Republicans Elected Joe Biden
A "Proud Republicans for Biden" sign is shown at the Democrat Campaign Headquarters, June 29, 2020, in Wildwood, Florida. JOHN RAOUX, AP
Results from down ballot show strong republican turnout – just not always for the president
The US Presidential election is finally over. While the incumbent is still sponsoring numerous legal challenges in several states he has also relented to the transition process beginning. Joe Biden will be president.
And he may have Republicans to thank for it.
Republican Gains
Four years ago Donald Trump famously foiled the polls and Hillary Clinton. He won in no small part, as progressive strategist Ruy Teixeira told The Hill, “because people switched from Obama to Trump”. He pulled independent and former Democratic voters into a winning coalition.
Which appears to be exactly what Joe Biden has done to win this year, but with Republicans voting for him --- or at least because they didn’t vote for Trump.
Republicans turned out in force this election. The expected blue wave never materialized --- Democrats may have outspent Republicans 2-to-1, sometimes 3-to-1, but they have very little to show for it.
The GOP gained seats in the House. Even if both of Georgia's Republican Senate candidates lose the state's mandatory runoff elections, the Democrats will still only control a 50-50 chamber because of Vice President Kamala Harris’s casting vote. Their agenda will be severely constrained.
Every incumbent Republican governor was re-elected and the GOP won the open seat in Montana. In 2021, Republicans will control 59 of the country’s 98 partisan legislative bodies (Nebraska has a single, nonpartisan chamber), including New Hampshire’s House and Senate, flipping red this year in a state that voted Biden.
In a dozen states, Republican candidates for the Senate gained more votes than Trump. In Texas, more than 100,000 voters chose Sen. John Cornyn but not Trump. Two thousand West Virginians voted red for the Senate but not for the White House. Four thousand people in Wyoming, 15,000 in South Dakota, and 16,000 in New Mexico backed a Republican senator but not the President. Republican voters in Nebraska, Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, and Arkansas either voted for Biden or left the top of the ballot blank.
In 5 of 11 states voting for Governor, the Republican candidate got more votes than the President, including in Biden wins by large margins in Vermont and New Hampshire. Trump had less support than Republican candidates for the House in key states such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
In the once-reliable red states of Alaska and Georgia, the signs were even starker. Georgia’s House candidates had more support than Trump. So did Sen. David Perdue, even as he was forced into a runoff with challenger Jon Ossoff.
Trump did expand his coalition a bit compared with 2016, especially among minorities. More Muslims, Hispanics, Asians, and Blacks voted for him. The only group were he lost significant support from was white voters – the only demographic strongly favoring Republicans.
Yes, more people voted for Donald Trump than for any Republican Presidential candidate in history, but both in states he won and in states he lost, Trump was frequently the most unpopular Republican on the ballot.
Speaking Ill
To say that Trump has been a divisive political figure is not an understatement; it’s true to the point of parody. Even before he became a viable candidate, Trump was publicly denounced by Republicans of all types, from President George H. W. Bush to conservative comic P.J. O’Rourke. His Presidency was dogged by the #NeverTrump movement, constant snipes from Republican journalists, and the organized and well-funded Lincoln Project, dedicated to making him a one-term president.
Trump didn’t do himself any favors in this department. He spent a significant amount of time violating Ronald Reagan’s infamous 11th Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans. From dismissing John McCain’s military service to insulting so many GOP senators that Mitch McConnell had to tell him to stop, Trump has been unapologetically nonpartisan and equal-opportunity in who he excoriates.
Perhaps you can’t spend your time in office embarrassing the party that put you there. Maybe a global pandemic and sputtering economy punished an incumbent. Possibly a nation tired of ill-timed or poorly worded Presidential tweets elected a more traditional leader.
Whatever the reason, Republicans in many places around the country came out to vote for their candidates --- except the one at the top until January 20.
Thomas Brown is a former Republican political consultant, now history teacher and writer. He writes at The Swamp and is featured in Grunge, Quillette, Spiked, The Bipartisan Press, Human Events, among others. Find him on Twitter and his new book is An Honest Man.