Donald Trump and the Republican Base—A Message has been Lost
September 1, 2024
American Eclectic posts articles twice a month, on the 1st and 15th. This is the third year of publication; previously published articles can be found on my site.
The critique of Donald Trump's approach to energizing a specific Republican voter base, with the expectation of their enthusiastic support leading him back to the White House, is a topic that has been discussed since before Trump first ran for the Presidency in 2016. In 2016, Trump received just under 46 percent of the popular vote (Hillary Clinton got 48 percent). In 2020, Trump got slightly less than 47 percent of the popular vote (Joe Biden got 51 percent). These figures indicate that Trump did not significantly increase his overall vote share despite emphasizing the raw number of 2020 votes he received, which was 11.2 million more than in 2016. However, Biden in 2020 received 15.4 million more votes than Clinton in 2016. This critique of Trump's approach to energizing the Republican voter base is a crucial aspect of our political analysis, providing a historical context for the evolution of political strategies.
Delving into the 2000 election, setting aside the Florida vote dispute and the Supreme Court's role, provides insight into how Republicans looked beyond 2000. The prolonged battle between Al Gore and George W. Bush for the presidency is significant, but Republican campaign strategists viewed the national voter breakdown and were thinking about the next election in 2004. One strategist's perspective is particularly enlightening:
What came from that analysis was a graph that I obviously gave Karl [Rove], which showed that independents or persuadable voters in the last 20 years had gone from 22 percent of the electorate to 7 percent of the electorate in 2000. And so 93 percent of the electorate in 2000, and what we anticipated --93 or 94 percent in 2004, just looking forward and forecasting --was going to be already decided either for us or against us. You obviously had to do fairly well among the 6 or 7 [percent], but you could lose the 6 or 7 percent and win the election, which was fairly revolutionary, because everybody up until that time had said, "Swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters, swing voters."
And so when that graph and that first strategic imperative began to drive how we would think about 2004, nobody had ever approached an election that I've looked at over the last 50 years, where base motivation was important as swing, which is how we approached it. We didn't say, "Base motivation is what we're going to do, and that's all we're doing." We said, "Both are important, but we shouldn't be putting 80 percent of our resources into persuasion and 20 percent into base motivation," which is basically what had been happening up until that point -- look at this graph, look at the history, look what's happened in this country.
Karl Rove was Bush’s principal political campaign adviser, and he took this message to heart. Notice that in the quote above, a Republican political base was not seen as sufficient to win elections; the quote, “Both are important,” indicated that there was still a need to reach out to independent and undecided voters. A Bush media advisor referred to the “persuadable middle electorate.” He saw this group of voters as around 20 percent of the electorate.
Heading toward the 2004 Presidential election, in which Bush won re-election, defeating John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, Rove aimed to reach out to 4 million evangelical voters, seeing them as likely Bush voters. In other words, a Republican political base began to take shape between 2000 and 2004.
In 2004, a New York Times piece included an odd quote that seemed odd then and still sounds bizarre today. There is a dispute over who said this, with a belief that it was Karl Rove. Rove said it was not him and called the quote “weird.” A rock band, The National, released a song (“Walk It Back”) in 2017 that referred to the quote, so it returned to the limelight. The Times article with the quote is as follows:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
This quote was made while the United States was involved in the Iraq War, and an interpretation of it was that it simply applied to the Bush administration's justification for going to war against Saddam Hussein, the Iraq ruler. Broader interpretations followed, such as it being linked to Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to Trump when he was President, in January 2017, referring to “alternative facts” that she used to support Trump’s claim regarding his widely inflated estimate about the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
It is interesting to tie this maybe Rove's quote that “we create our own reality” and Conway’s “alternative reality” to Trump’s approach to decision-making when he was President. I think it is instructive from the point of view that it also provides insight into how he approaches voters in this election. Trump sees a political base and thinks of it in absolute terms, so there is no need to expand his reach to include those willing to support him if he speaks or presents policy proposals more accommodatingly. The emphasis, however, is placed on simply energizing a political base to vote. In one odd moment, he stated, “We have all the votes we need.” Either Trump believes that an enthusiastic political base is enough, or he was talking through his hat and, in his usual manner, just saying whatever comes into his head at the moment.
