The electorate delivered a split decision last week, dividing its vote with almost perfect equality between the
Democratic
and
Republican
parties. Pundits had
predicted
massive Republican gains, and GOP operatives and advocates were expecting a “red wave,” but it was not to be. What to make of this?
For starters, the practical policymaking difference between a wave and a drop will be far less than the effect it would’ve had on the parties’ confidence going into 2024. As it stands, Republican gains in the House should be enough to create the effect of divided government, even if the Democrats retain nominal control of both chambers. That would be about the same result as if the GOP had won both chambers decisively, for
President Joe Biden
would still be there to wield his veto pen, frustrating Republican efforts at legislating. The true policy downside for conservatives is, presuming the Republicans fail to win the Senate, the Democrats can continue to confirm their judicial nominees. But the political upside for Republicans is that Biden seemed emboldened last Wednesday and will probably run for reelection no matter many Democrats’ preference for him to step aside. Given his massive unpopularity, that creates an opportunity for the GOP.
MIDTERM ELECTIONS LEAVE BIDEN’S PATH FORWARD WITH CONGRESS UNCERTAIN
Still, the two sides have a tendency to score elections like sporting events. The Republicans were expecting the “win,” and instead they “tied,” at best. That is disappointing for the Right and merits some investigating.
One of the most interesting things about elections is how shifting just a few votes from here to there can make a massive difference. So it was last week. As of this writing, Republicans won a fairly comfortable victory in the House of Representatives by popular vote but still had not secured an outright majority of seats. Reorganize those votes just a little bit, and what turned out to be a red trickle might indeed have become a red hurricane.
What this means in turn is that it is possible to explain the results in any way imaginable and be right, at least in part. Was abortion a factor? Probably so — it likely helped bring marginal Democratic voters into the electorate who might not have participated. Was Biden’s relatively low profile a factor? Again, yes. The president kept out of the public spotlight, and as a consequence, Democrats did well among those who only moderately disapproved of the president’s job performance. Other factors probably helped Republicans. GOP gains in
New York
were probably due in part to crime. Were realignments at work? Indeed. Colorado got a little bluer, while Iowa got a little redder — the trends continue.
But there is a remarkable throughline of the election: When Republicans failed to run strong candidates at the top of the ticket, the party suffered — often from the top to the bottom of the ballot. When they ran strong candidates at the top, they did well.
This becomes crystal clear in contrasting Republican Party outcomes in Pennsylvania and Florida, two states that, historically speaking, have tended to move in similar directions on the national stage. But not last week. Florida went massively Republican, while Pennsylvania lurched to the left. It is hard not to appreciate why — Florida Republicans put their best candidates on the ballot, and Pennsylvania Republicans put out their worst.
Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis
has been a model for successful Republican governance in his state, and he was rewarded with an astonishingly large electoral victory last week. Likewise, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) won a third term in decisive fashion, finishing just a few points behind DeSantis.
In
Pennsylvania
, conservatives are in shock that Lt. Gov.
John Fetterman
won the Senate race there in comfortable fashion — by about 4 points as of this writing. But the bigger story in the Keystone State was the miserable performance of gubernatorial candidate
Doug Mastriano
, a state lawmaker who charged from virtually out of nowhere during the primaries to capture the party nomination riding a Trumpist wave. Yet Mastriano never pivoted to general election concerns, could not raise money, and was saddled as an extremist by Democrat Josh Shapiro. And while outside conservatives thought Dr. Mehmet Oz was superior to the health-stricken Fetterman, it mattered to Pennsylvanians that Oz was from out of state, seemed to be a new convert to conservativism, and won the nomination by the slenderest of margins.
We saw this happen time and again all through the country as weak Republican candidates paid a greater penalty than one would have expected, given their opponents and given the president’s job approval rating. Not just Mastriano and Oz, but also Blake Masters in
Arizona
, Don Bolduc in
New Hampshire
, Paul LePage in Maine, and Herschel Walker in
Georgia
. One could also look at the House and see Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), J.R. Majewski (R-OH), and Bo Hines (R-NC) struggle in seats that, given the national environment, should have been winnable. Meanwhile, strong Republicans, particularly incumbents with proven track records of governing, did just fine. It was not just DeSantis and Rubio — but also Mike DeWine in Ohio, Greg Abbott in Texas, Kim Reynolds in Iowa, and Chris Sununu in New Hampshire.
Yet it seemed as though in places where Democrats won, they hardly were offering their best. Again, take Pennsylvania. Fetterman has severe health problems, and Shapiro underperformed in his 2020 campaign to be reelected as attorney general (perhaps a reaction to the too-harsh COVID-19 policies employed by Gov. Tom Wolf). Ditto Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH), neither of whom will ever win an award for being a top-notch candidate. But apparently, that did not matter. Republicans with a touch of zany, a dollop of phony, or a dash of dimwitted struggled, even against uninspiring Democrats.
And this takes us inevitably back to Donald Trump. It is impossible not to consider this outcome yet another rebuke of the 45th president, not just because he endorsed many of these candidates at critical moments in the primaries. It is that for four years in office, he seemed … zany, phony, and dimwitted. Many conservatives acknowledge this but nevertheless appreciate the former president’s tenure because of all the policy victories they enjoyed. But voters in the middle never counted those victories as being worth all that much to them. They were merely exhausted by the crazy, which Trump dialed up to unimaginable levels after he lost the 2020 election. Republicans, it seems, still have that taint to them. Voters seem prepared to accept mediocre-at-best Democratic rule if it means keeping the crazy out of power.
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The mandate for Republican voters moving forward is to get realistic about picking who will represent them in general elections. Trump may have given the conservative movement a series of substantial policy victories, but he has diminished its reputation as a respectable political coalition. This mark is certainly not indelible. DeSantis is a testament to the fact that one can remove the penalty of Trumpism from which Republicans still suffer. But it takes seriousness of purpose, with a focus on delivering meaningful results to average voters. Too few Republican candidates seemed to promise that last week, which is a big reason why, despite Biden’s massive unpopularity, the GOP was left disappointed with the results.
Jay Cost is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a visiting scholar at Grove City College.
