Trump Endorsed Candidates Underperforming

The recent elections in Arizona are historic. They influence what the republican party will look like moving forward. 

In a recent Washington Post article, Phillip Wallach outlines the difference between the performance of candidates who were endorsed by Trump and the performances of candidates who weren’t. 

“In…114 districts, candidates bearing Trump endorsements underperformed their baseline by a whopping five points, while Republicans who were without Trump’s blessing overperformed their baseline by 2.2 points — a remarkable difference of more than seven points.

In short, Trump remains quite popular among Republican voters, and his endorsement was decisive in plenty of House primaries this summer. But close association with the twice-impeached president was a clear liability in competitive 2022 House races, turning what would have been a modest-but-solid Republican majority into (at best) a razor-thin one. For die-hard loyalists eager to see their party purged of any “RINO” elements, that might be a price worth paying.

But for those Republicans focused on building their party’s coalition and improving its performance in the 2024 presidential election (relative to Trump’s 46.1 percent in 2016 and 46.8 percent in 2020), the evidence from this year’s House races overwhelmingly suggests that conforming the party to Trump’s vision is an electoral dead end.”