Heads or hearts this year? Voters will begin to tell us next month

It's not just Republicans versus Democrats. It's pragmatism versus principle.

Five states with a combined population of nearly 1 in 5 Americans (18 percent of the population) will hold primary elections next month. They will likely provide the first tangible indications of primary voters’ mind-sets in this critical midterm election. When voters in Arkansas, Illinois, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Texas go to the polls to select nominees for the November general election, will they choose pragmatism and electability, or go with principle, consequences be damned? In other words, heads or hearts?

Interestingly, the zeitgeist in each party is somewhat at variance with what happened in the presidential election 15 months ago. With just over 25 percent of his second term behind him, President Trump has embarked on a muscular, in-your-face agenda that one might expect from someone who won by a 15-point margin rather than his actual 1.5-point victory. But for 200,369 combined votes in three states—29,397 votes in Wisconsin (.86 percent), 80,103 in Michigan (1.4 percent), and 120,266 in Pennsylvania (1.7 percent)—it would be Kamala Harris preparing for a State of the Union Address on Feb. 24, not Donald Trump.

Conversely, the prevailing mentality in the Democratic Party seems to vacillate between defeatism and belligerence. Interestingly, Trump’s vote margin in those three Frost Belt states was substantially wider than the 42,918 total votes that put Joe Biden over the top in the three closest states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin in 2020; he and his team somehow seemed to think they had a mandate as well. This is what happens in a country that is so evenly divided. If you win, it’s by a mile; if you lose, it’s by a millimeter.

Looking back at the closing days of that 2024 campaign, it’s easy to forget how close things were. In The New York Times’ polling averages on the morning of the election, in six of the seven swing states the leading candidate averaged 49 percent of the vote, the trailing candidate 48 percent. Trump had that tiny edge in Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia; Harris was up by a single point in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In Arizona, Trump was at 50 percent, Harris at 47 percent. In each of the seven polls, the undecided vote was 3 percent. Obviously, those voters broke in Trump’s direction in the end. Tiny shifts in votes with huge consequences make up the political world we now live in.

When such a narrow, wafer-thin sliver of the electorate in seven states determines the president, and an even-smaller shaving in a couple dozen House districts tips the balance in that chamber, one might expect political parties, their leaders and strategists, to be carefully calibrating what might give them that final boost to get them over the top in the next election. But instead of scalpels, we get meat cleavers.

We have elections with infinitesimal margins, yet the two parties are as far apart as the North and South Poles, as different as night and day. The binary nature of our political system grossly exaggerates controversies, with equally distorted consequences.

Think about immigration and the border as a case in point. When Biden took office in January 2021, a clearly porous border was a concern for a not-insubstantial share of voters, yet they were told that the administration lacked the authority to address it. Nothing happened for three years. Then in Biden’s final year, the administration started to do what it said couldn’t be done at the border, and the rate of border crossings plummeted. The political damage was already done. Had the administration simply done it in 2021, much could have been different. Along with the cost of living, this issue expedited Democrats’ eviction from the White House more than anything else.

Then Donald Trump comes back into office, promising to go after “the worst of the worst,” violent criminals who are in the country illegally. The next thing we know, he implements draconian policies, targeting blue cities seemingly at random, with nannies taken away from children in parks and on sidewalks, farm workers pulled from fields, and longtime residents snatched off the streets or out of their homes. Internal documents reviewed by CBS News show that fewer than 14 percent of those apprehended have any violent criminal records at all.

This was not the cruise that swing voters signed up for. But then again, swing voters don’t nominate party candidates; most aren’t even affiliated with either party. They are constrained by whatever or whoever the parties choose to present. These are not the choices they want, but it’s what they have.

What choices will primary voters in five mostly Southern states present to them beginning next month?