2018 mid-term results: not enough Trump voters

In 2016, Donald Trump won about 46% of the vote nationally, 2 points lower than Hillary Clinton. But his support was so artfully distributed that he got the crucial electoral votes of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Two years later, his party was defeated in the US House of Representatives, losing 35 to 40 seats, despite a map whose geography further favors the GOP than the electoral college. It seems, however, that when all of California's votes are recorded, Republicans will have won about 46% of the vote nationwide, almost the same proportion as two years ago.

All this dinner paper about how Trump voters still love Trump was, in other words, pretty much about the money (at least on the whole). It's just that it did not matter.

There have never been enough Trump voters to form a majority of the electorate. And that, more than the backlash of the suburbs or anything else, is what the Republicans did Tuesday. Trump's voters stood with Trump and voted for the Republican, but this time all the others voted for the Democrats. And the Democrats won.

Donald Trump has never been popular

Trump stands out so much in the political landscape that evolutions often appear, neglecting to mention the fact that he had an opponent.

But the central reality of the 2016 campaign is that the candidates proposed by the two main parties were unusually unpopular. The typical scenario of the 21st century presidential campaigns is that even the lost candidate is favorably considered by at least a narrow majority of the population. But 2016 gave us a unique scenario in which both candidates were under water, leaving the voters having approved none of their candidates as a crucial constituency.

Most voters assumed Clinton would win the election. Many of them voted for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. As a result, Trump won a victory at the Electoral College, even though it was less than 50% not only in the three crucial states of the Midwest. but also in Arizona, Florida and North Carolina.

Democrats spent two years after the elections doing what parties lose: recruiting a new generation of candidates, opening up to new activists and internal turmoil, and changing the message (the 2018 announcements focused solely on health , not on Trump). to be mean).

Trump, meanwhile, spent two years acting as if winning 46% of the vote was the greatest achievement in the history of US politics, while in reality, Mitt Romney and John Kerry did better than that and Michael Dukakis almost did the same. He broke his promise to divest himself of his business interests, enact a health care plan that covered everyone, and exceeded expectations by breaking his promise to end tweets and behave in a more presidential manner.

All the while, the press stopped occasionally to notice how attentive Trump was to his base and how perfect he was at combating various fights – with the media, with the Canadian nation, with immigrants, with FBI counterintelligence. division – who played at the sensitivity of his base.

All this was probably true. (Although, again, Romney with wet noodles got a bigger share of the vote.) But it was also a little weird. Winning the presidency by losing the 46-48 popular vote is in line with the rules of the game, but Trump has left a negative margin for error. The calculation was simple: every day, all the Democrats had to consolidate those who did not like Trump and who expelled the Republicans.

But the House GOP seemed confident that their gerrymanders would hold on. And then, when polls in September and October made it clear that this was not the case, Trump started talking about the caravan. The political goal here, we were told, was to get Trump's base to come home, which is more or less the case. Except that 46% of the population is not so large.

Achieving unity is the main challenge of Democrats

One of the main advantages of Democrats to achieve unity in 2018 is that in congressional elections you have the right to nominate different candidates for different positions.

Jared Golden, a young veteran and former Susan Collins staffer in Lewiston, Maine, is an almost perfect candidate to run in the state's second congressional district. And his campaign program heavily focused on everyday populism and racial justice was perfectly suited to the district.

Jacky Rosen ran a very different race in the very different state of Nevada, bringing together the coalition of Latinos and white-trained professionals who elected Catherine Cortez-Masto two years ago and who now places this dynamic state under democratic control. total.

Lucy McBath has assembled a very different coalition, probably the coalition of the long-term future of Democrats, in a diverse and largely upscale neighborhood of Atlanta's prime suburbs, while Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio defeated their victories in the Red States. based on the liberalism of the old work.

The challenge in a presidential race is that you can only present one candidate in a diverse country.

Trump has the same challenge. But its advantage is that even though its base is not the majority of the country, it is very homogeneous. Nearly 90% of Trump's electors were white and more than 70% had no university degree. This means very basic calls to the white identity policy of the working class as well as the promise of anti-abortion judges for evangelicals educated at the university to maintain the grassroots.

Bench

Clinton's coalition, on the other hand, had about a third of white professionals and about a third of working-class minorities (themselves divided into black and Latino voters). About a quarter were working-class whites, joined by a smaller but influential group of non-whites trained in middle school.

Holding this group together is objectively difficult. Golden's biography, personality, and platform that has worked in Maine may not be as appealing to McBath voters in Nevada, and McBath will struggle to appeal to Golden voters. Trump voters who still love Trump are not in the majority, but to get a majority, you have to tie them all together, which is difficult.

But hard does not mean impossible.

Charisma – the X factor that propelled JFK, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama to the White House, has allowed Beto O 'Rourke to achieve an unprecedented performance for a Texas Democrat and become the instant superstar of the day. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez in New York – is a traditional part of the formula. But fear too. In 2016, Clinton was handicapped not only by some of her shortcomings as a candidate, but also by the fundamental reality that everyone thought she would win. Nobody feels like a cheap date.

By 2018, everyone knew better. And if they feel the same in 2020, Trump is doomed.