The Extremism Elixir
How the GOP's Non-Mainstream Views Are Costing Them At The Polls
Last Tuesday night’s election results across the country continued a trend of Democratic wins. In fact, since the 2022 midterms, Democrats have outperformed President Biden’s 2020 performance in special elections (in some cases by significant margins). What’s astounding is that these results are happening while the current Democratic president’s approval ratings are underwater including in many of these states and districts. We saw this in 2022 when Biden was at around 45% approval but Democrats were able to gain a seat in the U.S. Senate and only narrowly lose the U.S. House. Whatever issues Biden has in the polls, those aren’t translating to the GOP winning elections.
In this election, Kentucky Democratic Governor Andy Beshear won re-election by about five percent over his GOP challenger state attorney general Daniel Cameron. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won a key Supreme Court race by nearly seven percent in this key battleground state. Democratic backed candidates won key school board races in swing counties and even leaning red counties. New Jersey Democrats picked up a few seats in the state legislature. Virginia Democrats held on to the State Senate and gained back control of the House of Delegates. And in lean red Ohio, by a nearly 15 point margin, voters helped codify the right to an abortion into the state constitution and legalize marijuana. The one main GOP win of the night was Mississippi GOP Governor Tate Reeves winning re-election over his Democratic challenger Brandon Presley but by a less than a five point margin.
Every race has unique factors and I don’t want to diminish those in my analysis of why this happened. And I am hesitant to draw sweeping predictions about what will happen in 2024. For one thing, state races are different from federal races, even in this age of polarization. No one, for instance, believes that a Democratic Governor winning in a state Donald Trump won by over 25 points in 2020 means that Trump would no longer be the solid favorite in Kentucky against Joe Biden next year. Tate Reeves winning by a smaller margin than Trump won by in Mississippi doesn’t mean Mississippi will be competitive next fall.
But during the last two presidencies, when the incumbent president was unpopular, the opposition party by and large tended to benefit across the board. In 2010, amidst discontent with the economy and increasing unpopularity of President Obama, the GOP swept into control of the U.S. House and flipped hundreds of state legislative seats. In 2014, amidst similar unpopularity of Obama, Republicans flipped the U.S. Senate. In 2017, in response to the unpopularity of President Trump, Democrats won a ton of down ballot races and overperformed expectations in Virginia statewide and state house races. In 2018, Democrats capitalized on Trump’s toxic approval ratings to regain control of the House and flip back hundreds of state legislative seats.
In the first big election of the Biden presidency in 2021, this pattern seemed to continue. Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Virginia and New Jersey underperformed President Biden’s margin of victory in those states by about 13 points. Republican Glenn Youngkin was able to narrowly win the Virginia gubernatorial race. Democratic Governor Phil Murphy narrowly won re-election in even bluer New Jersey. Democrats suffered losses down ballot as well.
President Biden’s approval ratings are no better today (in fact they are likely worse) than they were in November 2021. So that begs the question: why have 2022 and now 2023 elections trended so heavily in the Democratic direction?
Put simply, the issue environment has changed. In the fall of 2021, suburban swing voters in Virginia and New Jersey were upset about how long schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They were frustrated with a lack of return to normalcy on an issue that hit close to home. This, plus the growing discontent with the rise in prices and the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, served to be an issue that Youngkin and other Republicans were able to beat Democrats on by taking away enough suburban independents and soft Democrats away from the Democratic candidates. There was a sense in the country that freedom and normalcy were more needed, including among young voters within the Democratic/Biden coalition. And they sided with the GOP.
Since 2021 though, normie swing voters have seen the alternative from the Republicans. Republicans began to see their win on the traditionally Democratic issue of education as more permanent, rather than what it really was - temporary discontent with Democrats over school closures. And they then began to overreach by leaning into focusing only on “woke” issues and worse, overhauling curriculums to reflect radical right wing views of history and science and banning books that even remotely mentioned issues of race and sexual orientation. And while that may fire up the GOP base, it alienates swing voters, even some of the ones who think some on the left have gone “too woke.” It looks to normie voters like the GOP is focusing too much on weird cultural fights while doing little to address their real concerns about inflation and economic mobility. And worse, it now looks like the GOP is the party standing against freedom and personal liberty.
