Lessons learned from tumultuous midterms There’s a new political divide
Tuesday’s vote highlighted how Trump has changed the landscape
WASHINGTON — The most tumultuous midterm elections in a generation broke new ground and shook old norms.
What have we learned?
It’s 2020 already
President Donald Trump filed for re-election the day he was inaugurated, and his campaign has already raised $100 million and begun airing TV and digital ads. So it should be no surprise that Trump strode on center stage more aggressively than any other modern president during the election midway through his term. He drew thousands of supporters to huge rallies, where he talked more about himself than the candidates he was there to boost. Some were in states crucial for his re-election prospects. On Monday, he closed the campaign with events in Ohio, Indiana and Missouri, and officially announced his 2020 slogan: “Keep America Great.”
For Democratic presidential hopefuls, the campaign was an opportunity to audition. A stream of potential contenders managed to make their way to Iowa, the state that is slated to hold the opening presidential caucuses. A college diploma is the new political divide. The gender gap – the tendency for women to vote more Democratic than men do – is familiar, a regular feature of American elections since 1980. Now a sharp divide over education has added another dimension and opened a new breach between white voters who have a college degree and those who don’t. (African American voters at all education levels typically cast ballots for Democrats.)
The education gap is particularly spectacular between college-educated white women and noncollege-educated white men.
Going into Tuesday’s election, white college-educated women preferred Democratic congressional candidates by 18 percentage points, a Marist/NPR Poll found, while white men without a college degree backed Republicans by 33 points — a jaw-dropping 51point swing.
This could signal the start of a realignment between the two major parties, with repercussions for presidential elections down the road. Consider this: 41 percent of white men without a college education strongly approved of Trump, one of his best showings. Among college-educated white women, 56 percent strongly disapproved, one of his worst.
‘Obamacare’ is recovering
In the last two midterms, no issue hurt Democratic congressional candidates more than the Affordable Care Act. Backlash to the law contributed to the historic loss of 63 House seats in 2010 – and with that Democratic control – and an additional 13 in 2014.
Since the ACA was enacted in 2009, Republicans campaigned on a promise to repeal it in four successive elections.
But in a turnaround, most of the ads that mentioned “Obamacare” this time were being aired by Democrats who accused Republicans of undermining its protection for patients with pre-existing conditions. The Wesleyan Media Project calculated that close to 60 percent of the TV ads supporting Democratic congressional candidates last month mentioned health care; fewer than 10 percent of Democratic ads did in 2010 and 2014.
Republicans were on the defensive about their vote last year to weaken the law’s protections by allowing states to waive some of its requirements. What’s more, Republican attorneys general in 20 states have joined in a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and would overturn the framework that protects coverage for those with chronic illnesses.
Mega-money talks
Big money. Small money. More money.
Total spending on the midterm elections topped $5.2 billion, the Center for Responsive Politics estimated – not only the most ever spent in a midterm but also the biggest jump in spending in at least two decades. While Republican candidates raised record amounts of money, Democratic candidates raised even more.
“There’s more money in campaigns than you could have ever imagined,” says Stuart Rothenberg, a veteran
analyst with the nonpartisan Inside Elections.
Women roar
In the midterms, Trump defined the emerging Republican Party. Women – as candidates, contributors, voters and activists – defined the emerging Democratic Party.
That began the day after the president was inaugurated, with massive women’s marches promising resistance. What followed was two years of unprecedented activism. Take House races, tracked by Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics: 476 women filed as candidates; the previous record was 298. On Election Day, 237 were on the ballot; the previous record was 167.
Records were broken by female contenders for every sort of office – for governorships, Senate seats, and state legislative races. A record number of women donated to campaigns, the Center for Responsive Politics reported, and often to female candidates. Women contributed $159 million to female Democratic candidates, two-and-a-half times the amount they gave two years ago.
Trump rules
A former Democrat who had never run for political office before his unlikely campaign two years ago is now the face of the Republican Party, redefining its tenets and reshaping its coalition.
The midterm elections underscored how completely Trump commands the GOP. Outsider Trumplike contenders upset establishment favorites for the gubernatorial nominations in Florida and Kansas. The senators most likely to criticize him, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona, decided not to run again. The Republicans on the ballot who openly distanced themselves from the president could be counted on one hand, and not using all five fingers.
“What’s surprising to me is how sustained and intensified the support is for Donald Trump,” said Lawrence Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. “The much-predicted fall of Donald Trump as a candidate and as a political figure has not been the case among Republicans. If anything, he’s picked up a more intense following.”