Sunday, December 4, 2022
Topic: Politics
Content Type: Opinion
Keywords:
election, mid-term
2022 Mid-Term Post-Mortem
It's no secret that the Republicans greatly underperformed expectations in the 2022 mid-terms. On average, the out-of-power party typically gains more than 25 seats in a mid-term election. As of writing, Republicans gained 9 seats, and there is one seat left to call. In a year where the President is as unpopular as any predecessor, and inflation is at a 40 year high, Republicans were expecting much more than they obtained.
What went wrong? Why did they underperform so spectacularly? There have been many theories posited, but none have been enormously satisfying. To work toward an answer, Republicans have announced that they will review the 2022 election to determine why they performed so woefully.
This is a necessary and welcome step, but for several reasons, I have little confidence that it will help clarify the 2022 election. For one, the people involved are all politicians. Kellyanne Conway did get Trump elected, so she has some knowledge and experience she can bring to bear but I'm concerned that she's too beholden to Trump to fully consider the possibility that Trumpism was to blame. Blake Masters lost his election which could provide insights into what he did poorly, if he is a clear-headed person, but is more likely to lead to mis-emphasis and mistaken conclusions.Secondly, Republicans did a post-mortem after Romney lost and decided they needed to moderate on the immigration issue. Then Trump was elected after notoriously not moderating on that issue.
Here are the theories I'd like the committee to consider. For each, I'd want a section of the report that lays out the theory, the evidence for it, the evidence against it, how important the committee believes it was to the results, and what can be done in the future to prevent it.
Was it Issue-based?
Some argue that Republicans don't stand for anything and that hurt them with independent voters who didn't have anything to vote for. I've always thought Republicans should push a positive agenda, but I've also come to understand that Republicans aren't good at defending their agenda, that much of their agenda is complicated and hard to defend, and that running on nothing has worked for them in the past. This is a really interesting question because Republicans have actually been gaining on the issues (and this) Inflation and crime are two issues where Republicans had a commanding lead and were top of mind for voters, yet Republicans still lost.
Two issues where Republicans did not have an advantage were abortion and election "denialism". Abortion is the issue that many analysts are claiming made the difference. Especially for independents. I can believe that. Some have also made the argument that it was the democracy issue. If either of these is true, it represents a massive failure of Republican messaging. For abortion, while a majority of Americans supported Roe v. Wade, when polled more precisely about abortion policy, a majority supports banning late-term abortions with a cutoff somewhere between 12-15 weeks. The Mississippi law, which was the basis of the challenge under Dobbs, because it was questionable whether it would be allowed under Roe, would've banned abortions past 15 weeks. Neither side's base is in line with popular opinion on abortion, yet Democrats have convinced the public that they're the majority and Republicans are extremists. Republicans need to push back harder on Democrats on abortion. Most Republican-led states have laws in line with majority opinion, while most Democrat-led states are pushing for unrestricted abortion. It is the Democrats who are the extremists.
The democracy issue is similar to abortion in that Democrats and the media have effectively painted Republicans as extremists. There's obviously something to that because of Trump and his accolades' claiming the election was fraudulent or that they wouldn't abide by results. But Democrats aren't guiltless here: Hakeem Jeffries, Jamie Raskin, etc. Not to mention Biden's student loan forgiveness diktat, his continuing use of Covid emergency powers, his attempt to continue the eviction moratorium that the Supreme Court warned him not to do and then struck down when he did, the vaccine mandate end-run he tried. There are many examples Republicans could use against Democrats to blunt the impact of the "election deniers".1
The risk of running on issues is that even a hint about maybe cutting any money from any government program from a single person while no one else wants to talk about it and says nothing about it gets turned into 'Republicans have decided to cut Social Security'. Every reasonable person knew that the NY Times and Biden were blowing up what Rick Scott said to scare seniors and independents for Democrats' political gain, but both are adept at selling molehills as mountains. If your agenda is based on reducing the debt and the size of government and any hint of any reduction, no matter how minor will be magnified to 'Republicans have already decided in secret to zero-out your retirement and deprive you of medical care when you turn 65', it's no wonder that Republicans want to stay silent on issues.
Money
I haven't spent as much time looking into these issues, but were Republicans outspent? If so, how much of the differences came from that? Open Secrets reports that Republicans actually outspent Democrats by a few hundred million. Though they allocated their spending differently. I do not have the expertise to judge whether Republicans' allocation was suboptimal. I will say, though, that Democrats outspent Republicans on media by over $100M (~25%), which seems problematic.
I've heard it argued that a lot of Republicans' money came from PACs whose ads cost three or four times more than ads purchased directly by a candidate in the final days of an election. If money was even, but ads cost more for Republicans by virtue of the way they were financed, that's a problem that needs remedying. Some have also already started talking about how Republican money-raisers are raising money for themselves while claiming to raise it for other candidates.
Other Topics
Candidate Quality - This has been discussed frequently by analysts, and certainly should be reviewed by committee. It will be more difficult to address than others, though, because to some extent, Republicans are stuck with who runs and whom voters choose. Many of the candidates were clearly sub-par (for Democrats, too). I will look forward to seeing evidence on how some candidates performed poorly, and what characteristics determined that.
Gerrymandering - Did Democrats win the gerrymandering game and shave off a few seats. Conveniently, 538 has already considered this and concluded that, yes, Democrats gained a couple seats because of gerrymandering.
Turnout - Did Democrats turn out more than Republicans. The very early indications were that young people made the difference and turned out in huge numbers that won the election for Democrats, but those conclusions have been walked back. In fact, Republican turn out was very good, and Democratic turnout was slightly lower. The big question here, though, is whether voters have realigned in a way that mid-term electorates will be consistently more Democratic than before (more upper income, high propensity voters)
Why were the polls off?
Lastly, the committee should consider why the polls were so far off. The generic ballot seemed to perform well, but many of the state contests were pretty far off. New Hampshire, in particular, but also Laxalt in Nevada, Walker in Georgia, and Oz in Pennsylvania. All were leading in the final days, and Laxalt had been ahead for weeks. Incorrect polls lead to misallocation of funds and election efforts and need to be closer to reality.
Notes
1 For what it's worth, this is another example of the uphill battle Republicans have against the media. There were undoubtedly some deeply problematic candidates Republicans ran. Foremost among them was Mastriano, but the media, as it is wont to do, expanded the definition of election denialism to capture more behavior and Republican candidates, and then with help from Democrats including Biden himself, amplified the concern to convince Americans that democracy was teetering on the edge. In the end, nearly all of the candidates who were "election deniers", accepted the results of the election as candidates have always done. Democracy was saved.