candidates for U.S. House in 2022. This…