Republicans remain catiously optimistic the party’s Senate candidates can survive the fallout over Donald Trump’s lurid comments about women and multiple sexual assault allegations less than a month before the election.
Since the video emerged on Oct. 7, a group of high profile GOP senators and candidates renounced their support of Trump, which many believed would anger the nominee’s core supporters. Others worried that down-ballot Republicans would be tainted by Trump However, that has largely not been the case, according to polls that have trickled out over the past week, as Republicans continue to try to localize their races and focus on their own race rather than Trump’s.
“[Republican Senate candidates] have kept the radioactive fallout from Donald Trump largely away from them for now. The uncontrollable scenario is the down ballot effect because of major battleground state losses due to a poorly run campaign,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP strategist who specializes in crisis communications. “Senate Republicans have largely gotten their Trump flu shots to inoculate themselves on the local level by talking about local issues and not talking about the presidential campaign.”
This stands to be the case for most GOP candidates, especially those who rebuked Trump in the days following his comments on a hot microphone 11 years ago. Among those are Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, both of whom had awkward relationships with Trump prior to their withdrawal of support and have kept local issues front-and-center, including trade and the opioid crisis that has hit both states hard.
At the moment, Portman maintains a double-digit lead over former Gov. Ted Strickland, having increased his lead by nearly 3 percentage points since Oct. 7, when the video came out, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. As for Ayotte, her lead over Gov. Maggie Hassan remains unchanged since then, holding a 2.3-point lead over her Democratic challenger.
Additionally, Sens. Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey and Richard Burr have seen their races remain largely static since the video came out. In fact, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson has even seen his poll numbers rise, having trailed by nearly ten points until recently. He currently trails former Sen. Russ Feingold by 3 points.
The only GOP candidate to see his poll numbers fall since the video emerged is Nevada Rep. Joe Heck, who led by 3.4 points when the video came out, only to see his lead over Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto evaporate and turn into a 2-point deficit.
Overall, Republicans expected some of Trump’s biggest supporters in those states to react harshly to those who revoked support. However, they expect to win over some independent voters and some voters who are anti-Trump.
“The expectation is that you lose some support from your base but pick up some from independent voters that are not voting for Trump. It’s a balancing act, and at this point no one’s really sure how it will shake out in the end,” said Ryan Williams, who was Mitt Romney’s press secretary in 2012 and serves as an adviser for the New Hampshire GOP this year.
“Certainly, there’s going to be some base ramifications with the Republican base for some of the Republicans that dumped Trump, although I don’t think it’s going to be a huge impact,” Williams said, adding that he’s hopeful some of those Trump supporters will come home and support GOP Senate candidates by election day.
Another reason Senate GOP incumbents and candidates haven’t fallen like many believed they would is because Trump is not viewed as a typical Republican or a politician at all. For example, over 70 percent of voters believe that Portman and Toomey are “different” kinds of Republicans than Trump, according to CBS News/YouGuv polls released in August.
The Clinton campaign also made the decision in May to tell voters that Trump was more “extreme” than other Republicans, rather than tying him to rank-and-file members of the opposition party, much to the consternation of Democrats elsewhere. While the move has helped Clinton in her own race, it has not been of much help to Democratic challengers down-ballot, who have tried hard to tie their GOP counterparts to Trump without help from the top of the ticket.
“There’s no such thing as a generic Trump Republican. It doesn’t exist,” Williams said. “People think of Donald Trump as a reality TV star, not a Republican politician. They just happen to be on the ballot together.”
One GOP operative also told the Washington Examiner that it has been easier for Senate Republicans to be “able to create their own identity” this year, pointing to the focus on local issues.
“In many ways, this election would have been much harder if Ted Cruz was the nominee,” the GOP operative added, saying that a Cruz/Clinton contest would be an issue-by-issue by issue campaign and focus on party identity.