One article presented Trump’s decision-making when he was in the White House as:
[E]veryone in this chaotic White House will tell you, when it comes to this president, having all the facts all the time is virtually impossible. “It’s very hard to be in the Trump loop,” one former Trump adviser said, both owing to his “unpredictable” personality as well as the “insular nature of his senior staff.” (About the president’s perspective on the staff scrambling and turf wars, another adviser, who has known Trump since the 1990s, added, “I don’t think the president cares. I think he likes the infighting. I think his attitude is, let’s see if you’re tough. Let’s see who’s tough.”) Being informed, then, is a matter of proximity — which explains why, unlike on most campaigns, Trump’s managers and strategists traveled the country with him on his private Boeing 757, for fear that staying behind in the Trump Tower war room could mean losing their influence. “There is kind of a circle-the-wagons mentality, and if your wagon’s out of the circle for a while because you gotta do something, you’re out of the loop,” a former adviser said.
An insular attitude dominated this decision-making, whether on the campaign trail or when he was in the White House, and it can help explain why Trump cannot try to cast a wider net and reach the voters he should be reaching.
The 2004 Presidential election, the first after 9/11, should have been an easy win for George W. Bush heading into the campaign season. Bush’s approval ratings looked reasonably good heading through September and October and toward the election on November 5. In nine Gallup approval ratings leading up to election day, Bush was 50 percent or above in six. Yet, the contest reached Ohio with its 20 Electoral College votes, and who won would decide the election. Bush won Ohio and received 286 Electoral College votes to John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, getting 251 (with 270 needed to win). Congressman John Conyers (D, MI) issued a report that raised questions about the outcome in Ohio. As this report stated:
[O]nce you have in place the state’s supervisor of electoral process: in this case Ohio’s Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who orchestrated this famous victory…we find that there were massive and unprecedented voting irregularities and anomalies in Ohio. In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.
A New York Times piece on the 2004 election in Ohio stated:
From seven-hour lines that drove voters away to malfunctioning machines to poorly trained poll workers who directed people to the wrong polling places to uneven policies about the use of provisional ballots, Ohio has become this year's example for every ailment in the United States' electoral process.
With a state recount expected to be completed next week, few experts think the problems were enough to overturn President Bush's victory here. And many of the shortcomings have plagued elections for decades.
An attempt was made to get John Kerry to protest the election results (like Donald Trump did after the 2020 election), but Kerry declined.
The 2008 and 2012 Democratic victories showed decisive wins, with Barack Obama winning. Obama got 365 Electoral College votes to John McCain’s 173 in 2008 and 332 Electoral College votes to 206 for Mitt Romney in 2012. Obama received more than 50 percent of the popular vote in both elections.
Following the 2012 election loss, Republicans issued a report. Reince Priebus, then the chair of the Republican Party, stated:
Our message was weak; our ground game was insufficient; we weren't inclusive; we were behind in both data and digital; our primary and debate process needed improvement. There's no one solution. There's a long list of them.
The report laid out a plan to reach out to women, African Americans, Hispanics, and gay voters. There was even a reference to the need to back “comprehensive immigration reform.”
Donald Trump, on the day the report was released, tweeted, “New @RNC report calls for embracing ‘comprehensive immigration reform. Does the @RNC have a death wish?” At the time, Trump was not seen as a major presence in the Republican Party. Henry Barbour, one of the people who contributed to this report, said of Trump, “Swing voters would flock away from him in droves. He’s chasing some ghost that I don’t think exists anymore.”
Trump’s 2016 win over Clinton garnered him 304 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 227, but, again, Trump only received slightly less than 46 percent of the popular vote (to Clinton’s 48 percent). Again, as pointed out above, his 2020 loss to Joe Biden gained him less than a one percent increase in the popular vote over his 2016 win.
