Trump losing the nomination won’t cause a GOP turnout problem
Zachary Faria
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The doomsaying from some Republicans that the party can’t win if former President Donald Trump isn’t the nominee is both a terrible way to run a party and simply wrong.
Some GOP strategists are again warning that if Trump does not win the nomination, his most fervent supporters “will take their ball and go home,” putting the party in an unwinnable race in 2024. There is much ado made about Trump’s base and his “unique coalition,” so much so that these strategists apparently do not see a universe where any Republican other than Trump ever wins again.
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The notion of Trump being some unique political force on the national stage has always been wildly overrated. He won in 2016 thanks to a unique combination of the national mood and the national rejection of Hillary Clinton. Of the six states that Trump flipped in 2016 compared to 2012, three of them (Iowa, Ohio, and Florida) are already predisposed to vote for Republicans or have grown more Republican over the past decade. Of the other three, Trump won Wisconsin with fewer votes than 2012 nominee Mitt Romney received when he lost the state.
Moreover, Trump’s “unique coalition” and fervent base have been useless to the GOP over the last three election cycles. That includes his 2020 defeat in which he lost the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and the formerly reliable Republican states of Arizona and Georgia. If such a mediocre political talent as Joe Biden can get enough turnout to become president (against Trump), why are we so convinced that only Trump can muster the turnout to win a presidential election?
In fact, we have seen this play out on a smaller scale in Georgia. Trump declared war against Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) for not stealing the election on Trump’s behalf and recruited former Sen. David Perdue to primary Kemp. Kemp then beat Perdue by 52 percentage points in the primary. Whatever Trump-only Republicans took their ball home for the general election proved to be insignificant, because Kemp then won reelection by 7.5 points in a state that Trump lost.
The percentage of Trump-only GOP voters in the electorate is vastly overestimated. Many of Trump’s most devoted supporters will continue to vote for someone such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) or whomever else the GOP nominates because most of them don’t want Biden (or Vice President Kamala Harris) to win. And even if a small amount of Trump’s biggest supporters stay home, a non-Trump nominee would put suburban voters back on the table for the GOP.
Believe it or not, the political landscape did not freeze in place in 2016. Things change. The idea that the GOP should let Trump hold it hostage because of some unique (and mythical) hold over GOP voters in a general election is absurd. If you truly think that the party can’t win without the guy who lost the last presidential election, then it would seem that your political analysis is broken.