In today’s fast pace, media saturated, meme driven world, old school messaging and advertising will not be enough, especially in the face of historical trends. The public, most of the time, craves something different, a fearlessness and a boldness that the old guard is unwilling to deliver, and if Republicans cannot deliver it, they will be doomed.
For years, pundits, both professional and amateur such as myself, have pondered what the world looks like for the Republican Party after President Donald Trump, the author of the greatest political story ever told and the architect of an entirely new voting coalition, departs the political scene. Beyond the inevitable policy disputes that will necessarily occur when different factions vie for leadership of an essentially wide open political party, the question has always been: Are the new voters President Trump has brought into the fold potential Republican voters for life or are they simply temporary Trump voters, compelled for some reason to vote for him and him alone? If the latter is the case, is there anyone that can replicate his approach well enough to win? After Tuesday’s elections, the preliminary, provisional answer appears to be resoundingly unfortunate for the GOP. Despite many in the media claiming the Democrat sweep of largely blue states was some repudiation of President Trump himself, or as CNN put it a “vivid show of discontent with President Donald Trump nearly a year into his second term,” the underlying numbers strongly suggest that Republican candidates were unable to bring low-propensity Trump voters to the polls for various reasons. In New Jersey for example, the headline percentage for Democrat Mikie Sherril’s besting of Republican Jack Ciattarelli, 56.2% to 43.2%, suggests a blow out victory across the board, but the actual vote totals tell a far more nuanced story. In 2021, Mr. Ciattarelli lost to outgoing governor Phil Murphy by a much closer margin, 51.2% to 48% in what many considered a winnable race, and yet Mr. Ciatterelli actually earned less votes then than he did now. Somehow, he got trounced after increasing his total by over 126,000. Needless to say, his problem was that he received 600,000 votes less than President Trump. In fact, if he had racked up Trump-level numbers, Mr. Ciattarelli would have prevailed because, despite her significant margin, the Governor-elect received about 400,000 less votes than Vice President Kamala Harris. She did, however, outperform her predecessor, Governor Phil Murphy by a little over 400,000 votes in a reasonably high turn out race for Democrats, suggesting another problem: Not only do Trump voters stay home, Democrat voters are extremely fired up to pull the level even for a subpar candidate. This was true even though exit polls in the Garden State showed that slightly more people, 2%, approve of the Republican Party than their Democrat counterparts, and President Trump’s disapproval rating was at a reasonable for a blue-state 55%.
In principle, these numbers suggest a Republican victory was possible. In practice, it was close to a blood bath. MSNBC Data Analyst Steve Kornacki considered the minority vote President Trump had been able to secure just last year compared to Mr. Ciattarelli. “The other ingredient in Sherrill’s win involves nonwhite voters. It was with these voters — Hispanic and Asian American voters in particular — that Trump made his biggest gains in 2024. These voters had not backed Republicans in the past, but Trump’s surprising inroads raised hope among Republicans — and trepidation among Democrats — that a broader shift might be underway, not just in New Jersey but nationally. In this way, Ciattarelli was a test case: Could these Trump gains transfer to a non-Trump Republican running without Trump on the ballot? The answer is a resounding no. In New Jersey municipalities that are at least 60% Hispanic (and where results are currently available), all of Trump’s 2024 gains were washed away Tuesday night…Similar results can be seen in heavily Asian American areas in Middlesex County, where Trump also made notable gains last year. Had Ciattarelli combined his suburban performance from 2021 with Trump’s 2024 inroads among nonwhite voters, Ciattarelli would have won. And if he could have retained at least some of both, the race would at least have been tight.” While it might be easy to dismiss this result because Mr. Ciattarelli wasn’t a particularly strong candidate – not outright bad, just generic with no real message, reason for running, bland advertising, and a sort of milquetoast demeanor – a similar story played out in Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger trounced Winsome Sears. Once again, Lieutenant Governor Sears underperformed outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin by around 200,000 votes and Donald Trump by over 600,000. Meanwhile, her opponent outperformed last time’s loser, Terry McCauliffe by around 300,000 while being off from Vice President Harris’ total by barely 400,000. Though off-year elections generally have lower turn out than presidential elections, Lieutenant Governor Sears still massively underperformed in a race where the voters themselves said Trump had little impact in their vote. According to NBC News, “Thirty-seven percent of voters told NBC News exit pollsters that they voted on Tuesday to oppose Trump, and 15% said their support for Trump was the reason they voted for governor. But a large chunk of voters were motivated by other concerns entirely; 47% of Virginia voters said the president was not a factor in their local vote at all.” For those who believe it was the economy or President Trump’s hardline stance on immigration, neither appeared to be decisive either, “Forty-nine percent of voters said the economy is their most important issue, according to early results of an NBC News exit poll. Other top issues included health care (21%), immigration (11%) and education (10%).”