The political base issue, studied in numerous ways, showed that in 2020, there was some change in Trump’s base. In 2016, Trump received 29 percent of the Latino vote nationally, which increased to 32 percent in 2020. Both are below George W. Bush in 2004, when he received 40 percent. In the case of Trump in 2020, many of the Latinos who voted for him were non-college graduates, which reflects a significant share of Trump’s overall voter base. The problem with Latino voters for the Republicans running in future Presidential elections is that they are more likely not to identify with a political party, so their votes could be up for grabs. Those Latinos who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 and will, in this election, cannot be counted as reliably Republican.
I spent months in Arizona in 2020, where 21 percent of the voters are Latino. Trump’s 2020 gains came not necessarily because of Latinos, or a segment of them, becoming more conservative but also because the Biden outreach campaign was either incompetent or useless. I discussed the 2020 election with several Latinos in Arizona, and they had trouble seeing any attempt by the Biden campaign to reach out to them. Maybe the Harris campaign will be different. When Harris campaigned recently in Georgia, she made a concerted effort to reach rural voters, which I have argued in several of my articles that Democrats have needed to do. Perhaps this outreach to rural voters reflects a broader outreach to other voters, particularly Latino voters.
If Trump loses this election, it will be interesting to see what type of post-election assessment the Republican Party will conduct of itself. The report they issued after the 2012 election showed insight and a willingness to take a step back and reflect on how the country looked upon them. I am not sure that will happen after this election, at least for a while; there appear to be too many little Donald Trump-types running around in the party. It may take time for Republicans to wean themselves off all the Trump wannabes. Trump did not create the fear and anger many of Trump’s supporters displayed. Trump has been able to exploit and fan the flames of fear and anger. The problem is that he has made it acceptable to behave and act in ways that would not have been acceptable before him. It will take time to bring much of that under control. I wrote a piece in 2022 on the potential for violence as an outgrowth of Trump and his rhetoric (Politics Through Intimidation: The Picture of Dorian Gray Is Alive and Well-Unfortunately). I hope the threats and violence addressed in that piece—particularly targeted at election officials- do not happen. Trump has made it acceptable to do things that would not be acceptable before him.
Democrats, on the other hand, need to figure out how to deal with state election officials who can try to put their hands on the scale and tip elections toward Republicans. The situation in Ohio in 2004 was a wake-up call. The conviction of Tina Peters, the former Republican county clerk in Colorado, might indicate more of that behavior to come. As reported:
[J]urors found Peters guilty of three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. She was also convicted of first-degree official misconduct, failure to comply with an order from the Secretary of State and violation of duty − all misdemeanor charges.
Georgia looks likely to encounter legal problems in the post-election period for this election. The Georgia State Election Board has allowed local election officials to investigate vote counting. With discretion left to local officials, that can lead to problems where people who believe the 2020 election was stolen might impose their beliefs on the present and see things that are not there. A member of the five-person board believes there were errors in the 2020 election, even though she provided no evidence to support her position. With a county clerk found guilty in Colorado and a true believer in a position to influence voting in Georgia, these two people reflect the views of others who also are in positions to influence the vote—the myth of a stolen 2020 election hangs heavy over this coming election. Democrats are contesting the ruling by the Georgia State Election Board in court to allow local election officials to use their discretion in certifying or verifying the election results in their jurisdiction. It is confusing to figure out what these local election officials can do to throw a monkey wrench into the election process. Still, the state election board’s ruling gives them the discretion to do things that can cause problems in the election process. Trump keeps pushing the 2020 stolen election theme, and others support him, and there is genuine concern Republicans may try to steal this election. Listen to conservative talk radio shows, and the theme that Democrats are out to steal this election is a constant issue. While these talkers cannot precisely address how the 2020 election was stolen and point to the thousands of votes needed to steal an election, you find that used as the background to this election.