In this time, the population has moved on from the pandemic and Republicans can now no longer run against Democrats as a party restricting freedom with Covid restrictions. The potent argument for the GOP from 2021 now is no longer relevant for swing voters.
And in the summer of 2022, the Supreme Court overturned nearly 50 years of precedent on abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade in the landmark decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, effectively turning abortion laws over to the states. Republican legislatures began pushing for very strict abortion laws; in some cases, they banned abortion after just 6 weeks of pregnancy. In what should have been a low turnout August referendum in red Kansas, voters turned out in high numbers to reject a proposed constitutional amendment that would have not have allowed the right to an abortion in Kansas by a nearly 20 point margin. This pattern continued as even redder Kentucky voted for the pro-choice side of an abortion referendum in November last year. Earlier this year, Wisconsin voters turned away a conservative State Supreme Court candidate partly over concern about a draconian abortion law being brought back in the post-Roe world.
Now let’s turn to Tuesday’s results. Again, abortion itself was on the ballot, this time in Ohio. In a state that twice voted for Donald Trump by eight percent, voters turned out at near 2022 midterm levels to codify essentially the abortion policy built by Roe v. Wade (no limits on abortion rights up to the point of fetal viability - about the start of the third trimester - but allowances for restrictions after that). The margin was again solid for the pro-choice side - a 14 point margin.
I am not making an argument that this makes Joe Biden competitive in Ohio next November. This electorate, based on the exit polls, was an electorate much more Democratic than the state would be in a presidential election. The electorate here said they chose Biden over Trump in 2020 by two percent. That being said, I think abortion being on the ballot is a boost for Democratic turnout. This is especially the case for younger voters, voters of color, and younger progressive voters. These are voting blocs that at the moment Biden is either losing or not inspiring. And they are absolutely critical to his winning coalition. In fact, a recent CBS poll suggested that Democratic voters are nearly twice as likely as GOP voters to say abortion makes them more likely to vote in 2024. And I think the more Democratic nature of the electorate in Ohio gives credibility to this poll finding. And I think it suggests that even with a bigger electorate that likely would include more GOP leaning voters, this issue could drive out Democrats to the polls who otherwise may stay home.
In Kentucky, an even deeper red state than Ohio, Governor Andy Beshear actually ran more as a pro choice Democrat. And he was aided by his GOP challenger’s very extreme positions on abortion. Beshear’s campaign ran this searing ad where a 12 year old girl who was raped by her stepfather said under Cameron’s extreme no exceptions policy on abortion, she would’ve been forced to bear the child in that circumstance. Keep in mind that Cameron’s position is basically opposed by an overwhelming majority of Americans and even in ruby red Kentucky is a very extreme position. Even in red states, the GOP is having a hard time dealing electorally with the backlash over the Dobbs decision, primarily because GOP lawmakers are signing on to extreme restrictions on abortion that may win them plaudits with activist groups in their base but are frightening swing voters and moderate Republican voters.
Now back to our friend Glenn Youngkin and Virginia. The Virginia GOP Governor was aiming for a Republican trifecta in Richmond by helping his party retain control of the House of Delegates the GOP had won in 2021 and take back control of the State Senate. Youngkin is a popular figure in Virginia, largely because he has not been able to push through much of a hard right cultural agenda because the Democratic Senate has been a check on him. The GOP was hoping Youngkin’s popularity and Biden’s unpopularity would help carry them to victory.
And Tuesday’s results were evidence of both the possibilities and limits of this strategy. Youngkin and his PAC’s spending surely helped give GOP State House and Senate candidates chances to overperform in Biden districts. However, the Team Youngkin spin after this election has been premised on the idea that if the GOP nationally performed as well as they did in many competitive districts, the GOP would easily win. Team Youngkin is correct that Democrats underperformed President Biden’s and in some cases 2022 Congressional Democrats’ vote share in many of these seats. But what they’re missing is the context. This is an off year election where young and non-white voter turnout that comes out at higher levels for Democrats in presidential and even midterm elections was lower. In addition, having a popular governor of your own party and an unpopular president of the other party typically is a boon to the party of the popular governor. And historically, voters in suburbs in Virginia have voted more Republican for state and local offices. Keep in mind Virginia has a lot of former Republican suburban voters who may be open to Republicans in the Youngkin mold rather than in the Trump mold. So this is nothing to brag about for Republicans. In Biden 2020 districts that Republicans won in 2023, Democrats ran pretty similar to their 2019 performances, a strong year for Democrats in Virginia.
