There’s a narrative emerging that Trump getting blown out may not affect down-ballot races, especially Congressional races. According to a number of polls, Democrats only hold a small lead in the generic Congressional ballot. Analysts believe that more voters want to see a check on Clinton than want to promote her agenda. That may be true but it doesn’t account much for the people who are driven to the polls by presidential campaign and might not show up at all this year.
Voter turnout in presidential years is considerably higher than in non-presidential years. In North Carolina, for instance, the percentage of registered voters who show up in presidential years is almost 70%. The percentage who show up in non-presidential years is about 45%. That 25% of the electorate is driven almost exclusively by the presidential contest. Their votes in races below presidential are mostly incidental. They aren’t thinking that much about why they’re voting one way or the other and are mostly following a party line.
Survey research is a pretty good reflection of the opinions of the people polled at a given time but polls are lousy predictors of voter turnout. That’s why they so seldom accurately reflect wave elections. Not a lot of people were predicting the scope of the wave elections that hit in 2006, 2010, or 2014, even if they indicated which party was favored overall. The 2008 election felt like it was going to be very big for Democrats because the Obama campaign was such a relief following the tumultuous end of the Bush years.
Right now, the RCP average has Clinton leading Trump in North Carolina by 2.9%. If Clinton wins by that margin, then Democrats will do well up and down the ballot because it will probably mean a lot of Republicans sat this one out. We can already see that trend in the mail-in ballots, a method of voting traditionally dominated by the GOP. Republicans are significantly behind their 2012 numbers while Democrats and Unaffiliated voters are ahead of theirs.
If Trump gets blown out, it will be as much a reflection of Republican-leaning voters who don’t show up on election day as it will be a decision by independent or GOP voters to vote against him. These missing voters will cause the wave that helps down-ballot Democrats. If Trump gets blown out nationally and voters choose Republicans down the ticket, then the country is not really as polarized as we’ve all been led to believe.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
The Trump campaign revealed divisions in the Republican Party, a party already splintering with the emergence of the Tea Party faction. The Trump faction has fractured the GOP into more bits. The Trump faction has opened a wound in the body politic representing an existential threat to the Republican Party and to the nation.
Arising out of the racist lie that the President of the United States is misbegotten because his blackness comes from his purported birthplace in Kenya, the Trump campaign found traction in the muck of subterranean bigotry. The simmering stew of animosity came to a boil with the addition of anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican sentiment. The Trump rallies have been an embarrassment to the country, a display of racial antipathy most Americans thought was left decades ago in a dark chapter of the American past.
The Trump campaign reignited the passions of white supremacists who emerged this year from the shadows to howl at phantasms. He has given racists permission to wear t-shirts with racist epithets in the public square and has promised to provide bail and lawyers to supporters who smack protesters around. Emboldened by the superheated climate, bomb throwers for Trump have amplified the nasty rhetoric.
The quiet, friendly neighbor who begins to hyperventilate about blacks, Mexicans and Muslims reveals a racist core we did not see before the Trump campaign. No longer just the party of our crazy uncles, Republicans now wear the stain of racism as a badge of honor. We see our friends and family members marching off to fight the ignoble battle. They grip their guns more tightly and take aim at Americans that who them no harm.
Thanksgiving may not be as much fun this year. There may be blood on the lawn.
take aim at Americans that mean them no hard.