President Joe Biden may have a useful foil in November besides former President Donald Trump: Vote against “Make America Great Again” Republicans.
Polls in Arizona show Trump leading Biden by 3 to 6 points. However, Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake is trailing her Democratic opponent by up to 8 points. The divisive former news anchor failed to run for governor in 2022 after promoting Trump's false claims about election fraud.
Why I wrote this
In Arizona and North Carolina, MAGA Republicans are stirring up controversy and boosting Democratic opponents even as former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden.
In North Carolina, the latest poll shows Trump leading by 2 points, while Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson leads the Democratic candidate by 8 points. Robinson, the state's lieutenant governor, has called homosexuality “filth” and proposed banning abortion. concept.
Some Republican-leaning voters in these states may split their ballots, voting for both Mr. Trump and the Democrats, or leave the no option blank. But some may ultimately decide to stay home.
“Mark Robinson is a bigger threat than any legal challenge facing Donald Trump,” said Paul Shoemaker, a North Carolina Republican strategist who worked for one of Robinson's main opponents. he says.
President Joe Biden has a useful helping hand in November, beyond his supposed opponent, former President Donald Trump, by voting against “Make America Great Again” Republicans. There may be.
Voter enthusiasm for the presidential race could be delayed because the top of the ticket includes a rematch of two very familiar and unpopular candidates. And operatives on both the left and right fear that a small number of controversial pro-Trump candidates in key battleground states could cost Republicans winnable Senate seats and governorships, which in turn could lead to Trump He said it could even damage his presidential hopes.
This is called the coattail effect, and it actually has a negative effect.
Why I wrote this
In Arizona and North Carolina, MAGA Republicans are stirring up controversy and boosting Democratic opponents even as former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden.
“This is, for lack of a better word, a negative trickle-up,” said Matt Grodsky, a Democratic strategist and former communications director for the Arizona Democratic Party.
In the key battleground state of Arizona, polls currently show Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden by 3 to 6 points. But Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake is trailing her Democratic opponent there by up to eight points. The divisive former news anchor will not run for governor in 2022 after promoting Trump's claims of election fraud and calling late Arizona Sen. John McCain a “loser.” was unsuccessful. She then refused her concession and filed a lawsuit, which was later dismissed.
Similarly, in North Carolina, which Trump narrowly won in 2020, the latest Quinnipiac poll shows the former president leading Biden by just 2 points, while Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson is leading Democrat It is shown that he is 8 points lower than his opponent. The state's lieutenant governor has called homosexuality “filth,” suggested a ban on abortion and called Parkland school shooting survivors “spoiled, angry, know-it-all kids.” It made headlines for calling it that.
Some Republican-leaning voters in these states may choose to split their ballots, such as voting for both Trump and the Democrat, or leave the no option blank. . Some may decide to stay home or change their minds about supporting Trump.
“Mark Robinson is a bigger threat than any legal challenge facing Donald Trump,” said Paul Shoemaker, a North Carolina Republican strategist who worked for one of Robinson's main opponents. he says. Shoemaker says the gubernatorial candidate's inflammatory statements could sink the state for Trump. “If you have a weak candidate voting down and you have a strong top candidate, how do you weaken that candidate? By tying him down. …That's Politics 101.”
Since Trump was elected president in 2016, many Republican candidates have leaned into his MAGA brand, but few have been able to capitalize on it to victory. As Grodsky notes, the past two election cycles have shown that Trump is unique in many ways, and that voters rejected candidates who tried to emulate Trump's populist style at the state level. It has proven that there are many things.
mid-term setbacks
Republicans learned this firsthand during the 2022 Congressional midterm elections. Democrats outperformed expectations and took back the Senate after several President Trump-backed candidates battled with moderate voters. Democrats are now hoping, and some Republicans are worried, that this fall will be a repeat of two years ago, but this time the White House is also at stake.
This week, reports surfaced that Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy of Montana, a former Navy SEAL whom Trump called an “American hero,” had given conflicting stories about a gunshot wound he allegedly sustained while deployed to Afghanistan. did. In Ohio, Bernie Moreno, a car dealer and MAGA standard-bearer, easily won the primary, defeating a traditional Republican whom Democrats saw as the bigger threat. Dave McCormick, a Republican Senate candidate in Pennsylvania, is facing accusations that he actually lives in Connecticut, which is a false accusation that the state's 2022 Republican Senate candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, It evokes similar carpetbagger claims that contributed to its downfall.
This term's Senate map is strongly Republican, with Democrats defending five seats that are likely to be ousted or picked up by Republicans, and the remaining four seats potentially in jeopardy. In contrast, Republicans have only two seats ranked as “likely to go Republican,” with all the rest considered safe.
But a similarly Republican-leaning map in 2022 wasn't enough to defeat a controversial MAGA-leaning candidate. Some of those Republicans boosted their efforts to win the nomination by running ads that accused Democratic groups of being “too conservative” or too aligned with Trump. It's a tactic Democrats have quietly repeated in states like Ohio.
Still, Democrats say they need to take seriously the possibility of a MAGA candidate winning in November. In North Carolina, Democratic Party Chairman Anderson Clayton points out that Robinson, the state's current lieutenant governor, has already been elected statewide once.
“The bottom of the ballot will help the top of the ballot, uniquely in my state,” Clayton said. “But we need to educate voters about who these candidates are so we can get the opposite support.”
Some analysts remain skeptical that the down-ballot race will ultimately have a major impact on the presidential election.
“Trump is a very polarizing figure for Democrats, and so is Biden for Republicans. Motivating people is a top priority,” said Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego. To tell. “Politics has become so nationalized and driven by attitudes focused on the presidency that there isn't much room for candidates to carve out a ticket to differentiate themselves.”
How many split voters are there?
In recent years, as polarization has increased, the number of split voters (those who support candidates from different parties at the same time) has declined. The 2020 election had the lowest level of ticket split since Pew Research Center began tracking data in the early 1970s.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Democratic Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Jon Tester (Montana) are up for re-election this year in states that were reliably Republican in the presidential election. In 2016 and 2020, popular Republican governors won New Hampshire and Vermont, even though Hillary Clinton and Biden led those states. Despite Biden's apparent victory in this year's Maryland Senate race, popular former Gov. Larry Hogan (Republican) is currently in the lead.
North Carolina has a particularly strong history with splitting tickets. Trump and Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper won the state in the past two presidential elections. Current Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Stein was reelected as state attorney general in 2020, the same year Robinson was first elected lieutenant governor.
But some observers say some Republican voters, who told pollsters they support Trump but are turned off by Robinson's controversial stance, ended up turning to the former president. It has also been suggested that the government may also turn away.
“Most of us watching the state are trying to see how the gubernatorial race will affect the presidential race,” said Michael Bitzer, a political scientist at Catawba College in North Carolina. With Trump and Robinson, “we have two Republican candidates at the top of the race, and they're very aligned with each other,” he added. “Can they cross that 'that's too much for me' threshold in a little middle ground in North Carolina?”
