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(Trends Wide) — Donald Trump finds himself in a stronger position to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination than he has in months, as his party rallied behind him following his indictment by a New York grand jury on fraud charges. commercial.
But the actual results on the ground still suggest the former president may not be good for the Republican brand among the general electorate.
On the day of Trump’s appearance in Manhattan on Tuesday, Democratic-backed Janet Protasiewicz celebrated victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race as liberals won control of the top court in the latest swing state.
That result is just part of a larger story in which Democrats and Democratic-backed candidates across the country have fared better in this year’s election than Joe Biden in their states or districts in 2020. And it’s potentially a augurs well for the fortunes of the Democrats in 2024.
Wisconsin Lessons
The result in Wisconsin sums up the Republican problem. Biden carried the state by less than one point in 2020, after Trump carried it by a similar margin four years earlier. The Badger State is one of the few to have voted for the winner in the last four presidential elections, and it is one of the few to have a US Senator from each party.
Protasiewicz’s 11-point margin of victory over his Republican opponent is a relative explosion compared to Biden’s 2020 performance in Wisconsin.
We may also see the outperformance of Democrats in Wisconsin in another election on Tuesday, this one a state Senate race in the Milwaukee area. While it’s not talked about as much as the state Supreme Court pick, Republicans needed to keep the seat open to win a supermajority in the state Senate.
The Republican candidate won, but only by 2 points. This marked a 3-point top performance for the Democratic nominee, as Biden lost the district by 5 points in 2020.
Wisconsin’s results match up well with what we’ve seen so far in the 2023 special election across the country.
In the only federal special election so far this year, Democrat Jennifer McCllean topped Biden’s 2020 margin in Virginia’s 4th congressional district by 13 points.
In the average of nearly 20 special state legislative elections, Democrats did about 4 points better than Biden’s margin, on average.
The president, of course, won the 2020 election, so the fact that the political environment seems better for Democrats now than it did then bodes well for his party.
It also marks a big difference from what we saw in 2019 when Democrats in special elections were nearly on par with Hillary Clinton’s margins in 2016. That came after Democrats edged out Clinton in the 2018 midterms. It was a sign that the 2020 election could be close.
an unpopular president
What makes the strong showings by the Democrats this year especially rare is that they are happening with Biden’s approval rating stuck in the low 40s. Normally, you wouldn’t expect the party of an unpopular president to do so well in the election. out of year
This suggests that the factors currently at play are similar to those in the second half of 2022. Following the US Supreme Court decision to quash Roe v. Wade in the middle of the year, Democrats began to surpass Biden’s 2020 margins in districts that held special elections.
And the Democrats had a historically exceptional night in the November midterms. They more than held their own, even though Biden’s approval rating was well above 50%.
Midterm exit polls revealed that many voters who disliked Biden or Trump voted Democrat. Nearly all of the key races in the states likely to decide the presidency in 2024 were Democratic. Put another way, Biden was not the deciding factor you might have expected him to be among swing voters. Trump also took into account his vote, even though he was not president.
Neither abortion nor Trump seem to disappear as a problem in 2023.
Abortion was at the forefront of the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and liberals hoped that a Protasiewicz victory would provide them with a majority to legalize the procedure statewide.
And Trump remains the clear favorite for the Republican nomination for president, despite his impeachment and continued unpopularity with the general electorate.
If those things don’t change by 2024, the Republicans may be in big trouble.
