Republicans have been using fear and have been accused of violating voting laws in order to gain an advantage. They, along with Trump, have used immigration as a primary policy to target when rallying their voter base for the midterms. They have been using the migrant caravan currently in Mexico and border security as top issues to concentrate on, stroking fear in Americans’ hearts of a possible immigrant “invasion.” Moreover, the Republicans have been accused of violating voting laws, such as the ones in Georgia where failures in governor candidate Kemp’s cybersecurity in his online registration system have been exposed when accusing the Democrats of the same thing.
The Democrats have been mainly been trying to unseat many of the Republicans that are in the majority of the House by rallying their voter base to turn up and vote. Many of the Democrats are either immigrants or young, and tend to lean left, as the Democrats have launched an aggressive campaign against the Republicans. They have been criticizing Trump on being too harsh with border security, and too complacent in our foreign policy especially with Russia. The Democrats have been desperate in gaining control of the House, as the government has been increasingly divided.
In my opinion, I believe that both parties have been using lucrative practices to gain political clout in order to gain more seats in the House. Both parties can be found trying to rally up their voter base through bashing their opponent or proposing more extreme policy ideas.
What are ways the Republicans and Democrats can have had more successfully run their campaigns?
What were your predictions for midterms and how has it changed your expectations?
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2 comments:
I'm fresh off reading "Revenge of the Median Voter Theorem" by Kevin Drum during class on Wednesday (which was written before the election, interestingly enough), which concludes that centrist voters exist, even with polarization. Given that those voters helped swing the House toward the Democrats on Tuesday, the conclusion appears to be that Republicans should have focused more of their pitch toward attracting moderates and less on divisive issues like immigration.
However, I think you're right in that issues like immigration did help turn out the voter base, which presented pre-election Republicans (or really any party in power during midterms) with a dilemma. Should they use a more moderate campaign to gain the center votes, but lose more firm Republicans that may have been less motivated to vote and perhaps the extreme voters that would love extreme policies? Or should they play to the base and focus on increasing voter turnout amongst consistent Republicans over attracting new voters? Republicans chose the latter, and as Drum predicted, the center moved away from them. Unless one party can magically figure out the secret to government, I don't see this trend stopping anytime soon, and power will fluctuate as per usual.
Democrats won House and Republicans won Senate. This is somewhat fitting as the House of Representatives have long been regarded as the branch of Congress where individuals are given more representation, while the Senate gives exactly 2 spots to each state. Currently, in the nation, Democrats may constitute a majority when it comes to counting individuals, but many of these individuals are congregated in smaller urban cities so overall Republicans would hold a majority if we are counting by states.
I think moderates and independents definitely played a big role in the last election. As the Republican party continuously becomes more polarized and more extreme, many moderates shifted to the Democratic voter base. Before the next election in 2020, the Republican party is going to need to make a choice between continuing to become more extreme as they have been doing so far, or shifting their policies to become more moderate in order to win back the moderate and independent voters who voted for the Democratic party in this midterm election.
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