Indies went Dem in the midterms. Here's why.

Republicans succeeded in one of their top goals this year: They brought more of their party’s voters to the polls than did Democrats. But in the course of energizing their core voters, Republicans in many states lost voters in the political center—both independents and many Republicans who are uneasy with elements of the party’s focus under Mr. Trump.

Control of the House and Senate, which had seemed poised to land with the Republican Party, is coming down to a handful of races that so far are too close to call, though the GOP remains on track to winning a narrow majority in the House. Republicans have won nearly 5.5 million more votes in House races than have Democrats, a tally by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds, as many voters were motivated by anxiety over high inflation and a low opinion of President Biden’s response.

At the same time, Republican analysts said their unexpectedly weak showing in the election indicated that they had failed to press hard enough on those issues. In Michigan, the Republican Party’s state committee said a failure to talk to voters in the political center was a central reason that Tudor Dixon, the party’s Trump-endorsed nominee for governor, was crushed in a 10 percentage point defeat by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. …

“Motivating the base makes sense, but you have to make sure your party doesn’t nominate people who are so flawed that your base can’t accept them,” said Fred Yang, a Democratic pollster.

He said that was the case in places such as Arizona and accounts for why GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters, who aligned himself with Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud and said he would support national abortion restrictions, not only lost independent voters by more than 30 points but also forfeited 14% of Republicans to his rival, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, who won. By contrast, only 2% of Democrats backed Mr. Masters, AP VoteCast found.