In the United States, the November 2 elections produced an excellent result for the Republican Party, bad for the Democratic Party and a mixed one for Donald Trump.
In his run for the presidency of Virginia governor, Republican Glenn Youngkin – like other Republican candidates in other states – has focused on the issues dear to the former president. After all, the party is now his. Yet Youngkin has been able to triumph by keeping Trump at some distance, showing that it is possible to imagine a party that is not completely dominated by the former White House tenant.
Perhaps this is why Trump’s early comments on the run-up were more subdued than usual. “I would like to thank my base for voting en masse for Glenn Youngkin,” Trump said. “Without you he could never have won. The Maga movement (Make America great again) is bigger and stronger than ever ”.
Trump appeared much more interested in attacking the Democratic candidate. “It appears that Terry McAuliffe’s campaign against a certain ‘Trump’ has helped Glenn Youngkin enormously. McAuliffe has done nothing but talk about Trump, without ever stopping. And he lost! ”, Wrote the former president in a second statement. “I didn’t even have to campaign for Youngkin. McAuliffe did it for me ”.
In reality, the reasoning is also valid in the opposite sense. It is true that McAuliffe tried to motivate voters by waving the former president’s bogeyman, failing dramatically. But the downside is that Youngkin was certainly not anxious about Trump taking action to support him. In fact, with great acrobatics, Youngkin managed to avoid snubbing Trump’s voters while modulating his message in order to win over the moderates of the suburbs, as I wrote yesterday. When Steve Bannon organized a rally for Republican candidates Trump attended, Youngkin made sure to be elsewhere. The Washington Post reported that Youngkin and Trump spoke on the phone repeatedly during the campaign, but it is significant that neither of them leaked this information before the vote.
Other factors proved far more decisive than Trump’s presence. First of all the turnout, rather high. McAuliffe garnered more votes than incumbent Governor Ralph Northam in 2017, but was still overtaken by Youngkin.
At the moment, President Joe Biden is very unpopular, and this seems to have penalized the Democrats. In a state that Biden had won by a 10 percent margin in 2020, CNN surveys indicate that just 44 percent of voters approve of his work, compared to 54 percent disgruntled. More or less the same percentages that Trump recorded in the same poll (42 percent in favor and 54 percent against).
Perhaps the factor that could prove most decisive for the upcoming elections is the vote of the suburbs. In 2020, CNN exit polls had indicated that Biden had won the support of the suburbs of the big cities (53 percent versus 45 percent), and according to opinion makers the rapprochement with the Democratic Party of the suburban voters, once loyal to the Republican party, it had been one of the most relevant dynamics in the political landscape, able to balance the loss of support of the white working class who had sided with the Republicans. But now exit polls indicate that Youngkin won in the suburbs (53 percent versus 47 percent), turning the tide. “Apparently the Democrats had only borrowed those voters,” a spokesman for the Association of Republican Governors told Politico.
At this point one wonders if it makes sense to question the weight of a mixed result on a personal level for Trump, in the context of a Republican victory. After all, Trump remains the dominant figure in the party and the favorite in the nomination for the 2024 presidential election.
A potential source of conflict is Trump’s tendency to want to manipulate major electoral contests by backing candidates who have been loyal to him, even in cases where they are expected to encounter difficulties in a general election. But Youngkin was not one of them. It must be said that Trump did not endorse any candidate in the Virginia primary, but the fact remains that Youngkin looks more like the 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, and in the primary he defeated a candidate much more like Trump like Pete Snyder. In this sense, the choice of more extremist candidates could create a conflict between Trump’s interests and those of the party. However, if the Republicans have been able to take over even Virginia, it is plausible that in 2022 they can defeat the Democrats even by choosing the “wrong” candidates.
An important clue will come from Youngkin’s government activity. If the governor behaves like his Florida counterpart Ron DeSantis, who has tried in every possible way to be compared to Trump, it will mean that the former president still has a firm grip on the party. But Youngkin could also act with more restraint, trying to please Trump’s voters without being a slave to him. In this case Youngkin would stay more in line with his political personality and make a more prudent choice, even if the limit of the single term in Virginia means that he will not have to face the vote again in 2025.
A key indication will come from the behavior of suburban voters. Democrats may have only borrowed them in local elections in 2017, mid-term elections in 2018, and presidential elections in 2020, but it is unclear whether these voters belong to Republicans or if they can be “hijacked” again. The country’s political path may depend on how these voters will vote in 2024 if Trump is a candidate again. Will Trump again be damaging to the point of driving them away? Or will they have forgotten and forgiven his excesses by then?
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
.