GOP had all the ingredients for a 2022 red wave except good candidates
Zachary Faria
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Republican turnout during the 2022 midterm elections outpaced Democrats, and the GOP made larger gains with women and Hispanics. Still, the party failed to secure expected gains. Its unimpressive election performance is yet another point that illustrates that the GOP’s problem is the terrible candidates being nominated in major races.
According to a report by the Pew Research Center, a larger percentage of voters who backed former President Donald Trump in 2020 voted in the midterm elections than did voters who backed President Joe Biden. More Democrats stayed home in 2022, and the few voters who switched ballots over the past three election cycles were more likely to be Democrats backing Republicans than the other way around.
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On top of that, the GOP cut the Democratic Party’s margins among women voters from 18 points in the 2018 “blue wave” to just three points in 2022. Democrats won 60% of Hispanics just as they did in 2020, 12 points lower than the 72% they won in 2018.
In summary, even with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Democrats making abortion a major issue, Republicans generally had better turnout across the country and lost women voters by only three points. All the ingredients for the expected “red wave” were there but one: decent candidates at the top of the ticket.
Republicans ran terrible candidates for governor in Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Republicans came closer to winning governor’s races in blue states such as New Mexico, New York, and Oregon than they did in swing states Michigan and Pennsylvania, while Kari Lake lost in Arizona on the same ballot that the state’s Republican treasurer (who was a nominee for governor before bowing out of the primary) won by double digits.
Terrible GOP candidates were put forward for Senate races as well in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, leading to Republicans losing all four races as well as control of the Senate. And the terrible candidates at the top of the tickets took the wind out of GOP House candidates, leading to a majority of just nine seats at the time. And the GOP wasn’t immune from nominating losers to House races either, including giving away a seat in Washington that a generic Republican should win by double-digit points.
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GOP House candidates rode the red wave in states with strong GOP candidates leading the way, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and New York governor candidate Lee Zeldin. It should have been the case nationwide, but the combination of fealty to Trump and the losers he endorsed, as well as general apathy from GOP leaders who thought voters would simply hand them elections regardless of quality, led to embarrassing losses.
Republicans appear to have mostly settled the latter issue, but it won’t matter if the party puts another loser, like Trump, at the top of every ticket in the presidential race to drag the party down across the board once again.