John Hayward with a good macro election analysis:
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"This may be the strangest election I've ever seen." Steven Moore nailed it on Fox News. Despite 75% of voters saying country is on 'wrong track' and majority 'angry' about inflation/economy, not a single incumbent governor or senator gets flipped? How does that happen?
It's one of the strangest elections on the books, as witness the shock among so many on the Democrat side that they did so well. They somehow managed to defy political gravity, despite the worst "wrong track" numbers in memory. Probably no single explanation, but a few factors...
To get the most obvious out of the way, a lot of people are yelling "fraud." Some hinky stuff happened, and apparently we'll have to put up with that forever, because the electorate does not insist on clean, efficient elections even after states like Florida prove it's possible.
Fraud doesn't explain nationwide results, though. Better to consider that Dems took advantage of the pandemic to loosen voter rules to an absolutely insane degree, and they are absolute masters at harvesting what we might politely refer to as the "indifferent" voter.
What's the point of talking about "momentum," late-breaking events, or even how candidates perform at debates when a huge chunk of the vote is banked by mail before the debates even happen? Robotic party-line voters and harvesting matter more than campaign skill.
Second, candidate quality matters - and it matters a LOT more for the party that doesn't have a massive ballot-harvesting machine humming away to scoop up indifferent voters early. This was painfully illustrated in Pennsylvania, the true bellwether race of this election.
Many GOP candidates did well in tough areas, but they just couldn't close the deal. That has a lot to do with candidate quality - think of the old maxim that you only get one chance to make a first impression. That's even more important in an era of absurdly loose early voting.
If scads of mail-in votes are harvested before there are even debates, then the "campaign" doesn't matter as much. You can run a tight campaign, make all the right moves while your opponent implodes, and still come up short because you got off on the wrong foot.
That's an environment that obviously favors incumbents, who already got elected and have huge bankrolls of money and power, over challengers who have to introduce themselves - and it really cuts against "outsider" challengers without political resumes or establishment support.
The only real red tsunami of the midterm election, in Florida, featured incumbent Republicans with very solid resumes and excellent political machines. DeSantis shook the pillars of heaven in a state he originally won by a squeaker against a drug-addled train wreck Dem.
Third, and related: money matters, a lot. You didn't hear any media bellyaching about money in politics this time around because Democrats had oceans of it. We laugh at proven-loser Dems like Abrams and Beto who wasted millions, but believe me, Dems had plenty to waste.
Money always matters in politics - it might not overwhelm everything else, we love stories of the underfunded David taking out establishment Goliath, but it's a huge factor. It lets you blast your message to voters - and Dems get BILLIONS of in-kind donations from their media.
Dems also have VERY powerful political machines in the cities they control, which churn out votes like a factory punching out widgets. Some of those machines are a century old and more. It takes money, time, and skill to build operations that can fight back.
Fourth, movement and polarization are a real factor - an opportunity in some ways for the GOP, a problem in others. It's striking how closely Zeldin's heartbreaking loss in NY tracks with the number of people who fled the Dem train wreck in NY. Votes have been cast with feet.
People are moving around, between states and to the suburbs. It's not really a new phenomenon - think back to the "white flight" debate of decades past. Badly governed jurisdictions tend to get worse as reasonable people flee. Failure doubles down, again and again.
The GOP's best bet is to reach people in death-spiral blue areas with the message that they CAN do better, things CAN change, but it's not easy. It's only possible if you're running candidates who convince those voters they can govern well, with a nationwide election narrative.
Didn't really see much of a national election narrative from the GOP this time around. The Dems definitely had one, with abortion panic and Biden's Mussolini speeches. They made a desperately play to shore up their base, and it worked extremely well.
Tom |
