Chris Wilson, polling guru for the pro-Ron DeSantis PAC Never Back Down, released on Wednesday an analysis of third-party surveys. These surveys were conducted by his firm, WPA Intelligence, and were related to the prospect of Donald Trump’s renomination to lead the GOP and his candidacy’s effects on Republicans running for offices farther down the ballot. That outcome, Wilson contends, would be another “disaster for Republicans in competitive seats.”
By one study’s estimate, Trump’s endorsement alone had a measurably negative effect on Republicans in competitive races in 2018 — already a structurally difficult year for the GOP. “By their estimation,” Wilson wrote, “Trump cost Republicans at least 15 seats (11 in the House and four in the Senate).” That effect is compounded by the significant fundraising boost a Democrat facing a Trump-backed candidate can expect to enjoy as a result of the former president’s endorsement:
A study conducted after the 2022 midterms suggests, in Wilson’s estimation, that Trump’s endorsement “increased Dem share in open seat districts and states, and cost Republicans control of the Senate.” Another post-2022 analysis of the political landscape determined that Trump’s capacity to mobilize and energize his opponents imposed significant headwinds on his hand-picked candidates, costing them as much as six points apiece — a deficit that explains why Republicans lost statewide races in states like Nevada, Georgia, and Arizona:
Looking ahead to 2024, Wilson cited recent generic-ballot polling in Arizona and Georgia that found the Republican Party’s candidates for down-ballot races sacrifice six and four points respectively by nominating Trump to the presidency.
Wilson is hardly an impartial observer of these political trends, but this isn’t his data. Nor are his conclusions particularly tough to believe given the evidence of our own eyes.
The 2020 general election was a stunner. Trump lost, but it was not the blowout some had predicted (the RealClearPolitics average showed Joe Biden leading the incumbent by over seven points on Election Day). And the 2020 generic ballot test vastly overstated the public’s preference for Democratic candidates. The GOP held onto vulnerable Senate seats in Maine, Montana, Iowa, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and Republicans in the House defied expectations by holding each of the 27 seats the Cook Political Report rated as tossups. These candidates managed this feat by running ahead of the president by an average of 3.1 percent. The areas where Democrats outperformed — urban metros and the suburbs in states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania — shifted away from Trump and the GOP in the four years since 2016. It’s not difficult to envision a scenario in which a less divisive candidate doesn’t cost the GOP in erstwhile Republican heartlands where “suburban voting patterns closed the longtime Republican-Democratic gap” even despite the pandemic and its many hardships.
The 2022 midterms tell an altogether simpler story. Aside from his endorsement of incumbents with preexisting relationships with their voters, Trump-backed candidates in open races fared abysmally. The price of a Trump endorsement in last year’s midterms was to echo the president’s fixation with the notion that fraud and malfeasance cost him a second term in the White House. Most candidates in competitive races who ponied up that ante lost. Republican candidates still won a majority of the national vote for House races and out-performed expectations set by that year’s generic ballot tests. But in the end, Republicans failed to make the most of the environmental conditions that favored their party.
For a brief moment, there was a consensus within the GOP that Donald Trump’s myopia and his obsession with fealty cost Republicans too many winnable races. Republican strategists, even Trump’s closest allies, begged the former president to stay far away from Georgia in advance of runoff races — a tacit admission of his toxicity. But a familiar dynamic reemerged in short order. The Republicans who believed it was time to move on from the Trump era did so sheepishly — anonymously and without conviction. Those who stuck with Trump issued full-throated endorsements, implicitly threatening their more squeamish colleagues with the full force of the primetime lineup at their backs. The Trump backlash soon disappeared as had all others like it. The race was on to rule the rubble.
Is the former president’s past performance indicative of future results? Who knows? Campaigns are wild rides, and exogenous events that shake up seemingly implacable dynamics can and likely will happen. But letting the future of the party and its promise to roll back Democratic initiatives ride on a high-stakes gamble like that is a fool’s bet.