So why isn’t the popular vote worth noting in Senate races? Because it doesn’t even measure anything meaningful. Unlike the House, only a third of Senate seats are up in any given cycle. This year, Democrats were defending 26 of those to the Republicans’ nine, so it stands to reason they would get a lot of votes. California, the most populous state, will increasingly have Senate elections where no Republicans are even on the ballot.

“While Democrats lost seats on Tuesday night, they actually won most of the races that were held — at least 22 of the 35 seats, and possibly a couple more,” The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake explains. “That’s 63 percent or more of the seats, despite winning just 55 percent of the vote.”

Liberals have been obsessed with the popular vote ever since two of the most recent Republican presidents they hate most, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, lost it but were elected president anyway. The first real sign they’d begin applying the popular vote to institutions like the Senate, however, came when Democrats started arguing about whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote in their 2008 presidential primaries.