Election key: Trump turnout
War over ballots
Gordon L. Weil
A single factor may be the key to the outcome of the midterm
elections – turnout.
President Trump gets it.
He gives signs of believing that it’s better for his Republicans if
fewer people vote.
In the 2020 presidential election, he lost by 7 million votes
out of the 156 million between the two main candidates. Four years later, he won by over 2 million
votes out of about 153 million. The
Democrats shed over 6 million votes.
He asserts that he won in 2020 and could conclude that a
lower turnout favors Republicans. Because
most Republicans vote at the polling places on Election Day, while most Democrats
prefer early voting, often by mail, that might have led him to oppose mail
voting.
Republicans want to tighten access to voting. They say they are combating election fraud though
there’s little demonstrated evidence of it.
But Trump claims his loss resulted from widespread fraud. Massive efforts to prove that point totally failed,
but the claims persist and accepting them is a required mark of loyalty to
Trump.
Voter fraud is a myth. While there may be rare problems,
they are so minor that they cannot influence the results. But donning the cloak of protecting democracy,
the GOP can seem to be the good guys while preventing many Democrats from
participating.
The Republicans try to limit voting access and question vote
tabulation (only when they lose). Making
voting access more difficult, the GOP expects to deter lower income workers and
the poor from making what could be a big effort to register and vote in person. They also try to influence how votes are
counted, which aims at throwing out Democratic ballots.
Trump is currently thinking about declaring a national emergency
giving him the power to reduce or eliminate mail voting and to impose strict identification
rules to screen out lower income and less educated voters who won’t have time
or transport necessary to collect needed paperwork. Reducing mail voting could get some help from
the Postal Service.
He has fought hard to secure passage of the SAVE act that
could allow him to accomplish his goals, but Congress won’t pass his bill. Declaring a national emergency would be a
shortcut, though it would be challenged.
This year, increased turnouts for midterm primaries encourage
uncertain expectations of a big November turnout. In Texas, for example, the 2.3 million Democratic
votes compared with 2.2 million Republicans ballots. Both the turnouts and the Democratic showing
were unusually high, but three-quarters of eligible voters did not participate.
In November, Republicans who are disappointed with Trump
could stay away. But if the Democrats
are thought to be leftwing extremists, GOP voters are unlikely to swing to
their side. That’s why there’s so much
handwringing by pundits when a Democratic Socialist wins a primary.
But, even merely by staying away, a lower GOP turnout could
help the Democrats. And it’s possible that high prices caused by the Iran War
and uneasiness about immigration enforcement could cause some to protest by
voting for Democrats. Turnout will
depend heavily on whether the elections are a referendum on Trump.
In practice, the question is whether voter suppression will
work and if so, whether it will have a partisan effect. The GOP may believe that
educated, affluent people will vote and remain reliable Republicans.
But, despite the focus on the Democrats losing the blue-collar
vote, they are making major inroads among what once was a solid GOP vote. If women,
affluent, and better educated people continue moving toward the Democrats and
show up at the polls, they could upset the GOP strategy.
If Trump aims to make it easier for those groups to dominate
the electorate, he may have missed that they are moving away from the GOP. If he believes less educated voters are
increasingly Republican, he may have erred in making voting access more
difficult for them. Plus, their share of
the electorate is declining, while the more affluent Republicans are defecting.
In both parties, campaigns could boil down to GOTV – get out
the vote.
Rarely does an issue affect turnout to the point it can
determine the election outcome. But consumer
price hikes could cause results that go well beyond partisanship. Prices rose under Biden, and Trump won by promising
to reverse them quickly. The Iran war
made the situation worse, but he tells voters that small gas price increases
are worth it.
Whatever politicians claim, consumer price increases have
not been small. When gasoline shoots up
more than one dollar a gallon, it can fuel the kind of turnout that flips the
Congress.
Talk of a Blue Wave, a massive Democratic win, has begun to pass
the straight-face test. But it may take a Blue Wave to drown the voter
suppression that Trump seeks.