A conservative radio talker I was listening to recently stated, “We know” regarding the 2020 election being stolen. No, he does not know. Demonizing the political opposition and assuming they cheated but unable to show how they cheated or unable to provide proof of thousands of illegal votes is proof of nothing. Assuming something is accurate simply because you want it to be is unlike presenting evidence. I distinguish between what can be presented in a court of public opinion and a court of law. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative organization, has a section on its website titled “A Sampling of Recent Election Fraud Cases from Across the United States.” They cite 1,546 “proven instances of voter fraud.” Using their database shows something less disturbing regarding the 2020 election. Entering “Georgia” and the “2020 election” leads to “There are no results.” Entering “Arizona” produced one result, but it describes someone who voted in the 2016 election. Entering “Pennsylvania” produced no results. Entering “Wisconsin” produced one result, but it was from the 2018 election. Finally, entering “Michigan” produced no results. These states are often considered swing states that will determine the 2024 election. Remember the radio talker saying, “We know.”
The Georgia State Election Board calls for hand-counting ballots if necessary. On the surface, this sounds reasonable. One study, however, that looked at hand-counting stated:
Mandating that election officials hand count every ballot is an extreme proposal that would be far more expensive, result in significant delays, and, most concerningly, lead to higher error rates in vote counts and heighten voter concern over corruption. The secure tabulation equipment currently used by states provides a quicker and more accurate result than hand counts.
In Nye County, Nevada, hand counting of all ballots for the 2022 election led to an error rate as high as 25 percent. An MIT study found hand counting in New Hampshire had an 8 percent error rate, contrasted with a machine error rate of 0.5 percent. Hand counting led to errors in local elections earlier this year in Gillespie County, Texas. One local official (Republican) stated:
We took something that worked and now broke it. We failed to guard the purity of the election with this hand count. What we just did is evidence that this hand count was not accurate.
The issue of Republicans attempting to steal this election can be seen in challenges to voting rolls and the use of provisional ballots. Republicans have increased their challenges against voter rolls. For example, in Carson City, Nevada, the election official won campaigning on “election integrity” after the 2020 election. He is a Republican and was surprised that he was named in a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee and the state’s Republican Party. The suit addresses what is described as “inordinately high” voter registrations. One article stated:
The Nevada lawsuit is just one example of the tactics Republicans and conservative activists are using ahead of November’s presidential election, as they seek to purge voter rolls of allegedly ineligible voters. The efforts have election experts worried about voter access.
This may lead to an increase in the use of provisional ballots. In Ohio, strict voter ID laws have led to a significant increase in the use of provisional ballots. A study in Ohio noted that the percentage of provisional ballots rejected in 2023 (so not a congressional election or presidential year) was 28.4 percent, a jump from 2022 when it was 8.2 percent. Republicans, by challenging voter rolls and hoping to put voters in the limbo of needing to file a provisional ballot, may be counting on a significant portion of those ballots not to be counted. One report on provisional ballots stated:
Counties with a higher percentage of Black and brown residents and young voters had elevated provisional ballot use, a finding in keeping with national trends, while it was lower in counties with higher median incomes.
Minority and young voters are more likely to be Democratic voters. Suppose the efforts of Republicans to find all types of creative ways to reduce both voter registration and ways not to count ballots fail. In that case, they may need to return to that report on the 2012 election and learn that they need to be a more inclusive political party, which may help them in future Presidential elections. More importantly, it can help to reduce some of the needless political tension in this country. Defeating Donald Trump is more than just about preventing another Trump Presidency; it is also about encouraging the Republican Party to return to a more reasonable version of a conservative alternative to the Democratic Party.
For a future Republican Party to take their report on the 2012 election to heart and reach out to a broad cross-section of Americans, it will take party leaders willing to stand up and publicly confront the myth of a stolen election, and that will not be easy.
