The Question Every Republican has to Answer: Did They Support Trump in 2016?
Doug Sosnik
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At least once in a politician’s career they are forced to make a decision that will follow them for
the rest of their lives, like the vote to confirm Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court a quarter
century ago or the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. For today’s Republican leaders and elected
officials that moment has arrived. They have to decide whether they support Donald Trump for
the presidency of the United States.
For most Republicans it is a nightmare scenario to see Hillary Clinton elected president after
eight years of Barack Obama as Commander-in-Chief. However, for social conservatives, the
alternative would mean supporting a candidate whose positions on social issues – including a
woman’s right to choose – are untenable. For economic conservatives to support Trump it
would mean standing with a candidate who supports raising the minimum wage and who
continues to vacillate on whether he will raise taxes on the wealthy. For neocons, it means
supporting a candidate who will run to the left of Hillary Clinton on promoting and defending
America’s place in the world.
Republican “moderates” have been able to successfully navigate what many view as
Republicans’ dog-whistle politics that tap into voters’ biases since President Bush left
office. But justifying the endorsement of a candidate whose campaign is built on hardline
nationalist positions, including a ban on people entering our country based solely on their
religion, is a different proposition altogether.
Regardless of Republicans’ brand of politics, they all have to confront the same distasteful
choices as they decide how they want to be remembered at this historic moment in their
party’s history.
How the General Election is Shaping Up as Republicans Decide Whether to Support Donald
Trump
History has shown that the most decisive period of time in determining the outcome of a
presidential election can be traced back to the run-up to the general election - not the fall
campaigns. Going back to 1980, in eight out of the last nine elections (the 2000 election being
the exception) voters locked in their attitudes about the upcoming election well before the
beginning of the fall campaign. Once voters' views solidified, subsequent campaign events or
activities simply served to reinforce their initial perceptions about the candidates and the party
best prepared to lead the country. This year’s election is likely to be no different.
The Current State of the Republican Party
After one of the nastiest and most divisive primaries in history, Republicans are faced with a
divided party and unfavorability ratings at a near all-time high. [See chart 4] And their
presumptive nominee for president has the highest negative rating since the beginning of
modern political polling.
Making matters worse is that the tone and positions on issues that made Donald Trump so
successful with Republican primary voters are the very factors that make him so unappealing to
a majority of Americans.
Trump faces a staggering number of challenges as he begins the general election. Beyond his
immediate imperative to unify a badly fractured Republican Party and to try to bring down his
historically high negative ratings, he is also months behind in setting up a campaign
infrastructure with the strong fundraising, field and opposition research operations that will be
necessary to compete against the Clinton machine that she has been methodically building for
the past year.
The shock and awe of Trump's success throughout the primaries and the pace at which the field
folded after Trump’s victory in Indiana left Republicans unprepared to deal with his hostile
takeover of the party. Recent interviews with Republicans show the difficult – and awkward –
position they are in right now as they try to figure out how to deal with the inevitability of
Trump as their nominee.
At a presentation last week at Harvard's Kennedy School, Mike Murphy, the Republican
strategist who directed the $120 million Jeb Bush Super PAC, best summed up Republicans’
positioning by placing them into one of three camps: Vichy Republicans, who are for “whatever
is going to happen”; Survival Republicans, who give the "I'll get back to you” non-answer when
asked if they plan to support Trump; and Resistance Republicans, who are actively undermining
the GOP’s presumptive nominee and/or supporting a third-party challenge by a more palatable
alternative.
By definition Vichy Republicans will go with their short-term calculation to support whomever is
in power. The "I'll get back to you" Republicans are in an unsustainable political position that
has only been temporarily alleviated by Speaker Ryan's efforts to slow-walk his own decision to
embrace his party's nominee. Senator Kelly Ayotte's announcement last week that she will
vote for Trump but not endorse him is a perfect illustration of the dangers of trying to avoid
answering the question either way.
Many Resistance Republicans, some of whom harbor future ambitions to run for president, are
loathe to line up behind a nominee who has little or no philosophical or intellectual moorings
and who lacks the temperament to hold the nation’s highest office. Mounting a national thirdparty challenge isn’t likely to be successful given the significant institutional barriers to getting
on the ballot in all fifty states at this point. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons they may
pursue this course anyway. Another option is to place an acceptable conservative third-party
candidate on the ballot in states with targeted congressional races where the rules allow, giving
down ballot candidates cover from a Trump candidacy and all the baggage that comes with it.
In addition, a conservative option on the ballot could help Republican candidates boost turnout
among traditional GOP voters who cannot force themselves to cast their ballot for either Trump
or Clinton and who might otherwise consider staying home.
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The State of Play for Democrats
The Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, confronts a different set of issues
as she continues her march to obtain the 2,383 delegates she needs to secure the nomination.