At the same time, analysts did note a potential disconnect between the candidate and the voters’ concerns. As Professor Niambi Carter of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy asked, “The local actually really matters. So, people have to get something to vote for. It’s sort of seductive and it’s easy to go after Donald Trump. He’s not well-liked, his approval numbers are low. But that’s not gonna always be the thing that’s going to attract voters. What is this going to mean for my day-to-day life?” Still, it might also be easy to dismiss the outcome as a result of left-leaning states in an environment that favors the party out of power based on historical trends. From this perspective, the Republicans were always swimming upstream and Governor Youngkin’s victory in 2021 along with Mr. Ciattarelli’s extremely close race were outliers, occurring in conditions that aren’t likely to be replicated anytime soon. There might be some truth to that, except we’ve seen this movie before when Trump voters failed to turn out in 2018 and 2022 when their champion wasn’t on the ballot. In another analysis of the election from CNN, Aaron Blake put the matter plainly, “Trump not being on the ballot – is actually very important when it comes to assessing the fallout from Tuesday. Indeed, it crystallizes the GOP’s problem moving forward. That’s because term limits make it so Trump can never be on the ballot again, despite his sometimes musing about the possibility. And Tuesday’s results reinforced how the GOP really needs to figure out what to do about that.” He continued, “Trump has demonstrated a talent for bringing out casual voters to vote for him. But if those low-propensity voters don’t show up or don’t vote Republican when he’s not on the ballot – like he won’t be in 2026, 2028 or any other election – it’s a big problem to be so reliant upon them.” If anything, some of the Democrat victories illustrate the depth of this problem. In Virginia, Jay Jones won the race for Attorney General despite unearthed text messages where he called for an opponent’s children to be killed, literally “gets two bullets to the head,” followed by a wish that these children also “die in their mother’s arms” along with a scandal about whether or not he properly performed community service after being arrested for an excessive speeding ticket. “On August 8, 2022 I had a text conversation with Jay Jones,” a former colleague, Carrie Coyner described the messages. “What he said was not just disturbing but disqualifying for anyone who wants to seek public office. Jay Jones wished violence on the children of a colleague and joked about shooting Todd Gilbert.” Yet, Democrats came out in droves from him anyway and handed him the victory. In New Jersey, Governor Elect Sherill was found to be part of a cheating scandal at the Naval Academy where she was barred from walking at graduation, despite talking up her Naval record. She also somehow managed to earn $7 million in profits on stock trades while in Congress and when confronted about it, claimed she had no idea it was that much money. Still, Democrats didn’t care and voted for her anyway.
Once upon a time, scandals like these might have been disqualifying, but for Democrats in the Trump Era all that matters is electing more Democrats at every level, even if they have nothing to do with Trump in the first place. This means that Republicans are in the unfortunate position of having to find excellent, perfectly suited candidates like outgoing Governor Youngkin while their opponents are happy to run a dude with a Nazi tattoo, Graham Platner, in next year’s Maine Senate race. Thus, Republicans find themselves unable to bring voters to the polls unless someone who can never run again is on the ballot while Democrats would rush to the polls to vote for a ham sandwich to update the old expression regarding grand jury indicments, but this doesn’t mean that the Democrats don’t have problems of their own. If there was one bright spot for Republicans on a dark and stormy election evening, it was in New York City where Zohran Mamdami prevailed despite being an avowed socialist and failing to receive the endorsement of most leading Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. While the Mayor of New York City wouldn’t normally have outsize importance, Mr. Mamdami’s brash embrace of radical policies – backed by younger Democrats such as progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – suggest there is a large, largely uncovered schism in the Democrat Party that only the existence of President Trump has managed to bridge. With him gone and the future of the party wide open, it’s possible this schism devolves into a true civil war and opens a path for more run of the mill Republican politicians like Vice President JD Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who I certainly like, but are certainly not Trumpian either. In the meantime, we can expect Republicans to use the Mayor Elect as an avatar for Democrats in general, claiming they are all as radical and that is too radical for the American people.
Will it work? No one can say. In an era where a day seems like a lifetime in politics, a year might as well be an eternity and while the trends certainly do not look good for Republicans post-Trump, there are things they can do to improve their chances, especially assuming economic growth is on par with the latest estimates to exceed 3.5%. If Mayor Elect Mamdani’s win teaches us anything, it’s that candidates matter a lot. Setting aside his extreme politics, it should be no surprise that he bested a has-been 1980s Guardian Angel in a red beret and a disgraced former Governor who’s such an egomaniac and craves power so badly he was desperate to take a demotion to mayor. In contrast, Mayor Elect Mamdani was energetic, charismatic, and fresh. He was also bold and unapologetic. Where Mr. Ciattarelli offered the usual panoply of promises to reduce the cost of living in New Jersey and Lieutenant Governor Sears rehashed 2024’s social issues, the Mayor Elect promised something entirely different, even in the face of massive opposition from his own party and even though every voter with a half-a-brain and a functioning knowledge of NYC government, where they couldn’t install freaking porta potties on time and on budget, knows most of it will never happen or at the least it would prove a figurative shitshow. In today’s fast pace, media saturated, meme driven world, old school messaging and advertising will not be enough, especially in the face of historical trends. The public, most of the time, craves something different, a fearlessness and a boldness that the old guard is unwilling to deliver, and if Republicans cannot deliver it, they will be doomed. While all is not lost, I’m certainly not holding my breath in an overflowing NYC porta potty either, but I guess we shall see if the GOP gets the message.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 