The Republican Party has seen brighter times.
In the mid-term elections held on Tuesday, the GOP suffered losses in every significant race by a wide margin. Democratic contenders triumphed in the Virginia gubernatorial contest by about 15 points, the New Jersey gubernatorial contest by 13, and the Georgia statewide public commissioner elections by upwards of 25 points. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Supreme Court justices held onto their positions in a resounding victory.
These outcomes collectively demonstrate substantial gains in contrast to the Democratic Party’s performance just a year prior. Kamala Harris carried Virginia and New Jersey by a mere 6 points, while being defeated in Pennsylvania and Georgia by approximately 2.
Surveys had predicted Democratic wins in Tuesday’s key gubernatorial races. However, they severely underestimated the extent of the Democrats’ achievement. The party seems to have both generated unusually strong participation among its core supporters for the mid-term elections — and won over a notable fraction of undecided voters. Truly, Tuesday’s wave of Democratic support surged to a level that buoyed even the Democrats’ most vulnerable candidates: In Virginia, Democratic attorney general hopeful Jay Jones succeeded in clinching a comfortable win, notwithstanding his having expressed the wish for the demise of Republican children in leaked digital messages.
Tuesday’s results will have a directly weakening impact on the Republican Party’s broader political strategy in multiple aspects. As an example, Virginia Democrats are now apt to construct a revised congressional map that is less advantageous for GOP candidates.
Nevertheless, for many Republicans, this year’s elections are most concerning due to what they may indicate about their party’s trajectory. Simply put, the results imply that the GOP has become dangerously dependent on voters who are only motivated to vote for President Donald Trump — an individual who will (almost assuredly) never appear on the ballot again.
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The GOP majority hinges on voters who aren’t that into politics
During the last decade, Trump has reorganized the Republican base. From 2012 to 2024, the GOP augmented its vote share among voters without college degrees by 6 points, while diminishing by 2 points among college graduates.
Nonetheless, Trump did not just forge a Republican base that was less educated – he also fashioned one that was less politically involved. During his period at the helm of the GOP, Americans started to become more divided contingent on their level of political engagement — based on how frequently they had a tendency to vote and the degree to which politics factored into their identity. Highly politically active Americans shifted towards the left, while the detached shifted towards the right.
Initially, this could appear to be a disadvantageous swap for Republicans. Ceteris paribus, you would prefer to have the voters who reliably show up at the polls (hence the reason politicians have historically catered to retirees possessing substantial leisure time on election days). However, Trump’s realignment played out favorably enough for his party — as a result of the numerous politically unengaged, working-class individuals residing in swing states. And in presidential election years, Trump’s distinct charisma was sufficient to galvanize them in considerable numbers.
Possibly the most significant question mark in American politics revolves around what will transpire with the Trump-era realignment once Republicans nominate an alternative candidate.
Still, there had been an underlying issue. Even though Trump’s GOP has maintained its ground in presidential contests, it has tended to underperform in election years with reduced exposure. Democrats dominated the 2018 midterm elections and performed unusually well for a party in power during the 2022 elections. Generally, it would seem that Democrats currently enjoy a lead in elections characterized by reduced turnout, which represents a reversal of the historical pattern over the long term.
In concert, securing two out of three presidential races — with the trade-off of subpar showings in mid-term special elections and specific midterms — isn’t a detrimental agreement. Nevertheless, the anxiety for Republicans concerns whether the upside of this compromise will cease with Trump’s political career.
Absent a constitutional amendment (or upheaval), Trump will never be the GOP’s presidential choice once more. Possibly the most significant question mark in American politics revolves around what will transpire with the Trump-era realignment once Republicans nominate an alternative candidate.
The GOP’s worst-case forecast is that college-educated Never Trumpers will remain firmly Democrats — while less involved, working-class Trump partisans will recede back into political disinterest.
Tuesday’s results render that prospective reality a bit more conceivable. In Virginia and New Jersey, Democrats were dominant in highly educated suburbs that were previously closely contested. Concurrently, Republican turnout in those states was underwhelming, at least in comparison to Democrats’ turnout. Subsequent to examining Tuesday night’s vote tallies, the conservative analyst Erick Erickson despondently declared, “Trump is incapable of driving voter turnout unless his name is on the ballot, and that is now a thing of the past.”
In a multitude of respects, the GOP has been deliberately working to amplify the trend toward the left among highly educated, politically engaged voters. Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s likely successor, has made defending his party’s youthful neo-Nazis a greater priority than rendering Trumpism more palatable for urban, college-educated people. Meanwhile, the president himself has been intentionally driving up consumer prices, targeting his opponents with prosecution, attempting to deplatform his critics, disgracing his office, and participating in blatant acts of corruption.
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Democrats shouldn’t plan their 2028 victory parties just yet
Having expressed all of this, the conclusions of off-year gubernatorial elections are not a dependable guide for anticipating future political developments. Considerable shifts may occur between now and the midterms (not to mention, between now and 2028).
Moreover — specifically due to the fact that Democrats now have an advantage in elections characterized by reduced turnout — Tuesday’s events might provide a deceptively positive representation of the party’s longer-term prospects. When Democrats seized control of the 2023 special elections, numerous members of the party reasoned that it was poised to defeat Trump the subsequent year. But that turned out to be an error. The subset of voters who bothered to show up for off-year elections were simply far more Democratic than the electorate on the whole.
This same trend might replay itself. It is conceivable that the GOP’s least involved supporters will only show up for Trump. Nevertheless, an equally credible hypothesis is that they will only vote during presidential election cycles — in which they will cast their ballots for any MAGA candidate on the ballot. Until Republicans nominate someone other than Donald Trump, we merely cannot ascertain.
Adding to this, the Republican base remains more closely aligned to the United States’s electoral configuration. The median US state exhibits greater conservatism and a larger working-class demographic than the US on the whole. For this rationale, Trump’s GOP has a structural advantage in the contest for Senate majority, one that Democrats still possess poor odds of surmounting in 2026 or 2028.
In any case, the Trump GOP’s reliance on voters with a low inclination to participate is a manifest weakness. And the 2025 elections illustrated the underlying reason: If you seek an image of a Democratic future, envision intensely engaged, suburban upper-middle-class women trampling Vance’s face — for good (or, you know, during the 2028 election).
Source: vox.com