And as is a theme here, Governor Youngkin showed some lack of political messaging skill by making the election about his proposed 15 week abortion ban he said he would sign into law if he get the GOP trifecta. Youngkin and Republicans leaned into an issue that is very unpopular in Virginia, a more pro-choice state. By doing this, he gave Virginia Democratic campaigns a cudgel to use against the GOP. Their message was simple: elect us to stop a 15 week abortion ban. And in doing so, Democrats held the Senate and flipped the House of Delegates on the backs of angry suburban voters in the big population centers across the Commonwealth.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats did very well statewide, winning a Supreme Court election by about seven percent, a high margin for a swing state. Down ballot Democrats did very well in county races. Most notably, school board races signaled a backlash to extreme conservative school boards. Democrats won five seats and flipped control of the school board from the GOP in the Central Bucks School District in Pennsylvania. In Loudoun County, Virginia, the hotbed of GOP campaigns on parental rights and “woke” issues in the lead up to the 2021 election there, Democratic-endorsed candidates won six out of the nine seats on the county school board. Even in redder Ohio and Iowa, you saw Moms for Liberty (the key conservative school board activist group) backed candidates mostly go down in defeat.
This is a lesson for the right - that their extreme curriculum policies and book bans are frightening swing voters and even some soft GOP voters. Again, between this and strict abortion bans, the GOP has made it easy to be painted as an extreme culture war driven group who thinks they can run your own life better than you know you can. The mantle of defending personal freedom, in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic, has shifted in swing voters’ eyes to the Democrats.
I wanted to also point out areas where progressives fared poorly Tuesday night. This was seen in county prosecutors’ races. Even in blue Alleghany County, PA, a progressive county prosecutor went down to defeat. In blue Loudoun County, VA, the progressive incumbent Commonwealths Attorney lost. There is real discontent even among some Democratic voters in urban and suburban areas over rising crime rates and what appears to be the progressive left’s callousness to the issue’s importance. There’s a sense that progressive prosecutors and district attorneys are soft on criminal behavior and these voters are frustrated. Even in San Francisco last year, very liberal voters, mostly voters of color, threw a very progressive DA out of office. That is why the newly elected mayor of Philadelphia sounded like a more “tough on crime” candidate.
This may seem to contradict the leftward shift we saw in other county and state races that shifted left. But it really isn’t. Voters in the middle are flexing their muscles and are sniffing out extremes on either side. They want safer streets just as much they want to protect a woman’s bodily autonomy. They want good schools that are accountable to parents but not schools that target trans kids and ban any book that covers racial issues. They want normalcy. They want sensible governance from their elected officials. We saw this kind of ticket splitting in 2022 where many swing voters chose sensible Republicans and turned away election deniers that ran for the GOP. Even in red Kentucky last Tuesday, the GOP Secretary of State candidate who explicitly rejected Trump’s election lies did the best of any GOP statewide candidate.
While the last part of this piece focused on the progressives’ electoral problems on issues of crime, it is the GOP’s three-part elixir of extremism - abortion bans, book bans, and election denialism - that is driving away voters they could get. As I’ve said before, Joe Biden has some real electoral issues that may be unique to him (they may not too - that election is a year away). But the Democratic brand is fairly resilient largely because on the issues they are closer to the median swing voter than the GOP is right now. And it comes down to the fact that many swing voters think the Republican Party is just weird - weirdly obsessed with relitigating the 2020 election, weirdly obsessed with culture war issues, and out to get women and LGBTQ people. Swing voters think rightly that the GOP by and large wants to silence what kids can read in school, push a narrow religious agenda on folks, control women’s bodies, and when they don’t get their way at the ballot box try to overturn the election or not honor the election results.
If you had told me a few years ago that a Democratic president was at around 40% approval and voters were not happy with the economy, I’d have said the GOP would wipe the floor with Democrats. But the GOP’s extremism is serving as a counterweight to the typical maxim of parties out of power in the White House doing well when the President is unpopular. The Democrats by and large are doing a better job convincing voters in the middle that they are the better option.