Trump and Abortion Short-Circuit Red Wave - Horowitz

Trump and Abortion Short-Circuit Red Wave - Horowitz

On Fox News election night, Mark Thiessen called the results an “absolute disaster for the Republican party.”  The conservative Fox News contributor and former George W. Bush speechwriter captured the sentiments of most Republican elected officials and operatives as well as conservative pundits.  As the results have continued to come in, the picture has only worsened for Republicans.  It is now definite that the US Senate is going to stay in Democratic hands and while Republicans are still likely to take back the House, it will be by a razor-thin margin.

 

Republican disappointment and finger-pointing stem from the fact that the fundamentals that usually drive mid-term outcomes were strongly in their favor.  Joe Biden’s approval rating among people that voted in the midterms was only 44%, according to exit polling conducted by Edison Research; that is in the range that usually correlates to a major loss of seats.  Similarly, less than 1-in-4 mid-term voters were satisfied with how things were going in the country, while nearly 3-in-4 were dissatisfied.  These measures on election day stayed in the same ballpark they have been over the past few months. In other, words, the election results cannot be explained by a sudden improvement in how the electorate perceives Biden’s performance or some new-found optimism about the state of the nation.

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 

 Rather, the election results were a rebuke by the electorate of the perceived extremism of the Republican party and too many of their candidates. This extremism enabled the Democrats to succeed in turning the mid-terms--which are nearly always mainly a referendum on the incumbent president-- into a choice in which a decisive slice of swing voters chose what they viewed as the lesser of two evils.  As Tim Alberta aptly put it in The Atlantic, “The simplest explanation is that although many of these voters think Democrats are out of touch, they also think Republicans are out of their minds. And it seems they prefer the former to the latter.”  A telling indicator is that among the voters who somewhat disapproved of Joe Biden’s performance as president, Democratic candidates won a plurality.

 

More specifically, three factors, taken together, were the major contributors in the failure of a red wave to materialize: 1) the salience of abortion, resulting from the overturning of Roe v. Wade, combined with Republican candidates taking unpopular hardline pro-life stances without exceptions; 2) the still very unpopular  Donald Trump (39% favorable/ 58% unfavorable in the exit polls) taking center-stage in the critical last 7 to 10 days of the election, strongly hinting at another run for president; and 3) Mr. Trump’s  successful backing in Republican primaries of exceeding weak general election candidates whom he selected mainly for their willingness to embrace the “Big Lie.”

 

Observing the decline in the number of Americans that rated abortion as the most important issue facing the nation as the Dobbs decision moved further into the rearview mirror, many pundits believed there would be a corresponding decline in its potency as an election issue.  This turned out to be flat wrong. It is the case that when asked what they viewed as the most important issue facing the country, less than 1-in-10 mid-term voters said abortion, according to the Edison Research exit polls. When asked which issue was most important to your vote, however, nearly 3-in-10 midterm voters chose abortion, roughly as many as selected inflation.

Donald Trump’s active involvement in the mid-terms, along with the house select committee on January 6th’s excellent work, meant that he was likely to be on the ballot in some fashion for a significant number of voters.  But his rally appearances in the key final days of the election, in which he all but announced he was running for president again in 2024, put him even more front and center in voters’ minds at a severe cost to Republican candidates. It is no accident that late deciders broke heavily to the Democrats. Nearly 3-in-10 midterm voters said they voted “to oppose Donald Trump”—only a little less than the percentage of midterm voters who said they voted to oppose the incumbent president.  

 

Perhaps most importantly, Trump’s actions saddled the GOP with problematic candidates in nearly all the key states that ended up determining control of the U.S. Senate. Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona, Don Bolduc in New Hampshire and Adam Laxalt in Nevada— all of whom embraced the “Big Lie” at least in some fashion in order to win Trump’s support—went down to defeat (The same outcome is more likely than not for Herschel Walker in the Georgia runoff on December 6).  In nearly all these races, there were better general election candidates-- that without Trump’s involvement-- would have likely won their Republican primaries.  Also, in toss-up House races, nearly all the Trump-backed election deniers lost.

 

Voters rejected candidates who embraced Trump’s “Big Lie’ in nearly every competitive race in the nation, sensing that if a candidate was willing to mislead voters on an issue that was this important for our democracy, how could they count on them to tell the truth on other matters.  You could see the impact in the middle of the electorate.  Democratic candidates won independents by 49% to 47% and moderates by 56% to 41%.

 

With Donald Trump poised to announce another presidential race tonight, it will be interesting to see if his central role in bringing about yet another electoral train wreck for his party will finally result in the long overdue rejection by a majority of Republicans of his toxic and losing brand of politics.  Moving away from Trump and towards a new candidate and a new direction is not only the right thing to do for our nation; it will give the GOP a much better prospect of electoral success.