Trump voters - where will they go?

Donald Trump lost the November 3, 2020 U.S. election but he gained 11 million more votes over his 2016 total. Trump was the issue on the ballot, and more Americans despised him than liked him, so his Democratic opponent Joe Biden won 15 million more votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Trump appealed to voters for a number of different reasons, but his economic populism and racism were of greatest importance. While it can't be specifically calculated from from the results, I hypothesize that he had a particularly strong appeal to an unknown number of voters, but numbering in the millions, who saw him as charismatic and who strongly identified with him and his views, however repugnant. This appeal did not necessarily extend to other voters who supported the Republican party or who neatly fit its ideological categories. I suspect that most are deeply racist. These Trump loyalists would have voted the straight Republican ticket, making a critical difference in down ballot races. These voters belonged to Trump and not other Republicans. If he is not on the ballot, a significant percentage are not likely to be interested in voting. Most are likely low information voters. 

Jon Ossoff (left) and Raphael Warnock

Can we find any evidence of this? The only elections to have taken place since November 3rd were the two Georgia Senate run-off elections held January 5, 2021. Two Democrats, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, were victorious in the special elections, giving the Democrats control of the Senate. For that reason alone understanding what happened in Georgia matters a great deal going forward. Of the two contests, the Ossoff race had the potential to be more revealing because the Warnock contest was a multi-candidate affair.

Here is a quick summary based on a Washington Post article on the January 5th result by Philip Bump:

• Counties with larger Black populations shifted more heavily to Ossoff... comparing Ossoff’s percentage of the vote in November with what he earned in January shows how his support jumped more in counties with denser Black populations. 
• While those shifts in heavily Black counties were important, we should not undervalue the drop in support for (incumbent Senator David) Perdue in less heavily Black counties, too. Perdue’s vote total decreased the most relative to November in more heavily White counties.

Here is Bump's key conclusion:

• In just counties that are about 30 percent Black or less, he (Perdue) saw a drop of 190,000 votes to Ossoff’s 70,000 votes — more than his margin in November. One likely reason: The lack of Trump on the ballot directly meant that fewer Republicans motivated by Trump came out to vote.

For Democrats increasing turnout in black counties mattered significantly, but so also did the drop in the white vote in less black counties. Political organizing by Democrats, led by former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, made a big difference but loss of white Trump voters also mattered.  

A poll conducted a few weeks later by the University of Georgia for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper confirmed the transformed political landscape in the formerly safe red state of Georgia. Among the findings: 

• 57%, say that Trump is responsible for a “great deal” or a “good amount” of blame for stirring up the deadly mob on Jan. 6 that attempted to block certification of Biden’s election victory at the U.S. Capitol. 
• Fresh from their upset victories, the state’s two new Democratic U.S. senators are on solid footing. About 50% of Georgians have a favorable view of Ossoff, compared with 40% unfavorable. And Warnock, facing a reelection bid next year, has a 54% approval rating, with 37% disapproving of him.
• Regarding Trump, a solid majority of Georgians disapprove of the former president in the weeks since he left office, with 57% giving him an unfavorable rating, compared with just 40% who approved of his performance in the White House.

The elections and the poll strongly suggest that this formerly red state, now purple, is heading in the direction of becoming blue.

A recent analysis by the same newspaper also found:

Control of the U.S. Senate was on the line, but many Georgia Republicans — at least some deterred by Donald Trump’s loss — stayed home rather than cast ballots in January’s runoffs.

Their absence at the polls helped swing Georgia and the Senate to the Democrats.

Over 752,000 Georgia voters who cast ballots in the presidential election didn’t show up again for the runoffs just two months later, according to a new analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of recently released voting records.

More than half of the no-shows were white, and many lived in rural areas, constituencies that lean toward Republican candidates...

Meanwhile, 228,000 new voters cast ballots in the runoffs who hadn’t voted in the Nov. 3 election. They were more racially diverse and younger voters who tend to back Democrats.

As Georgia goes....

