Can the parties crack their bases' code during the primaries?
After a month or so, we will have a better idea of just how self-indulgent each party’s primary voters are this year.
The worst enemies of Democrats and Republicans can be found in their respective bases. They lure or browbeat their parties’ candidates into taking positions that are untenable with swing voters in purple states and districts, at least when they’re not nominating candidates who might be exciting to base voters but end up being toxic to voters in the middle.
The election season formally begins Tuesday as Texas, Arkansas, and North Carolina hold their primaries; if necessary, runoffs will be held on May 26, March 31, and May 12, respectively. After a month or so, we will have a better idea of just how self-indulgent each party’s primary voters are this year, and importantly, whether one party’s base is more myopic than the other—nominating candidates who reflect the anger, energy, and intensity in their respective bases but who are not necessarily focused on the same issues and priorities that independent voters care about.
In blue states, it usually doesn’t matter that much who Democrats nominate; they will still win general elections with only the votes of fellow Democrats. The same goes for Republicans in many red states: A nominee can win a general election just on the backs of fellow Republicans, and support among independents or Democrats isn’t necessary. But, by definition, in swing states and districts a nominee must also capture a disproportionate share of independent voters to win; those independents don’t often agree with those in the base.
At the time of the 2010 midterm election, President Obama’s job-approval rating in the Gallup Poll was just 45 percent. Yet while Republicans scored a net gain of 64 seats in the House, they nominated a pair of exotic and problematic candidates in Senate races in both Delaware and Nevada, energized by the tea-party movement, who went on to lose winnable races to Chris Coons and Harry Reid, respectively. What could have been a seven- or eight-seat gain ended up at six, and a Senate of 51 Democrats to 49 Republicans, two seats short of a GOP majority.
Two years later, Obama’s approval ratings had improved by about 7 points to 52 percent. But the GOP made the same mistakes again. In Missouri, their tea-party-aligned candidate squandered a winnable race against vulnerable Sen. Claire McCaskill. In Indiana, another problematic candidate defeated longtime GOP Sen. Richard Lugar, only to lose the general election to Joe Donnelly. Only in 2014, when GOP primary voters demonstrated more pragmatism, did Republicans finally win a majority in the Senate to match the House majority they secured in the 2010 midterm.
The tea-party wing of the GOP has morphed into the MAGA movement, but the self-destructive behavior continues. This was certainly the case in the 2022 midterms, when, despite President Biden’s anemic 40 percent job-approval rating, GOP primary voters managed to blow about two dozen races for Senate, House, governor, attorney general, and secretary of state. In the Senate races that year, Republican primary voters squandered their party’s chances in Arizona (Blake Masters), Georgia (Herschel Walker), New Hampshire (Don Bolduc), and Pennsylvania (Mehmet Oz). Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly, Raphael Warnock, Maggie Hassan, and John Fetterman should all be quite appreciative. As a result, instead of losing two or three seats, Democrats actually gained one seat.
In the pre-Trump era Republicans certainly held their own in the most competitive states, but since he first became president, not so much. In the 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections, Democrats have won 17 of the 21 Senate races in purple states to Republicans’ four. A similar dynamic exists in purple-state gubernatorial races, with Democrats winning 10 of 14. My guess is that the kind of Republicans who do best in purple states have either not been running or did and were not able to get past increasingly MAGA-dominated primary electorates. Secondly, in higher-visibility contests, Trump has been a huge drag on GOP candidates in hotly contested areas.
What must concern Democratic strategists is that, particularly since their 2024 presidential loss, the central organizing principle of the party base is opposition to Trump—in other words, anger and hate rather than policy and strategy. While that has helped them win key statewide races, it has not carried down to state Senate and state House races. Stoking anger at Trump may feel good among base voters, but lower on the ballot, there is not much for Democrats to run on.
The seven purple states have 14 legislative chambers. Republicans hold majorities in 10, and only in Nevada do Democrats hold comfortable majorities in both the state Senate and state House chambers. In the other two purple states where Democrats hold a chamber, it is by only a one-seat edge. They control the Michigan state Senate 19-18 and the Pennsylvania House 100-98. In New Hampshire, which is widely seen as a blue state, the GOP has not only controlled both the state Senate and House after each of the last three elections but has won the governorship in five consecutive elections (two-year terms), leading me to wonder whether it should be considered a blue state at all.
Over the last 20 years, Republicans have invested significantly greater sums of money in party-building on the state and local level. It has paid off. Not only has Democrats’ lack of investment hurt them in policy fights, but it has deprived them of a strong bench. These lower-level offices are the farm teams, the seed corn for the future; political careers can be accelerated or prematurely ended at these levels, impacting U.S. House, U.S. Senate, and gubernatorial elections in the future.
In short, the feeling that “if it feels good, do it” isn’t the best strategy to winning elections.