‘Democracy voters’ delivered for Democrats in tightest races
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden tried to shape the midterm elections not as a verdict on his time in office, but rather on the contrast between Democrats and Republicans on American democracy.
“We’ll have our difference of opinion. And that’s how it’s supposed to be,” Biden said in remarks days before the Nov. 8 elections. “But there is something else at stake: democracy itself.”
The election results reveal both the potential and the problems with Biden’s argument for motivating voters. In states such as Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, voters could look at their ballots and see a clear contrast between Democrats and Republican candidates who falsely claimed the 2020 presidential race was rigged.
Biden’s message resonated with many Democratic voters, AP VoteCast shows, and maybe even helped Democrats to defy gravity in key states in the midterms, which historically have resulted in major losses for the party that holds the White House.
But the nationwide survey of more than 90,000 voters also shows many Republicans similarly considered the future of democracy to be their motivating factor this year, and Democratic candidates didn’t exclusively win the democracy vote.
Across the country, Democratic congressional candidates won roughly 6 in 10 voters who said the future of democracy was their “single most important” factor, while about 4 in 10 backed Republican candidates.
DEMOCRAT VOTES
That gap appears to have been critical in some of the most competitive races for U.S. Senate and governor this year, setting up a stronger than expected performance by Democrats.
In Pennsylvania, Democrats John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro appeared to outperform Democratic House candidates nationwide, earning about twothirds of the “democracy vote.”
Biden made Pennsylvania the epicenter of his midterms push, going there 11 times this year, more than any state other than his home of Delaware.
Also getting about twothirds of the “democracy vote” were Democrats Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs in Arizona. Running for governor, Hobbs beat Republican Kari Lake, a former local TV news anchor who embraced Trump’s denial that he lost his re-election bid two years ago.
In Michigan, too, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer outpaced Republican Tudor Dixon by about two to one among those who considered democracy their chief consideration.
The democratic issue also dovetailed with the Supreme Court decisions that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the issue to the states. In his speeches about democracy, Biden specifically cited abortion bans as a policy goal of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.
Michigan had a ballot issue to preserve access to abortions. About 3 in 4 voters called the Roe reversal an important factor in their vote. Of that group, twothirds supported Whitmer.
RED STATES
But in other battleground states where Republican candidates edged out Democrats and in solidly red states the democracy vote wasn’t as clearly a Democratic vote. GOP candidates were able to draw about even with — or even edge ahead of — Democratic ones among those voters who said democracy was their top consideration.
In red-state Kansas, where Republican Sen. Jerry Moran and Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly both won re-election bids, the democracy vote responded differently to the two candidates. In the Senate race, voters who singularly prioritized democracy slightly preferred Moran over his Democratic challenger Mark Holland. But Kelly won about 6 in 10 of them in the governor’s race.
Meanwhile, Republicans had a strong showing in both Florida and in Texas, and VoteCast shows they earned more of the democracy vote than GOP congressional candidates nationwide. Close to half of voters who said the future of democracy was their top factor voted for Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida, and for Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle earned the backing of these voters because Republicans and Democrats have very different things in mind when they said the future of the nation’s democracy was their single most important factor.
Compared with other Republicans and with democracy Democrats, democracy Republicans nationwide were especially likely to be “angry” with the way the federal government is working and to say their vote was intended to express support for Trump; about half of democracy Republicans said each.