Critical to the success or failure of the Biden administration will be the outcome of the midterm elections to House of Representatives and the Senate in 2022. For Democrats, while the map for the Senate is relatively positive, it has generally been true that midterm elections don't produce positive results for incumbent parties. 

However, when you look closely, one finds that there have been specific reasons for each midterm result.  One must also remember that the current era is highly polarized. In earlier periods successful presidents often had long coatails that brought victory for numerous representatives and senators along with them in the presidential election. This is no longer the case. It was often the marginal victors in a presidential year who were most likely to lose a midterm contest. As political analyst Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report asks: Is the midterm a referendum on Biden or on Trump?  

I am not sure she is right (Trump may actually focus more on making money and staying out of jail) but it is possible Trump will seek a significant political role going forward. Amy Walter clearly thinks so:

Unlike previous presidents — especially those who lost re-election, he isn't interested in retreating from public view. He — and those who support his brand of politics — are going to play a much more significant role than we've seen in modern times. Whether it is Trump stepping into competitive primaries to exact revenge on those who voted to impeach him, or a state party voting to censure one of its most promising Senate candidates — the infighting among the GOP will be a factor in determining the kinds of candidates who will be on the ballot in 2022.

It's also unclear at this point what role the attacks on the Capitol on January 6th will have on the opinions of Trump and GOP members of Congress.

As my colleague Charlie Cook has noted, "unreleased survey research—both quantitative polls and qualitative focus groups—since the January 6th attack on the Capitol suggests that between 25 and 30 percent of Trump voters now have very mixed feelings about having backed him. They are less likely to believe that the election was stolen, and they were alarmed by the attack in Washington. They care more about the coronavirus pandemic and the direction of the economy.

These voters aren't necessarily open to voting for Democrats, but they may be less willing to come out and vote for a GOP candidate who identifies him/herself so closely with Trump or the more Trumpian factions in Congress. Given that these Trump-conflicted voters are more likely to be living in a congressional district or county that is more purple than dark-red, their absence could be critical in determining control of the House and Senate. 

The most likely factors to be decisive in 2022 are dealing with the pandemic, which the Biden administration seems likely to handle adroitly, and the economy, which will have to be recovering well. However, there are going to be voters who only wish to vote if Trump is actually on the ballot, as appears to have happened in the Georgia Senate elections. In addition, I suspect that January 6th is a point of departure for Trump and not in a good way.

 The Hill an online newspaper covering Capitol Hill argued that the split in GOP ranks could portend disaster:

The Republican Party is riven by internal tensions, and moderate voices fear it is headed for disaster at the hands of the far right.

The centrists’ worry is that the party is branding itself as the party of insurrectionists and conspiracy theorists. This spells catastrophe for the GOP’s ability to appeal beyond a hardcore base, they say.

As an example, in Colorado in the six days following the January 6 insurrection, 4600 Republicans changed their party registration. There is a vast amount of video of the riot that will be shown repeatedly on air during the impeachment trial. Given what we know so far about the reaction, it is clear this will not be good for Trump's political future.  A similar phenomenon happened in Arizona.

A Canadian Precedent

What can happen when a populist figure is no longer on the political scene has an antecedent in Canada. John Diefenbaker was Prime Minister of Canada from 1957 to 1963. While not at all like Trump some of his appeal to voters was as a populist figure. He pulled voters to the polls in 1958 when he won a landslide for his Progressive Conservative Party. But they were gone by the time he sought re-election in 1962.  Although his popularity declined in much of the country he did hang on to considerable support in his political home in Saskatchewan all the way through to his last campaign in 1965 when he won all the seats in the province that year. However, by the next campaign in 1968 when Pierre Trudeau was winning his first majority government, in Saskatchewan the disappearance of Diefenbaker led to the loss of  20 percent of the PC vote, which in turn led to a revival of NDP fortunes in the province. The NDP had won only one seat in 1958 and had been shut out ever since. Even Tommy Douglas lost his bid for a seat in 1962. In 1968 post-Diefenbaker the NDP won 6 seats.  

A Republican Party without Trump is not the same party and would not have the same appeal.