Both party operatives running next year’s congressional campaigns and candidates mulling 2024 presidential bids have to further contemplate the opposite question. For the voters who Trump dismissed as the GOP lost both the presidency and the Senate, how much of that was driven by personality or policy?
Moreover, confusing this inquiry is that Trump intends to be active in the midterm election campaign and may run for president again in 2024.
Trump was an unconventional candidate in many forms. A reality TV star and celebrity businessman who had been a household name since the 1980s, he ruled the airwaves through free media like television news coverage rather than relying on his personal fortune to fund an advertising blitz. His combativeness and eagerness to stay on offense helped him stand out from a field of 16 other Republican presidential contenders.
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Though, Trump further rejected many party orthodoxies that dated back to George W. Bush, if not Ronald Reagan. He was critical of most free trade agreements and willing to inflict tariffs on foreign goods, especially imports from China. He opposed the invasion of Iraq and promised to end “endless wars.” Trump vowed not to touch Social Security or Medicare with Paul Ryan-style entitlement reforms and vowed to crack down on illegal immigration rather than offer a pathway to citizenship.
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Trump won over a great number of white voters without college degrees, making the Republican ticket competitive in the Rust Belt for the first time since Reagan. Yet he further turned off college-educated suburban voters, particularly women.
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The outcome was that Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016, thanks to narrow wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. He repeated his power with working-class whites and made inroads with Hispanic voters and black men four years later, even after the pandemic disrupted the once-strong economy central to his case for a second term. Yet this time, it was offset by the revolt of suburban whites, which had already cost Republicans the House in 2018. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin returned to the Democratic column by small margins, and President Joe Biden shifted the first Democrat to take Arizona and Georgia since Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
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Even in defeat, though, Trump endured competitive battleground states, where Biden won by just 0.03 percentage points compared to 4.5 points nationally. Only 43,000 votes in three states — Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin — could have handed Trump victory in the Electoral College.
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