"When you turn an election into a three-ring circus, there's always a chance that the dancing bear will win."
—Nancy Isenberg
1) Capitalize on a Divisive Issue
In 1972, the Supreme Court released their landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade, legalizing pre-viability abortion throughout all 50 states. Republicans, recognizing a shiny new tool in their belt, released a national platform in 1980 led by Reagan. Calling for Roe’s repeal, they were able to mobilize a previously untapped evangelical base, the “Moral Majority,” and ultimately win the election. (Abramowitz, 2019, pg. 53)
The “traditional family values” crowd still flocks to Republicans, with 30 percent of pro-life voters in a 2020 Gallup poll indicating that they would only vote for candidates who share their views on this issue (Brenan, 2020). Perhaps Trump truly had his finger on the pulse of the conservative voter when he released his list of potential Federal Society nominees for the Court, giving hope that this perceived moral travesty could indeed be reversed.
The upcoming Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization may reveal if the issue of abortion can remain a cudgel for Republicans. If the Supreme Court kneecaps or ends the practice, Republicans may find themselves with a bit less bluster and bravado on the issue, and the pro-choice crowd may become mobilized in turn.
2) Lose: Fail to Disarm Attack Ads
After the 1988 election, in which George H. W. Bush erased Michael Dukakis’s double-digit lead, negative campaigning became a necessary evil. Attacked as unpatriotic for his opposition to a constitutional ban on flag-burning and weak on crime due to his state’s prison furlough program, the Dukakis campaign was either too inept or too oblivious to counter these attacks effectively. (Shaw, 2006, p. 26)
In 2004, John Kerry similarly failed to effectively answer the younger Bush’s windsurfing attack ad, portraying him as an inconsistent flip-flopper. The contrast between “a New England elitist,” unable to commit on issues from military intervention to Medicare, and a flight suit-clad Bush, declaring “Mission accomplished” in Iraq, proved stark. Ultimately Kerry never recovered fully from the portrayal. (Hetherington & Weiler, 2018, p. 31)
3) Win: Get Out the Vote
Since the birth of the “Get Out the Vote” movement in the early 1990s, and it has been found that “mobilization is perhaps the critical component to contemporary presidential election campaigns” (Shaw, 2006 p. 33). Most voters are already predisposed to a particular party—but a candidate’s ability to translate that support into tangible votes is often the deciding factor in an election.
Consider Georgia. President Joe Biden became the first Democratic president elected in the state since 1992, and the runoff elections sent two Democrats to the Senate for the first time in two decades (Miao, 2021). With over 4.4 million voters, turnout doubled the number who voted in the 2008 runoff elections and surpassed the number cast in the 2016 presidential election (Rakish et al., 2021).
These numbers weren’t some happy accident. While Trump relitigated the 2020 election results and alleged rampant fraud, the New Georgia Project, which focuses on registering people of color and young people to vote, took action. The group knocked on over 2 million doors, sent over 4 million text messages, and made over 6.7 million phone calls in a two-month timeframe (Miao, 2021). The Democratic Party as a whole made over 25 million attempted voter contacts in the same window (Miao, 2021). The legwork paid off, handing Democrats majority control of the executive and legislative branches.
4) Lose: Oversee (and Fail to Fix) a National Crisis
Crisis—whether economic, military, or public health-related—typically falls squarely onto the shoulders of the current administration. Whether the president himself was the catalyst for the catastrophe or simply an unlucky bystander, as Truman famously stated, “the buck stops here.”
In a form of democracy where “retrospective assessments lie at the center,” less is demanded from the uninformed average voter. All that is necessary is the ability to weigh the change in personal circumstances. So, if the world has spiraled into some disastrous dystopian hellscape during the president’s term, voters are likely to address their displeasure at the ballot box. (Geer, 2006, p. 154)
Think Herbert Hoover’s ties to The Great Depression—or Jimmy Carter’s presiding over the Iranian hostage crisis. Throughout the 2020 election, the deadly coronavirus pandemic was inextricably linked to Trump. Self-inflicted or otherwise, the injury from public crisis often decimates an incumbent candidate’s chances.
5) Win: Subtle (or not) Race-baiting
“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger.’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites… ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘Nigger, nigger.’”–Lee Atwater, strategist for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush (McGhee, 2021, p. 33)
Political scientists Lee and Roemer found that Republican policies perceived as anti-Black attracted millions more white voters than their flailing economic policies ever could. This underlying racial resentment led to a less than 1 percent income growth for 90 percent of American families for thirty years. Without racism, the income tax rate would be an estimated 11-18 percentage points higher, and “the fiscal policies in the USA would look quite similar to the fiscal policies in Northern Europe.” (McGhee, 2021, p. 38-39)
Just last month, Glenn Youngkin rode the wave of white fear to the Virginia governor’s mansion. Stoking irrational parental panic, he campaigned against critical race theory—promising to “ban [it] on Day One” (Kreiss, Marwick & Tripodi, 2021). Despite Youngkin’s (and Republicans) complete misrepresentation of the college-level material, the absurd idea of racial shame targeting gullible white fourth-graders was enough to galvanize to an uninformed base, potentially shifting the tide in his favor.
6) Lose: Not Enough Money in the Bank
91 percent of the time, the better-financed candidate wins, with 2012 congressional candidates on average outspending their opponents 20 to 1 (Lowery, 2014). Simply put, money matters—no matter what office a candidate is seeking.
This money isn’t typically from small-dollar donors either—typically, special interest groups and super PACs make a sizeable chunk of a candidate’s cash. Of the over 2800 successful Congressional bids since 2008, only 14 received the majority of their funding from small donors (Vox Media, 2020). Often this can make politicians beholden to those lining their pockets.
How many Republicans openly express interest in climate change legislation despite scientific consensus on the subject? In 2010, the Koch brothers, who provide Republican candidates with substantial funds, signaled that candidates in their party who even acknowledged climate change “would be taken out—they’d be primaried” (DiMaurio & Pehme, 2020). Since then—crickets. Nobody wants to kill the golden goose, even in the interest of preserving our planet.
7) Win (or Lose): Partisan Gerrymandering
GOP mapmaker Thomas Hofeler in 1991 defined redistricting as “the only legalized form of vote-stealing left in the United States today.” By 2001, he had changed his tune: “Of course redistricting is democracy at work” (Vox Media, 2020).
What changed in the decade between? The Republicans had gained control of more state legislatures and were better able to leverage this system to their benefit. Gerrymandering may prove the most determinative factor in the true ability to win an election to this day, and both parties are guilty.
In 2018, Democrats received 205,000 more votes than Republicans in Wisconsin but got only 36 of the 99 state assembly seats—53 percent of the vote, but only 36 percent of the seats (Bump, 2018). Meanwhile, successful gerrymandering by Democrats has helped the party maintain control of 7 out of 8 districts in Maryland.
The Supreme Court has declared that this is a political issue that they are unable to address. But in a world where the right and left can find little agreement, polls show that both Trump and Biden voters are opposed to gerrymandering—by a rate of 88 and 92 percent, respectively (Represent Us, 2021). Partisan consensus is nearly extinct, yet the people agree—the electors should pick the elected, not the other way around.
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