Trumpism Is Not An Effective Electoral Strategy

Doug Jones is a solidly left wing Democrat who makes little effort to appeal to conservatives. Nevertheless, in 2017 he was able to win a Senate seat in Alabama, one of the reddest states in the nation.

In 2018, Democrats won the House popular vote by almost 9 points, and held on to Senate seats in Montana and West Virginia.

In 2019, Democrats took full control of the Virginia State Legislature after many years out of power.

In 2020, Donald Trump became the first President to lose re-election since George H.W. Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992.

In 2021, Democrats took control of the Senate.

On reflection, even Trump’s victory in 2016 was somewhat unimpressive. It’s very rare for any party to control the White House for more than 8 years at a time, and even so Trump lost the popular vote to one of the least popular major party nominees in history, and only just won the tipping point state and hence the Electoral College. In the end, the Trump era has been an electoral disaster for the GOP, going from full control of Federal Government in January 2017, to Democrats having full control just 4 years later. Now the Republican Party is facing an internal conflict over whether or not to retain Trumpism, and its decision could determine its electoral performance for the coming decade.

Fundamentally, the electoral Achilles ’ heel of Trumpism is that it caters exclusively to the base, passionate Republicans who are very positive about Trump. All of Trump’s actions, decisions, and rhetoric are aimed at this one group. But this group simply isn’t big enough. Trump’s approval rating currently sits at just 39%, fairly typical of his rating throughout his Presidency. But 39% is not enough to win an election, and in these same polls an average of 56% of voters say they disapprove of Trump’s Presidency. Trumpism demonstrates little ability to cater to moderates and persuadable voters, because it doesn’t consist of policies or arguments, it consists of emotion. Ultimately, Trumpism is the politics of resentment for those perceived to have better opportunities in life than yourself. In this politics of emotion, it seems to frequently become necessary to believe conspiracy theories to rationalise emotions such as hatred of top Democrats or distress regarding election results. But the vast majority of the public don’t support these theories, so unless you already feel what you need to feel to buy into Trumpism, there really isn’t much out there to convince you to vote Republican right now.

Nothing represents this better than the failure of the GOP to publish a new manifesto in 2020, the first time a major party has missed a manifesto in decades. Instead, Trump chose to reuse his 2016 manifesto, which contains various outdated policies and ideas and is of course absent of any policies regarding Covid-19. Then again, having no policies regarding Covid-19 is reflective of a President who has sought to avoid engaging with the issue, instead focusing on attacking his critics online and hosting rallies, once again playing on emotion rather than policy. Entertainingly, this document which the GOP came to embrace in 2020 also contains various direct criticisms of “The President”, referring to Obama in 2016 but now reading as though Trump were attacking himself: “The President has been regulating to death a free market economy that he does not like and does not understand. He defies the laws of the United States by refusing to enforce those with which he does not agree”. The laziness of copy and pasting the manifesto verbatim is symbolic of Trumpism’s lack of interest in the actual process of governing a nation.

Furthermore, we see that Trump himself performs worse than other GOP nominees, and that the greater distance Republicans have from the White House, the better they do. In 2020, Trump lost the popular vote by 4.5 points, but the GOP only lost the House popular vote by 3. Based on the State Legislative seats which went up for election in 2020, we estimate that if every seat had gone up for election, Republicans would actually have won the State Legislative popular vote by 1 point. In the House and Senate, the Republicans who performed best as compared to Trump were consistently those who most frequently vote against him in Congress. This has a major impact in elections, with all 4 Democratic Senate gains made against Republican incumbents who voted with Trump 80-95% of the time despite being from competitive states.

On the other hand, it’s not entirely clear what strategy Republicans could employ other than Trumpism. Both the moderate and calm McCain in 2008 and the traditional conservative Romney in 2012 suffered clear defeats. The last time the Republicans won the Presidential popular vote was in 2004, but George W Bush went on to become a deeply unpopular President with a stained legacy, so his strategy is hardly one Republicans wish to replicate. Before that, Republicans have George H.W. Bush’s victory in 1988 to look to, except that he was defeated convincingly by Clinton just 4 years later. Therefore the GOP has to look a full 40 years into the past to Ronald Reagan and his “Reaganonomics” to find any proven electoral strategy for conservatives. The GOP’s identity crisis is certainly severe, but lacking any policies or recent examples of successful strategies, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the Republican party will end up stuck with some degree of Trumpism, and all the electoral challenges it entails.

