Erickson today: Running on economy worked, stop the steal didn't.

quote:

---

This election was supposed to be a red wave. Everyone, myself included and all the Democrats too, expected it. But it wasn’t.....

I have spent the last few days studying the voting patterns, the voting discrepancies, the exit polling, and more. What emerges is a simple, elegant picture of voters tired of the chaos and would rather stick with the stability of the status quo around which they can plan their lives than the potential of massive disruption by a party, the loudest voices of which want retribution for their own grievances than a different path forward for everyone.

I hesitate to dive too deeply in because everyone has a bias, and the bias reads into explanations. My bias is against Trump as a future candidate. I know that. But the data really does add up. His candidates underperformed generic Republican candidates. Independent voters really are tired of the chaos and were afraid Republican candidates would introduce even more chaos....

For the first time in four elections, independent voters went for the party in power, not out of power. For the first time in a very long time, a sizable portion of the GOP voted Democrat.

Frankly, people are just tired of the chaos. Republicans seemed to offer degrees of chaos. Generic Republicans won. Trump Republicans lost. Culture war Republicans lost. Economic Republicans won. But, importantly, culture war Republicans who ran on economic issues and crime won too. Stolen election Republicans dragged down everyone around them. Kari Lake could have won, but claiming the stolen election was the number one issue was like telling victims of a plague the number one issue is last year’s Christmas tree still being up.

Oz still could have won Pennsylvania, but Mastriano tanked the GOP...

Trump was a problem. Voters rejected Trump-backed candidates. Kari Lake in Arizona outperformed Blake Masters but underperformed the GOP vote in Arizona by six points. She’s so tied to Trump and Trumpism that Republican voters in a slightly Republican-leaning state rejected her. Even Democrats have expected her to win and Republicans voted Democrat to stop her.

When you start hearing about the Arizona election being stolen, remember the GOP congressional level races went very, very well for the GOP. They’re going to win a majority. Lake underperformed the rest of the GOP everywhere in Arizona and Masters underperformed her.

Voters are tired of Trump. It is clearly more of a problem in certain regions of the country than others, but generally, voters are tired of him. Voters in Washington State flipped a R+13 seat where the GOP candidate won a primary against a Republican who’d voted to impeach Trump....

You can complain, again, about McConnell spending money, but he had to pour money into Ohio for Vance when the GOP gubernatorial candidate won massively there. Every dollar spent in North Carolina and Ohio could not be spent in Arizona or Nevada to save other Trump candidates.

Candidate quality mattered. Voters in Pennsylvania had already elected John Fetterman to statewide office. Oz was an interloping transplant who never gelled with Pennsylvania voters. They went for the native vegetable over the transplanted New Jerseyian. ...

When you point to Fetterman and say candidate quality must not matter, you really should be looking at Fetterman and realize Pennsylvania voters thought, “Dammit. He’s still better than that other guy.”

Time and time again, independent and a sizeable portion of Republican voters voted against the newbies who tried to do their best Trump impression. These voters are exhausted by instability.

Abortion mattered. Republicans did quite well in deep blue states where abortion is not threatened. Suburban women in swing states went Democrat over abortion. That was not enough to pull the election away from the GOP in every case, but when combined with independents and Republicans tired of stolen election rhetoric and Trump, it mattered.

Ballot harvesting programs mattered. The Democrats banked big leads before election trajectories changed....

Messaging matters. The GOP had no message. Rick Scott wanted to tax social security. For all the blame Trump acolytes are heaping on McConnell, spare some for Scott whose message was tax increases on social benefits. It played very badly and ruined the GOP’s Senate chances. Rick Scott gave the Democrats a talking point voters could believe because Scott put it in writing....

Turns out funding Ukraine is popular even with Republicans, and all the crazy talk about stopping the funding was not helpful....

The bottom line of this election is that the red wave did not come because voters are exhausted with chaos and radical swings. They want stability and would rather the stability of a Democrat-led disastrous economy than the wild swings that might come with “stop the steal” Republicans.

Again, and this is very important, Republicans who ran on the economy won. Republicans who were tied to Trump lost. Republicans who were tied to Trump in prominent positions dragged down other Republicans around them.

Voters really like generic Republicans. They handed the GOP big wins in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, New York, Iowa, Arizona, Virginia, and more. Tudor Dixon brought the whole thing down on the GOP’s head in Michigan as a Trumpian culture war candidate. Lee Zeldin, in New York, successful unshackled himself from Trump and ran as a generic law and order Republican in New York and saved the GOP the House of Representatives even has he could not save himself.

The GOP needs more Lee Zeldins and less Tudor Dixons.

The good news for Republicans is that these are easy fixes.

Stop with the “stop the steal” conspiracies.
Put the crazies out to pasture. You on the right should now realize just how alienating our fringe is to independents. The “Squad” nearly handed the House to the GOP in 2020 with their alienation of independents. The loud fringe of the GOP nearly cost the GOP the House in 2022.
Work on a ballot harvesting program nationwide.
Stop sounding like assholes on TV.
Focus on constituent service and not punditry on Fox.
Republicans need to show they are grownups and stop performing for social media Twitter bros.
Say it with me: Voters do not like election deniers.
Replace the RNC Chair. We need a more professional operation less tied to the fortunes of one man.
Republicans do not misinterpret the data as voters going left, embracing wokism, or anything close. Understand, independent and Republican voters are simply tired of the GOP being perceived as the party of chaos. If you get that and fix that, you win.

Voters last week decided they’d rather the mess they are in than a potentially worse mess with the agents of chaos who fight, but get nothing done.

It was, in other words, a little bit of everything. The danger is that the GOP will focus on one piece of data and ignore the rest. The data suggests the GOP has a multifaceted problem, but they can overcome it.

An upfront solution is simple — reject Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.

---