Something strange is going on with American voters. Gone are the days of George W. Bush voters checking the box for every (R) down the list. Tuesday’s voters weren’t cooperating. President-elect Donald J. Trump may have won and Republicans may have taken the Senate (and likely the House), but it’s not all wine and roses for the Grand Old Party.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin defended her seat against businessman Eric Hovde by nearly 29,000 votes. In Michigan, Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin beat Rep. Mike Rogers by more than 21,000 votes. While it’s not been called yet, Nevada Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is leading Afghanistan War veteran Sam Brown by nearly 12,700 votes, and Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego is leading news anchor Kari Lake by more than 52,000 votes.
It’s not just the Republican establishment’s problem to deal with, either.
The strange thing is that Trump won every one of these states. He won Wisconsin by as many votes as Hovde lost by — a 58,000-vote swing. He won Michigan by nearly 80,000 votes — a 100,000-vote swing. Nevada: 51,000 votes; Arizona: 136,000.
Even in Pennsylvania, where Republican Dave McCormick declared victory over Sen. Bob Casey (D) Thursday, Trump beat McCormick’s score by more than 140,000 votes.
State races aren’t cookie-cutter. Arizona, for example, is an outlier, with Lake a divisive figure running against a Hispanic man in a place where one in three voters is also Hispanic. And Baldwin is an incumbent (though so is Casey). Rogers is a onetime never-Trumper and unrepentant war hawk and Israel hard-liner in a state where anti-Israel Muslim voters withheld their support from Vice President Kamala Harris, though Slotkin is both Jewish and a former CIA officer and Pentagon attaché, complicating that narrative.
In Wisconsin, an America First Party candidate won enough votes to put Hovde just 241 behind Baldwin’s lead, and a Libertarian Party candidate’s votes would have put him 42,000 points in the lead. In Michigan, a libertarian’s votes would have blown Rogers past Slotkin — but a Green Party candidate did just about the same to the Democrat. And across the country, Green Party members, libertarians, and other shades of independents played spoilers or would-be spoilers too. It’s hard to tell how many of their supporters cast their votes as a protest (and wouldn’t otherwise vote for the Republican or Democrat) anyway.
Then there’s the only-Trump folks. The low-propensity voters who never pick up a pollster’s call and are unreachable outside of YouTube and TV sports ads. They don’t know who the Senate candidates are and don’t care. Nearly 19,000 Wisconsinites voted for president but not a Senate candidate. In Arizona, that number is nearly 26,500 (so far). In Nevada: 18,177. Pennsylvania: 68,391. And in Michigan, where the Israel war protest votes were higher: 86,784. The data and the results suggest a lot of those votes went to Donald J. Trump.
It’s not just the Republican establishment’s problem to deal with, either. While Trump outperformed every single Republican Senate winner outside Utah and Wyoming, among the winners he most significantly outperformed were Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by about 400,000 votes and Ohio Senator-elect Bernie Moreno by about 300,000 votes — a smaller number but a far bigger proportion of Ohio’s smaller electorate.
This is a reality that all Republicans are going to have to contend with even while celebrating their victories. Not unlike with former President Barack Obama, the coalition Trump has built is temperamental. Not only is it not the Republicans’ to take for granted, it isn’t even certainly the Republicans’ in the first place — and supporting Trump’s agenda is no simple cure. Republicans are going to have to figure out the key to this coalition and do their best to earn it. Remember: Trump will never be on an American ballot again.
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Opinion & analysis, Politics