Trump is the common thread between the recent Republican losses in Alabama, New Jersey, & Virginia
Good article.
'We Are in a Trump-Driven Worst-Case Situation Right Now'
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/we-are-in-a-trump-driven-worst-case-situation-right-now/548288/?utm_source=twb
The president is the common thread between the recent Republican losses in Alabama, New Jersey, and Virginia.
Roy Moore at a campaign rally with a giant American flag behind him
Jonathan Bachman / Reuters
Ronald Brownstein 11:58 AM ET Politics
Roy Moore was a uniquely flawed and vulnerable candidate. But what should worry Republicans most about his loss to Democrat Doug Jones in Tuesday’s U.S. Senate race in Alabama was how closely the result tracked with the GOP’s big defeats last month in New Jersey and Virginia—not to mention how it followed the pattern of public reaction to Donald Trump’s perpetually tumultuous presidency.
Jones beat Moore with a strong turnout and a crushing lead among African Americans, a decisive advantage among younger voters, and major gains among college-educated and suburban whites, especially women. That allowed Jones to overcome big margins for Moore among the key elements of Trump’s coalition: older, blue-collar, evangelical, and nonurban white voters.
This was the same equation that powered the Democratic victories in the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races. The consistency of these results suggests that Democrats are coalescing a powerful coalition of the very voters that polls have shown are the most disenchanted, even disgusted, by Trump’s performance and behavior as president.
That points to a clear near-term threat in 2018 for Republicans. It also crystallizes the risky long-term trade Trump is imposing on his party: He is improving the GOP’s standing among groups that are almost all shrinking in the electorate, at the price of alienating groups that are growing.
It’s true that Jones won only very narrowly over Moore, a candidate so polarizing that he struggled in Alabama even before he was battered by extensive allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls, including some who were underage. But Jones won in a state where Republicans enjoy as dominant an overall advantage as they do virtually anywhere. Last year, Trump carried Alabama by nearly 590,000 votes. Since 2008, the only statewide race Alabama Democrats have won is a single public-service commissioner position that year; no Democrat carried more than 41.4 percent of the vote in any statewide race in 2014 or 2016. And no Democrat has won an Alabama Senate seat since 1992, when Richard Shelby did it before switching his political allegiance to the Republican Party.
Jones contradicted that history by consolidating the groups most dubious of Trump. The granite foundation of his victory was his huge performance among African Americans, who gave him 96 percent of their votes and accounted for 29 percent of all voters, according to exit polls reported by CNN. .......................................