[See chart 3] Bernie Sander’s enduring strength and the effective start of the general election
campaign following Trump’s Indiana victory mean that Clinton must fight a two-front war,
focusing on both Sanders and Trump at the same time.
Despite having won at least 3,000,000 more votes and almost 800 more delegates than Sanders
so far, Clinton isn’t perceived to be wrapping up the Democratic nomination from the position
of strength that her victory totals would suggest. Further complicating Clinton’s primary endgame strategy is the fact that she can’t risk alienating the Sanders voters who she will need in
the general election.
Sanders has been unequivocal about his opposition to the Trump candidacy, but he has also
made it clear that he will continue his campaign through the end of the primaries in June. Part
of his strategy going forward will be to pressure Clinton to adopt many of his policy positions as
part of the party platform at the July convention. Despite the challenges that the party and
Clinton face, they pale in comparison to the spectacle that Republicans must confront as they
try to pull their party together before the general election.
The General Election Electoral Map Looks Daunting for Trump
It has been well documented for the past two decades that Democrats maintain a clear
advantage in the Electoral College. Democrat have carried 18 states (and the District of
Columbia) in each of the last the last five elections, totaling 242 electoral votes. If Clinton can
hold on to these states in a two-way general election campaign against Trump, she would only
be 28 short of the 270 electoral votes she needs to win.
In order for Trump to consolidate Republican support, he needs to demonstrate that he has a
viable path to reach 270 electoral votes. His only route runs through the former industrial
heartland of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. A third-party challenge would
almost certainly widen Democrats’ advantage, opening up the possibility that we’ll see the
biggest political landslide in a three-person race since 1980, when Ronald Reagan carried 44
states and secured 489 electoral votes.
What Do the Primary Elections Tell Us about the General?
The short answer is not much. Despite all the time, energy, money and attention that have
been spent on the primaries, there aren’t many lessons that provide a helpful window in to the
general election.
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A majority of states that have held elections have had either closed voting (meaning that only
registered party members can vote) or they aren’t considered competitive in the general
election. While it is interesting that 20 states were carried by both of the presumptive party
nominees in the primaries, there are only six states carried by Clinton that are considered tossups in the general election, and only four states won by Trump. [See chart 2]
In the 20 states that both candidates carried, the demographic background of the primary
voters tended to reflect the strength of each of their candidacies. There were disproportionally
older voters in northeastern states and a large share of African American voters in the south,
which played to Clinton's strengths in the Democratic primary. Working class whites have been
the foundation of Trump's candidacy and they made up a large percentage of voters in these
states that both nominees carried in the primaries.
The primary processes in each state have also played a major role in determining the
outcome. Both candidates tended to perform best in states with primaries rather than
caucuses. Of the 10 states that Trump lost to Cruz, over half were in caucuses (all were also
closed primaries with the exception of Wisconsin and Texas, where Cruz held favorite son
status), while over 60% of the states won by Sanders were in caucuses.
The Consequences of Trump’s Candidacy for Senate Control
With Trump at the top of the ticket, no party has been more vulnerable to a political tsunami in
the U.S. Senate since 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected president in a landslide that saw
12 seats change hands from Democrats to Republicans, giving Republicans a majority in the
Senate for the first time since 1954.
Increasingly, Senate election outcomes mirror the presidential outcome in states. There are
currently only 16 incumbent U.S. Senators (five Democrats and 11 Republicans) who are holding
seats in states that did not vote for their party in the last presidential election. Of the 11
Republican-held seats carried by Obama in 2012, seven are at stake this year: Florida (open),
Illinois (Mark Kirk), Iowa (Chuck Grassley), New Hampshire (Kelly Ayotte), Ohio (Rob Portman),
Pennsylvania (Pat Toomey) and Wisconsin (Ron Johnson). [See chart 5] The most recent Cook
Political Report lists six of these seven seats as toss-ups. And, if Trump's candidacy shows signs
of imploding, second tier vulnerable Republican incumbents, like McCain (AZ), Burr (NC) and
Grassley (IA), will also be at increased risk of defeat.
The Republican Party Leaders at a Crossroads
Forty years ago Ronald Reagan redefined what it meant to be a Republican. During his farewell
address to the nation, Reagan spoke about the “shining city upon a hill.” He said that he had
spoken about the shining city all of his political life but had never quite communicated what he
saw in it. Reagan went on to say, “In my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger
than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony
and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had
to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the
heart to get here. That’s how I saw it, and see it still.”
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If Ronald Reagan were alive today, he wouldn’t recognize the Republican Party that is poised to
nominate Donald Trump as their president. The underlying factors that drove Republican
primary voters to support Trump will endure long past his candidacy. Republican primary
voters have spoken and the time has come for its leaders and politicians to weigh in on whether
they will support Donald Trump’s vision for the country and his candidacy to become the 45th
president of the United States.
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