Meanwhile, in five straight special elections beginning June 28, Republican House candidates did not do better but worse than the 2020 Republican presidential vote percentage in their districts. They held on to three by narrower margins than expected, failed to flip a district in New York that had gone Democratic by only 2 points in 2020, and lost a seat in historically Republican Alaska. Not exactly a Republican tsunami. If voters were so ready to punish Democrats, why didn’t they do it in actual elections?
Meanwhile, Republicans told themselves that few people really cared about the Jan. 6 assault on democracy. They ignored poll results showing 58% of self-described independent voters saying they would be less likely to choose a candidate who asserts that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. If a party is trying to win independent voters who disapprove of “election deniers” while the vast majority of that party’s candidates are election deniers, that’s a problem.
In general, too many professional Republicans and conservative pundits convinced themselves that the “angry working class” would drive Republican turnout, while ignoring the fear or disgust Trump instills in so many otherwise (if vaguely) right-leaning Americans in suburbia. And they utterly discounted how anti-Trumpism inspires otherwise dispirited liberals (especially young liberals) to vote.
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