Is This the End of Trumpism?
The party no longer decides
Republicans generally did badly in the recent midterm elections, in spite of winning a narrow majority in the House. Donald Trump and his influence deserve a lot of the blame for Republicans’ poor performance, but Republicans won’t be able to move on from Trump easily.
Republicans managed to win a slim majority in the US House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. It’s a significant victory because it breaks the Democrats’ hold on both chambers of Congress. It will allow Republicans to block Democratic legislation and launch their own investigations. But the red wave that we’d normally expect—and that many predicted—in a midterm year with both inflation historically high and an unpopular Democratic president didn’t materialize. The election was so close that Democrats came within 6,670 votes of keeping the House. Republicans ended up gaining just 9 seats in the House—they picked up 63 seats in the first midterm after Barack Obama was elected—and in the process failed to capitalize on what should have been an opportunity to make significant gains.
But Republicans didn’t just underperform expectations in the House race. They actually lost ground in every other way that matters. They lost a seat in the Senate in spite of having an advantage in the national House vote, which is significant because it means Democrats won’t have to share power or rely on Vice President Kamala Harris for tie-breaking votes. Republicans were unable to take the Senate in large part because they ran spectacularly bad candidates in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania. In Georgia, Republican Herschel Walker ran some 4-6 points behind the party’s other candidates for statewide office. Democrats also managed to pick up governors seats in Maryland and Massachusetts—where my incredible college classmate Maura Healey became both the first woman elected governor and the first openly lesbian governor of any state—as well to win complete control of state governments in Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota. The last time the party that held the presidency picked up both Senate seats and governorships was 1934.
If you read my election forecast, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. The week before the election, I wrote that Republicans were likely (90%) to win the House, but that Democrats would probably (52%) hold on to the Senate. Republicans would normally have a large advantage as the out party in a midterm election with an unpopular president, But the most politically unpopular event in 2022—the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs eliminating the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy—was something Republicans made happen. Shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision, voters in Kansas decisively defeated an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have allowed abortions to be outlawed in the state. Democrats proceeded to do better than expected in a series of special elections leading up to the midterm. The generic congressional ballot average before the midterm was consistent with a national environment that slightly favored Republicans, but not with the “red tsunami” that some partisan pundits tried to speak into existence.
Outcomes varied substantially from state to state, but restrictions on the right to obtain an abortion were defeated everywhere they were on the ballot, even in Kentucky and Montana. Republican candidates did well in Florida and New York, where reproductive freedom wasn’t immediately at stake, but did badly in Michigan where it was. Republicans who claimed Joe Biden didn’t really win the 2020 election were likewise defeated almost across the board. Secretary of state candidates who claimed the 2020 election was rigged lost everywhere but Indiana, while Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who had refused to “find” more votes from Donald Trump in 2020, won reelection easily. Exit polls and voter surveys found that both Democrats and Independents were concerned Republicans posed a threat to democracy and worried they might act in a way that was—as one focus group participant put it—“batshit crazy.”
More broadly, where Republicans focused on the economy and the concerns of ordinary voters they did relatively well. But where they ran on unpopular policy ideas, used extreme rhetoric, or pushed bizarre conspiracies, they did poorly. Voters roundly rejected the election-deniers, creeps, and grifters Trump had endorsed in competitive states. Opposition to Trump and his MAGA movement is probably the main reason Republicans did badly over the last three election cycles. Even out of power, Trump remains less popular than Biden. While Trump did manage to win in 2016—and has tried hard to brand himself a winner—a less awful candidate would probably have beaten the unpopular Hillary Clinton by an even greater margin. Trump promised his supporters at the time they would get tired of winning, but since the midterms several prominent Republicans have made a point of saying that they’re actually tired of losing. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board called Trump “the Republican Party’s biggest loser.”
It’s reasonable to wonder whether this is finally the end of Trump’s hold on the Republican Party. His high-profile failures hurt him because his career is built on the image he has cultivated of being extraordinarily successful. It has been clear for some time that Trump is a drag on the party’s electoral prospects. But it may be hard for Republicans to move on from Trump, the party no longer has much of a coherent ideology outside of personal devotion to him. The party didn’t even produce a new platform in 2020 outside of affirming its loyalty to his administration. Even though Trump recently called for “termination” of the US Constitution on the basis of his fabricated theory that the 2020 election was somehow not fair to him, almost no Republican politician will say they won’t support him for President again.
Even if party loyalties could simply be transferred from Trump to someone like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—and I’m skeptical—the party would be primarily animated by populist grievance. Christian nationalism, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, transphobia, QAnonism—not, thankfully, majority views in the US—are not incidental to the Republican Party, but have become central to its identity. Trump capitalized on them, but he didn’t create them, and they won’t go away when he’s gone. Most Republicans still believe the 2020 election was fraudulent, in spite of overwhelming evidence it was fair. Republican politicians who are unwilling to play along have been largely purged from the party. Republicans in the House have already threatened to shut down the government unless cuts are made to the popular Social security and Medicare programs and have promised to use their new majority to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop. DeSantis wouldn’t represent some substantive new direction for the Republican Party, but would bring more of the same culture war trolling that has characterized the party in recent years. He would at most be a more palatable version of Trump.
Trump has already declared his candidacy. If he wins the Republican nomination, I think he’s likely—but by no means certain—to lose to Biden or to whomever the Democrats run. But while I think nominating Trump would hurt Republicans’ chance of retaking the presidency, that doesn’t mean Republicans will necessarily choose someone else. Trump is clearly diminished—and seems focused on selling his new cringe NFTs—but he remains more popular among Republicans than any other potential candidate. DeSantis has been successful and is popular with donors, but is less magnetic than Trump, and may have trouble taking Trump on directly. The truth is that party leaders no longer decide on their own who the nominee will be. The Republican base does.
The biggest obstacle to Trump winning the nomination is probably the staggering array of legal difficulties he faces. Even if Trump isn’t convicted of a crime—and it seems increasingly plausible he will be—his legal problems may tarnish him enough for another Republican to beat him in the primaries. In September, I wrote that Trump had a 57% chance of winning the Republican nomination again. Insight Prediction now gives him a 46% chance, Metaculus a 43% chance, and PredictIt just a 28% chance. I agree that Trump’s chances of being the nominee are significantly lower than they were before the midterm—and DeSantis’s significantly higher—but I think Trump still remains the favorite.
My Forecast
Donald Trump has a 35% chance of being the Republican nominee in 2024
Ron DeSantis has a 28% chance of being the Republican nominee in 2024
Thanks to everyone who sent nice messages about Telling the Future for me to share with my funders! I’m sorry it has been so long since my last newsletter. My recovery is going well, but five months after my stroke it continues to take a surprising amount of my energy and time. I’m hoping to post on a regular weekly schedule again after the New Year. In the meantime, here are Good Judgment’s predictions for 2023 in The Economist. As always, if you enjoyed this, I hope you will support my work by sharing it with others. Happy holidays, everyone!
