Where are the Republicans who might vote for a Democrat?

A big win for Democrats will require GOP defections. And those are likely to be in short supply.

At a recent conference attended by many CEOs of some of the largest and most recognizable companies in the world, I was not surprised by the mixture of pessimism, sadness, and frustration expressed by so many regarding our politics. But even in the highest ranks of corporate leaders, few seem to appreciate the extent to which it isn’t just the candidates, campaigns, parties, and their agents who are behaving in such a partisan manner. The vast majority of rank-and-file voters demonstrate their own partisanship every time they cast a ballot; they no longer “vote for the person, not the party,” and all politics is no longer local.

As we approach the 250th anniversary of our country’s independence from the British, our voting has come to resemble theirs more than it did for much of the previous two centuries. Voters increasingly vote for and against parties more than individual candidates; indeed, the caliber of those whose names are on the ballot seems to matter less than the color of their jersey or the party designation next to their name.

Even while polls show mounting reservations about President Trump, if not downright opposition, that has minimal bearing on Republican voters in the red states and districts that Democrats need in order to flip the Senate or approach a wave election in the House. In this new era for our politics, voters having doubts about a president of their own party is one thing, but voting for the opposition party is something else entirely.

Partisanship, particularly negative partisanship—the tendency among many on each side to despise the opposition party’s leaders, candidates, policies, priorities, and rhetoric even more than they may like their own side—is one reason why straight-party voting has become so pervasive on both sides, and it should be kept in mind when looking at all of these polls.

Just 4 percent of Democrats voted for Donald Trump in 2024, precisely the same share of Republicans who voted for Kamala Harris; in each case, 95 percent of each side toed the party line. Four years earlier, both Trump and Joe Biden pulled the exact same 95 percent of their fellow party members, with 4 percent of Democrats voting for Trump and 5 percent of Republicans voting for Biden. In 2016, the cohesion levels were only slightly lower, with 94 percent of Democrats voting for Hillary Clinton and 92 percent of Republicans for Trump. This behavior extends to independents who lean toward one party or the other as well. Just 6 percent of independents who lean Democrat cast a ballot for Trump in 2024, and only 8 percent of independents who lean more to the GOP voted for Harris.

There are even fewer defections in midterm elections. In 2018, 97 percent of voters identifying as Democrats backed their side’s candidates; in 2022, it was 98 percent. For the GOP, it was 95 percent in 2018 and 97 percent in 2022.

That negative partisanship was on clear display in the results of the New York Times/Siena University national poll of registered voters published Monday morning. Twenty-two percent of Republicans said they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy. On the cost of living, 33 percent disapproved. On handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 25 percent of fellow Republicans disapproved. How about handling the war in Iran? Twenty-three percent of Republicans disapproved.

But when the same poll asked how they were likely to vote in this year’s elections for Congress, just 5 percent of Republicans said they would vote for a Democrat, 92 percent for a Republican, and 2 percent didn’t know or refused to say.

Of course, Democrats should be delighted that Trump’s job approval was down to 37 percent (59 percent disapproved) and overjoyed that their party has an 11-point lead among all registered voters in the generic ballot test, 50 to 39 percent. They certainly don’t mind seeing that there are more than a few Republicans who have misgivings about Trump’s policies. That does not mean, however, that those Republicans are going to vote Democratic in November.

Hence Democrats need to win in practically every blue state and district, and in purple states and districts too. Beyond that, if they have designs on picking up more than two seats in the Senate and a dozen in the House, they’re going to need to win in some states and districts where there are more Republican voters than Democrats and independents. When Democrats target seats and states that Trump has carried three times, in some cases with double-digit margins, winning every Democratic vote and the lion’s share of independents is not enough; they need defections. In an environment like this, the national generic ballot test is of limited utility. Nationally, the outcome will be determined in a relatively small number of districts. When the battlefield was bigger, the national generic ballot test was of more value than it is today.

There is no doubt that Democratic voters are more motivated this year than those on the Republican side, and that voter turnout will be asymmetric; Democratic turnout will be substantially higher than Republican turnout. That’s more than sufficient for Democrats to win in blue and purple states and districts, and maybe even in some very light-red Republican jurisdictions. But that won’t get it done in the ruby-red states and districts they are targeting. As this column has noted, exceptions do occur, but mostly in state-level races, like gubernatorial contests, where the cleavages are not quite as sharp as those for Washington offices.