What Biden’s Win Means For The Political Landscape

After months of voting, counting, and waiting, the General Election is finally over, and it’s bad news for Republicans. In the end, Biden won the popular vote by a fairly convincing 4.5 point margin. This is substantially less than what most opinion polls were predicting, but was still just enough to bring Biden to a victory. Not only did Democrats win back the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, they also picked up Ariziona and Georgia from the Sun Belt, both of which are extremely promising states for the party moving forward. However, in a sense Biden’s margin of victory was quite narrow, as he won the tipping point state of Wisconsin by just 0.6 points, meaning that Trump’s Electoral College advantage was approximately 4 points. Republicans also seem to be solidifying their control of Florida and North Carolina, quashing Democrats’ hopes in these populous and fast growing states.

In the Senate, we expected many of the key races to be close. In the end, many of these toss-ups ended up going to Republicans, continuing the trend we see in these results of Democrats underperforming their polls. The GOP held on in North Carolina and Iowa, and unseated Doug Jones in Alabama, demonstrating once again that incumbency is worth much less than party identity in the current political paradigm, making it extremely difficult for Democrats to hang on in red states and vice versa. Indeed, the vast majority of Senate seats once again simply went to the same party that won the Presidential race in that state. Democrats benefited from this trend by picking up seats in Colorado and Arizona, as well as 2 impressive wins in Georgia, giving Democrats the majority in the Senate they so desperately needed. The sole exception to the rule was Republican Susan Collins in Maine, whose moderate reputation allowed her to clinch a narrow victory in a blue state.

The House was a major source of disappointment for Democrats. While polling indicated the party may enjoy slight gains, instead their majority has been shrunk severely. Those Democrats who remain are a fairly cohesive coalition so should still be somewhat effective, however House votes won’t be the sure thing they once were. Overall across Presidential and Congressional races, we called 98% correctly. Our incorrect calls were all cases of underestimating Republicans, primarily based off inaccurate opinion polling.

Overall, this is a huge win for Democrats. With control of Congress and the White House, they will be able to pass Covid relief bills, implement executive orders, and appoint cabinet secretaries and justices as they please. However, their slim majorities in Congress will likely prevent them from implementing anything radical, as even a couple of Blue Dog Democrats voting against a bill would be enough to block it entirely. Furthermore, they are likely to lose those majorities in the 2022 midterms, meaning they will need to use these 2 years very effectively before Congress becomes split and deadlocked once again.

This election also serves as a vindication of the establishment wing of the Democratic party, demonstrating that mainstream left wing politicians are in fact capable of beating Republicans. This could put the brakes on the Progressive wing of the party, who had previously been arguing that only a radical populist Democrat could excite voters enough to win. It seems likely that in 2024, the Democrats will nominate Biden or Harris for the Presidency, with AOC or any other successor to Bernie Sanders sidelined. Conversely, the GOP may be forced to rethink its strategy. A President failing to win re-election is unusual, as is losing a Senate majority within just 4 years. Whether Republicans stick with Trumpism or fall back to the traditional conservatism of figures such as Mitt Romney will be enormously impactful, and doubtless a major political conflict over the next 4 years.

Finally, Republican structural advantages were cemented and expanded this election, most notably in Trump’s 4 point advantage in the Electoral College, increased from 3 points in 2016. It is entirely possible to envision a scenario where in 2024 or 2028 the Republican nominee wins the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by 5-10 million ballots. Additionally, the GOP did surprisingly well in State Legislative races, giving them extensive control of the redistricting process coming up in 2021. Meanwhile in many of the states that Democrats do control, they allow the redistricting to be carried out by independent commissions. Ultimately this is likely to mean that Republicans continue to have significant structural advantages in elections for the House and State Legislatures for the next 10 years counterbalancing Democrats’ larger coalition.

Democrats Are Likely To Win Full Control Of Congress

With the 2020 General Election just a few days away, Democrats command convincing 9 point leads in both the generic ballot and Presidential opinion polling. Although Republicans have structural advantages in the House, Senate, and Electoral College, the size of the Democratic lead results in a grim outlook for the GOP this cycle.

Our probabilistic forecasts for the House, Senate, and Presidential races are complete and have been tracking the changing national environment over time. Since the first Presidential debate and Trump’s subsequent coronavirus diagnosis, the President lost the small gains he achieved following the Republican National Convention. This article explores our current forecasts for the House and the Senate. Although these might not be the most high profile contests this year, they are absolutely pivotal in determining whether the winner of the Presidential race will be able to govern effectively, or will simply be a placeholder keeping the next President’s seat warm for four years.