Notes
A Sampling of Recent Election Fraud Cases from Across the United States, The Heritage Foundation: https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
All Voting Ohio, The State of Provisional Ballots in Ohio Post-HB 458: https://allvotingislocal.org/wp-content/uploads/AVL-FactSheet_-OH-Provisional-Analysis-2023.pdf
Natalie Neysa Alund, “Election-denying Colorado official convicted of 3 felonies linked to conspiracy theories,” USA Today (August 14, 2024): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tina-peters-convicted-on-7-counts-tied-to-post-2020-election-conspiracy-theories/ar-AA1oJndL?ocid=BingNewsSerp
George W. Bush Public Approval, The American Presidency Project: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/george-w-bush-public-approval
Kyle Cheney, “Trump kills GOP autopsy,” Politico (March 4, 2016): https://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/donald-trump-gop-party-reform-220222
Natalia Contreras, “They counted primary ballots by hand. Now a Texas county Republican party says they found errors,” The Texas Tribune (March 19, 2024): https://www.texastribune.org/2024/03/19/texas-republican-hand-count-election/
James Dao and Ford Fessenden, “Voting Problems in Ohio Spur Call for Overhaul,” New York Times (December 24, 2004): https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/24/us/voting-problems-in-ohio-spur-call-for-overhaul.html
Matthew Dowd and Mark McKinnon quoted in 2004: The Base Strategy, Frontline, PBS: https:// www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/architect/rove/2004.html
Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. President Elections: https:// uselectionatlas.org. This is a good site and easy to use.
Carrie Levane, “It’s a failsafe for voters. But a new report finds troubling trends,” The Center for Public Integrity (April 30, 2021): https://publicintegrity.org/inside-publici/newsletters/watchdog-newsletter/voting-ohio-provisional-ballots-problem-solutions/
Olivia Nuzzi, “Kellyanne Conway Is a Star,” New York Intelligencer (March 18, 2017): https:// nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/kellyanne-conway-trumps-first-lady.html
Bethania Palma, “Did Karl Rove Say ‘We’re an Empire Now’?” Snopes (December 12, 2021): https:// www.snopes.com/fact-check/karl-rove-empire/
Shuushannah Walshe, “RNC Completes ‘Autopsy’ on 2012 Loss, Calls for Inclusion Not Policy Change,” ABC News (March 18, 2013): https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/OTUS/rnc-completes-autopsy-2012-loss-calls-inclusion-policy/story?id=18755809
Zach Schonfeld, “The Curious Case of a Supposed Karl Rove Quote Used on The National’s New Album ‘Sleep Well Beast,” Newsweek (September 8, 2017): https:// www.newsweek.com/national-sleep-well-beast-karl-rove-662307
Steven Shepard, “New polls show how Trump surged with women and Hispanics-and lost anyway,” Politico (June 30, 2021): https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/30/new-trump-poll-women-hispanic-voters-497199
Holly Sonneland, “Chart: How U.S. Latinos Voted in the 2020 Presidential Election,” AS/COA (November 5, 2020: https://www.as-coa.org/articles/chart-how-us-latinos-voted-2020-presidential-election
Nick Valencia, Sara Murray, Jason Morris, and Jade Gordon, “GOP-controlled election board in Georgia passes rule that could further delay certification,” CNN (August 19, 2024): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/gop-controlled-election-board-in-georgia-passes-rule-that-could-further-delay-certification/ar-AA1p3YsD?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Matt Vasilogambros, “Republicans scrutinize voting rolls and ramp up for mass challenges ahead of election,” Stateline (April 9, 2024): https://stateline.org/2024/04/09/republicans-scrutinize-voting-rolls-and-ramp-up-for-mass-challenges-ahead-of-election/
Ballot Hand Counts Lead to Inaccuracy, Voting Rights Lab (February 27, 2024): https://votingrightslab.org/2024/02/27/ballot-hand-counts-lead-to-inaccuracy/
What Went Wrong in Ohio, The Conyers Report on the 2004 Presidential Election (Chicago, Academy Chicago Publishers, 2005).