With results in from the 2018 midterm elections, Americans have decisively settled on the kind of government they want for the next two years: divided.

While Democrats made significant strides in the House of Representatives (a gain of 35 seats as of the time of writing) Republicans held onto their majority in the Senate and are in fact likely to add two seats. Additionally, a number of governorships broke for the Democrats, though their efforts continued to be frustrated in such competitive races as Florida and Georgia.

The answer that voters returned on Election Day was that there is no answer, or at least, no easy answer. With Trump still occupying the White House and the houses of Congress split between parties for the first time since 2014, gridlock is sure to become a buzzword again in the chambers of Washington, D.C.

To be fair, all of this should come as little surprise. After all, if you factor in the notion that the president's party normally loses ground in the midterms, coupled with Trump's approximate 42% approval rating, such Democratic gains in the House make sense.

What's odder is the Republican gains in the Senate. The two bodies haven't moved in separate directions in terms of partisanship since 1962, and even then they only did so marginally. But, if you peek at the Senate map that the Democrats were defending, then things make a bit more sense. That is, of the 35 seats that were up for election (33 Class I seats, plus 2 special elections seats) Democrats were forced to defend 26 of them, or nearly three-fourths. In that, 10 of those seats were in states that Trump won in the 2016 presidential election.

True to form, Republicans unseated Democratic incumbents in Indiana, Missouri, and North Dakota, and likely will in Florida as well. Still waiting for the results of the Florida recount and a special runoff election in Mississippi on November 27^th, it seems likely Republicans will ultimately hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate.

Now, all of this is not to say that the Democrats did not succeed in 2018. Winning the House is no small feat. And picking up seven governorships and seven state legislative chambers isn't either. That being said, Democrats did not crash the election in the way that some political novices had hoped they would, losing competitive races in the Sun Belt, where many of the party's young, new stars have emerged.

Democrat Beto O'Rourke failed to unseat Ted Cruz in Texas and Stacey Abrams looks likely to fall against her GOP opponent Brian Kemp. Andrew Gillum seems headed to the same conclusion against Republican Rep. Ron DeSantis. While Democratic pickups in the Midwest, especially the unseating of Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin helped offset such losses, things are far from clear.

As the folks at 538 opined, Democratic losses in Florida, Texas, Georgia, and the Arizona gubernatorial race indicate that things are less than set looking forward to 2020. The tentative success of DeSantis and Rick Scott (who is looking to unseat incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson) makes it clear that Florida has and can continue to vote Republican going forward. GOP wins in the gubernatorial races in Ohio and Iowa mean that despite Democratic gains, the Midwest is far from settled territory either.

All of these aspects and armchair predictions bode well for Donald Trump, even as voters in part reject what they've seen so far from him. Despite his party losing the House, wins in the south show that he can be competitive there, he'll likely need to hold such Sun Belt states as Georgia and continue to succeed in such Rust Belt states as Wisconsin in order to keep winning.

Personally, I think I'm about as tired of all these politics as anyone else. Given the uneven and often disjointed start to Trump's presidency, I welcome different views to the table, even as I'm somewhat skeptical that anything will actually come of all of it.

Here's to hoping.