The House of Representatives

Following their blue wave in 2018, Democrats go into this year’s House elections with 232 representatives, a comfortable majority. To regain control, Republicans need to make extensive gains in an environment even more favourable to Democrats than the 8.5 point lead they enjoyed in 2018. Additionally, Democrats now have the advantage of incumbency in almost every swing seat, having won them off Republican incumbents 2 years ago. As a result, our model gives Democrats a 98% chance of maintaining control of the House, and actually expects them to expand their majority, winning 240 seats on average.

The Senate

In a chamber where California gets the same number of representatives as Wyoming, Democrats are always going to struggle. The Republican structural advantage in the Senate is immense, such that even in 2018 Republicans were able to expand their majority, and now occupy 53 out of the 100 seats. However, in 2018 Democrats had very high exposure in the Senate, with the vast majority of the seats up for election that year occupied by Democrats. This gave the GOP plenty of chances to pick off some of the less secure Democrats in red states they’d won courtesy of excellent years for Democrats in 2006 and 2012. In 2020, the tables are turned as the GOP seeks to hold onto the gains it made in 2014. Now Republicans have high exposure, and could suffer significant losses in this very blue national environment.

12 Democratic and 23 Republican seats are up for election this year, including many Republican held seats in moderately red states. To win control Democrats need to make a net gain of 3 or 4, depending on whether Kamala Harris or Mike Pence is elected to the Vice Presidency, which breaks ties in the Senate. The GOP stands to make a fairly easy gain unseating Doug Jones in Alabama. Following his victory in one of the reddest states in the country as a result of facing an exceptionally unpopular opponent in Roy Moore, Jones has been voting consistently with the Democratic mainstream. It appears he decided that even if he voted as a conservative Democrat in a similar manner to Joe Manchin in deep red West Virginia, Jones would still lose his re-election campaign, so has simply been voting with his party. The only other Republican target is Michigan, where Democrat Gary Peters is facing a small threat to his re-election campaign, but will probably pull through given that Peters and Biden are both consistently leading polls in the state.

Given Biden’s lead in national polling, it’s reasonable to assume that Democrats therefore need to make approximately 4 gains to win control of the Senate. Colorado is an obvious target, Biden is leading there by 14 points and incumbent Cory Gardener has made little effort to appeal to moderates in the state, and trails in polls by a significant margin. If Democrats can’t win this one, they can’t win.

Arizona presents a second strong target for Democrats. This swing state is currently leaning towards Biden, and the Republican incumbent Martha McSally is only an appointed incumbent, not an elected one, and is therefore not expected to command a significant incumbent advantage. Interestingly, in 2018 McSally lost Republican Jeff Flake’s old Senate seat to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, so if McSally loses again this year she will have been responsible for the GOP losing both Arizona Senate seats in the space of 2 years!

Beyond these 2 targets, Democrats have to work harder to make gains. Maine is a slightly blue state, but incumbent Republican Susan Collins has a moderate reputation, putting her in a much stronger political position than Gardener or McSally. However, since voting in favour of confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, voters in Maine are increasingly questioning her moderate reputation. She trails slightly in polling, but this is a race that could easily go either way.

Iowa and North Carolina are each somewhat red states with Republican incumbents, so the fact that Democratic challengers have small leads in each of these states is a reflection on the national political situation being very favourable toward Democrats. Additionally, Democrats are only slightly behind in Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, South Carolina, and both races in Georgia. All of these are red states with Republican incumbents, the fact that Democrats are even in contention here must be alarming for the GOP.

All in all, Democrats have 2 easy opportunities to make gains, and 9 highly competitive races which could go either way. If Democrats win even just a couple of those, they win the Senate. That’s why our model gives Democrats an 81% chance of taking control of the upper chamber. An important note is that the margin could also be extremely important here. If Democrats have only 50 Senators, they would be reliant on conservative Democrat Joe Manchin, whose vote could not be counted on for any liberal policies. If Democrats have 52 seats things are very different, and if Biden were President he could probably pass mainstream Democratic reform through Congress easily. With 55 seats or more, Democrats could run rampant passing whatever progressive policies they so choose, so truly every single competitive race could have an immense impact on politics going forward.

Whilst this piece has focused on the more likely scenario of Democratic victory, it’s worth emphasising the fact that the 2% and 19% chances of Republicans winning the House and Senate respectively are real and should not be ignored. But to hold on even in just the upper chamber, the GOP has a lot of ground to make up. Aside from Susan Collins, Republicans in key races show very limited interest in using moderate rhetoric and policy positions to persuade Independent voters, leading Independents to overwhelmingly back Democrats. While passionate conservative messaging does encourage Republican turnout, it also fires up Democratic turnout, such that Republicans find themselves having to play defence deep within their own territory. If the GOP does indeed suffer a severe defeat this year, they may have to re-examine this strategy.