Party defections are mostly a thing of the past
Federal candidates can typically rely on 90+ percent support from their party's base.
There was a pervasive sense of pessimism, if not panic, among congressional Republicans as they returned to Capitol Hill early last week after a two-week recess. They were beginning to realize the midterm outlook isn’t merely as bad as it normally is for a president’s party, but perhaps a good bit worse than that, and not likely to get better.
President Trump is now an anchor for the GOP among certain segments of the electorate. Trump’s positions aren’t just alienating many Republicans of a more centrist, less populist stripe; a sense is also building that he is in over his head and just winging it from day to day, if not hour to hour.
Notwithstanding certain over-caffeinated polling analysts on cable television, it is easy to overstate what these national trends mean for individual states and districts, given the current state of American politics. As this column has repeatedly noted, Trump’s single-digit approval ratings among Democrats virtually ensure a terrible political outlook for most Republicans running in blue, Democratic-tilting states and districts. Poor approvals among independents indicate that he is an enormous liability in purple, swing states and districts as well. Yet his approval rating in the 80s among Republicans could translate into something less than catastrophic for GOP candidates in red states and districts.
People tend to forget not only how pervasive partisanship has become, particularly now that there are no longer many conservatives in the Democratic Party nor liberals in the Republican Party. Those groups used to be the first to defect if their party was having a bad year.
In fact, we are seeing very few defections on any level in any kind of year. In 2024, 95 percent of Democrats voted for then-Vice President Kamala Harris and 95 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. Four years earlier, 95 percent of Democrats voted for Joe Biden and 95 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. In 2016, 94 percent of Democrats voted for Hillary Clinton and 92 percent of Republicans for Trump.
This is true not only in presidential elections; indeed, partisans vote even more cohesively in midterm elections for Congress. In 2022, the last midterm, 98 percent of Democrats voted for their own party’s nominee for Congress, just as 97 percent of Republicans voted for the GOP candidate. In 2018, 97 percent of Democrats voted for their side’s candidate, while 92 percent of Republicans did the same.
In the most competitive Senate races in 2022, the lowest support level for a Democratic nominee was John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, who pulled 94 percent support among his party’s voters. At the high end, Mark Kelly (Arizona), Raphael Warnock (Georgia), Maggie Hassan (New Hampshire), Tim Ryan (Ohio), and Mandela Barnes (Wisconsin) all pulled 97 percent of Democratic voters in the Edison Research exit polls for ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC.
Among Republicans, the low performers in key Senate races were Blake Masters in Arizona and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, both at 89 percent. The best were Ted Budd (97 percent in North Carolina) and Ron Johnson (96 percent in Wisconsin), with all others in between. Gubernatorial races showed a similar range.
In 2018, the lowest party support a Democratic nominee in a key Senate race received was Bill Nelson’s 91 percent in Florida. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona was tops at 97 percent. On the Republican side, at the low end was Martha McSally at 86 percent in Arizona, and the high was Adam Laxalt with 93 percent in Nevada, in a losing cause.
Democrats now targeting seats in extremely red states tend to ignore just how hard it is to actually win those. Look no further than the popular former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who took on Sen. Marsha Blackburn in 2018. Bredesen pulled 95 percent of Democrats, higher than Blackburn’s 92 percent among Republicans. But 44 percent of the electorate that year identified as Republican, compared to just 25 percent who identified as Democratic. Even Bredesen’s overperformance among independents—he won them 55 to 43 percent—couldn’t save him.
When Beto O’Rourke challenged Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas, he pulled 92 percent of the Democratic vote, a point above Cruz’s 91 percent among Republicans. O’Rourke also carried independents by 3 points, 50 to 47 percent, but it was not enough given the disparity in the composition of the electorate—38 percent identifying as Republican, 34 percent as Democratic.
There is no question that Democrats are now and probably will continue to overperform the norm this year. But beating the point spread is worthless unless the result ends with a win and a swearing-in ceremony next January.
In terms of the Senate, what happens in some upcoming primaries is hugely relevant. Democrats will be thrilled if Texas state Attorney General Ken Paxton wins the May 26 GOP runoff against Sen. John Cornyn. Democrats would have a decent shot at beating the scandal-plagued Paxton in this kind of year, but they would have no shot against Cornyn.
On Aug. 4, Michigan Democrats will select a nominee. Right now, three major contenders are effectively tied. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow would probably be the strongest Democratic candidate. Although she is a bit more liberal than optimal, she appears to be a much more talented candidate than the more centrist Rep. Haley Stevens. But if former Wayne County Health Director Abdul El-Sayed were to win the nomination, former GOP Rep. Mike Rogers would become a strong favorite to win the seat.
When a party is torqued up above a certain level, despising an incumbent president of the other party, there is a tendency to go too far in primaries, selecting suboptimal candidates. In Maine, Graham Platner has built up a huge polling lead in the Democratic primary over Gov. Janet Mills, with the winner taking on Sen. Susan Collins in November. But if you were to ask Republican strategists who they would most want to win the primary, it would be Platner by a long shot. The opposition-research file is bulging, and the race would become about him, rather than about Trump.
The bottom line is that things look pretty good for Democrats, and bad for Republicans, but it is easy to get carried away.