Can we all pause and say “phew” that Raphael Warnock won a full six-year term on Tuesday night and Herschel Walker will never be a U.S. Senator? For me, at least, this is a gigantic relief as I considered a matter of national pride.

With Warnock’s victory, the midterm elections are officially over and something remarkable happened. Not a single senator who was seeking reelection lost. This hasn’t happened since 1914, the first election after the Constitution was amended to allow for the direct election of senators. To all appearances, the American electorate was completely satisfied with the composition and performance of the Senate, so it decided to make no changes.

I doubt that’s true, but where is the evidence to refute it?

There was bound to be more turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives, not only because there were seven times as many seats being contested, but because it was the first election after the 2020 census and the ensuing redistricting process. A large percentage of the change in the House is due to this redrawing of seats. Some incumbents were pitted against each other, ensuring one would lose. Others were put into districts they could no longer win, which caused a handful of retirements and defeats. These factors had an impact in both Florida and New York, which seem to be the only two states to experience anything like the widely predicted red wave in favor of the Republicans. Overall, however, there was not much change, even though the control of the House did change hands. Almost all the incumbents (roughly 95 percent) who survived primary challenges went on to win reelection.

This number might seem impossibly high but it’s actually not out of the ordinary. It’s higher than 2018 (91 percent), lower than 2016 (97 percent), and the exact same as 2020. That incumbents tend to win is not news, but this year was supposed to be different, and more like 2010 when only 85 percent of incumbents survived.

Despite this seemly stability, the country is incredibly polarized and there’s widespread discontent. The last congressional approval poll by Gallup before the election had Congress underwater to the tune of 21 approve, 75 disapprove. On Election Day, President Biden’s aggregate approval number was 41 percent-53 percent. And polls leading up the election indicated a record percentage of voters felt the country is moving in the wrong direction.

Under these conditions, you’d think that voters would seek to change their representation but you’d be wrong.

When pundits and operatives talk about the Republicans blowing this election with bad candidates, it fits into this analysis if we posit that voters wanted change but not the kind of change on offer from the GOP. But that doesn’t explain why more Republican incumbents, like for example Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, didn’t lose. Did voters in the Badger State really think Mandela Barnes was too crazy and radical to serve?

The biggest change we’re going to see isn’t a direct result of the midterm elections. The biggest change is the total makeover of the Democratic leadership of the House, where Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn will be replaced by Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar.

On the other hand, it remains to be seen who the House Republicans will select to lead them, or if they’ll even be capable of settling on a leader. That hot mess is the best reflection of the actual political condition of the country, because the midterms provided a deceiving picture that all is well and the country is satisfied.