Why are Republicans struggling in Swing State Elections?

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨BadmanDan@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

The GOP lost every swing state wide election this year except for 1 (PA-Senate). And even that was razor thin in a Red Wave year.

They lost Governors/Senate races in

Arizona Nevada North Carolina Michigan Wisconsin

I know it’s normal for the presidential candidates to receive the most votes on a ballot. But even the Dems that won these races weren’t too far behind Kamala Harris. Yet the Republicans candidates were way behind trump.

Why is this? Do these people literally go to the ballot box just to vote trump and leave?

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Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
After the election, AOC reached out to her constituents to ask why some of them would vote for both Trump and her.

There’s a variety of answers, but the general sentiment is people want some way to “shake up Washington” without a real understanding of how exactly that would work or what would happen.

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- BadmanDan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I saw that. Do those people not realize AOC & trump have very different stances on issues? AOC will vote against like 90% of Trump’s agenda, and Trump won’t implement what she wants. If shaking up Washington means “nothing changes because bipartisanship is dead”, then okay I guess.
  
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  - Carrolade@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They don’t really think it that far through. Policy proposals aren’t considered, it’s more about vibe.
    
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  - RobotToaster@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I once read that socially conservative but economically left wing voters are quite a large group, but usually get very little representation. It’s just a guess, but it makes sense that those people would vote for AOC on economics while tolerating her on social issues. On the other hand economically right wing democrats like Kamala would have zero appeal to people like that.
    
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stinerman@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Why is this? Do these people literally go to the ballot box just to vote trump and leave?

This was found to actually be a somewhat common voting pattern.

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- BadmanDan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  But why? I know most of the GOP’s agenda dosent require 60 votes, but why do they just completely ignore all the other elections? I don’t get it.
  
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  - dhork@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s simply because they are not paying attention. And I don’t mean that as a put-down, I simply mean that Trump has their attention, not the broader GOP, nor anything about the government. They don’t care about the GOP Agenda, beyond a few of Trump’s sound bites. Many of them have an inherent distrust of politicians yet trust Donald Trump completely.
    
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  - Asafum@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Apparently a big part of Elons attempts at voter outreach for Trump were to encourage “bullet ballot” votes (only voting for the president and leaving everything else blank), which is also what caused some scare about potential voter fraud when the very large increase of bullet ballots were noticed. He had teams of people reaching out to “low propensity voters” and trying to convince them to simply show up and vote for Trump, not to worry about knowing anything else. So that actually worked in Trump’s and Musks favor as far as simply getting them in, but there was little consideration for the state that would leave the party in.
    
    (My personal bias would say neither Trump nor Musk give two shits about Republicans, or anyone but themselves, so Musk gets the position to further enrich himself and protection from investigation he wanted and Trump gets the same.)
    
    There is also the issue of the media, when a fox news or the like paints Trump as dogmatic savior, only he can save you, then that leaves a lot of people feeling like only he matters so they don’t pay much attention to who else they should vote for.
    
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  - Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    From what I’ve seen, most people don’t care about their parties “agenda”. They usually just hear about one of two issues and take a stance on that.
    
    A majority of the Trump votes, especially the ones that didn’t vote down ballot, were pissed at the status quo and voted against “normalcy”.
    
    They don’t know what sort of crazy shit Trump will bring, but they know they don’t want any more of what they have now.
    
    I’m not saying it’s the right stance to have, but it’s understandable.
    
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scops@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Can’t comment on the rest, but the NC gubernatorial race is pretty obvious. The GOP nominated an anti-trans blowhard who turned out to also be crooked, perverted, racist, and pro-slavery. He was trailing in the polls before the CNN piece about him.

The GOP basically set out to find just how low they could go with a candidate and finally found the bar. Black Nazis are apparently that bar.

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db2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Basically yes. If brains were dynamite, as the saying goes. They’re dumb af.

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- BadmanDan@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Is that not counter productive? More senate seats greatly benefit your presidential candidate. Yes, republicans have a majority now. But the closer you are to 60 seats the easier it becomes to pass BIG legislation.
  
  Granted, Republicans rarely ever try to pass BIG legislation.
  
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  - db2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yes it is. See the part where they’re dumb af for the explanation. They really truly are.
    
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  - iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You’re explaining this concept to the wrong people. This post feels like you just trying to prove you know how American politics works. Congrats, you know more than 90% of the American electorate.
    
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