Nate Silver explains why having Trump around has actually HELPED the Democrats ….
Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. And Joe Biden’s 4.5-point margin over Trump in 2022 is obviously nothing to sneeze at against an incumbent, although the race was closer in the tipping-point states and it’s hard to know what baseline we should be measuring the race against in the middle of the worst pandemic in a century.
What’s also interesting about 2016 and 2020 is that Trump underperformed Republican Congressional candidates both times. In 2016, Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2 percentage points, while Republicans actually won the popular vote for the House by 1 point. In 2020, the GOP lost the House popular vote by 3 points, less than Trump’s 4.5-point margin of defeat.
So the argument here is not that Trump is a popular candidate — he is emphatically not popular. Rather, it’s that Republican performance without Trump on the ballot may be even worse. They still suffer from selecting poor candidates — many of them endorsed by Trump — and having unpopular policies on positions like abortion. But they don’t get the enthusiastic turnout that Trump and his celebrity gives them. Instead, they often wind up with weird nominees that repel swing voters and motivate Democratic turnout without exciting their own base.
It’s also not as though Republicans have struck out. Trump won in 2016 in a historic repudiation of the established political order. And they have a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade and could persist for decades. Those are some big wins to savor.
But it’s been one hell of a devil’s bargain: a choice between mediocre results with Trump on the ballot or outright poor results without him. And without a lot of other models of electoral success — John McCain and Mitt Romney lost; George H.W. Bush was a one-termer, and George W. Bush ended his tenure as an extremely unpopular president — it’s not clear how the GOP breaks out of the trap….
Yeah, if Trump beats them and becomes President again, these Democrats ought to feel great about them and their strategy.
Then, they can work on ginning up MAGA candidates in the 2026 primaries, because the “Blue Wave” in the Trump midterm will be certain to come.
Also, this Nate Silver post is from a year ago. November 8, 2023.
A year ago, a whole lot of people would be surprised that in October of 2024, Trump would appear to be ahead.