WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump — who picked many of his party’s candidates and demanded fealty from them throughout the 2022 midterm campaign — was likely an albatross for the GOP Tuesday night, limiting Republicans’ gains in a midterm election the party expected to dominate.
But if recent history is any guide, Trump’s not going anywhere. The once and likely future presidential candidate is unpopular, but he continues to exercise outsized sway over the Republican base, and could hamstring the party for the next two years and beyond.
As vote-counting continued Wednesday morning, Republicans still had a chance to win both chambers of Congress.
Republicans, though in position to take the House, were sweating it out Wednesday and would need to hold their narrow leads in many of the remaining races to eke out a narrow win. Races in California, where Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy has focused attention, could prove decisive.
Paradoxically, a small majority for Republicans would likely give Trump more leverage in Congress, as McCarthy would have to depend on continued support from Trump acolytes such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to maintain power.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson was declared the winner in Wisconsin just before noon Central time, giving Republicans a 49-48 lead with races in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada yet to be decided. With neither candidate in Georgia winning more than 50% of the vote, the race will go to a Dec. 6 runoff like the one that decided Senate control in 2020. A 50-50 split in the Senate would give Democrats control with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.
The close races for control of Congress defy history. The party that holds the White House usually absorbs big midterm election losses. President Joe Biden’s low approval in polls, fueled by persistent inflation, made sizable Republican gains even more likely, at least on paper.
“Definitely not a Republican wave, that’s for darn sure,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Tuesday night on NBC as he predicted a narrow win for Republicans in the Senate.
The combination of Trump’s low popularity, the generally weak general-election performance of the candidates he endorsed, the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection that he inspired and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the right to an abortion this year appear to have drawn Democrats closer than expected. Exit polls conducted by media organizations showed two-thirds of independent voters hold an unfavorable view of the former president.
The latest blow to Republicans: Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin, a top target in the swing state of Michigan, was declared the winner overnight.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, another Democrat, also won her race, defeating Trump-backed candidate Tudor Dixon.
The Michigan results highlight one of the Republican Party’s biggest disappointments. Trump attacked Whitmer relentlessly. Michigan was a key part of the 2016 coalition that propelled Trump’s surprising victory over Hillary Clinton. The state’s historic ties to manufacturing and large population of white working-class voters gave the party hope that the state would trend red as the GOP moved further toward Trump’s brand of populism aimed at capturing economic and cultural anxiety.
But Biden won the state back in 2020, stanching the party’s losses in the upper Midwest.
Michigan voters also approved the most high-profile ballot measure to protect abortion rights, and voters in Kentucky rejected an anti-abortion measure that would have added language to the state constitution.
National exit polls this year showed inflation was a top concern among voters. But abortion ranked second. That, and the relative weakness of Trump-backed candidates, helped Democrats stay in the fight.
Many voters appeared willing to swallow their disappointment with Biden. An NBC exit poll showed Democrats narrowly winning — 49% to 45% — among voters who “somewhat disapprove” of Biden’s performance.
The Republicans’ loss of a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, another northern industrial state, could prove the most consequential if Democrats keep the chamber. Lt. Gov. John Fetterman defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz, a television doctor and first-time candidate backed by Trump. Fetterman, still recovering from the effects of a stroke, painted the untested Oz as an elite carpetbagger.
Many of the gubernatorial candidates Trump backed also lost or were in danger of losing as of Wednesday morning.
An exception was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who won reelection in a landslide that permeated races throughout the state. Republicans also performed well in Iowa — winning or leading in almost every major race — while making gains in blue New York, where they appeared likely to win four Democratic-held House seats. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat who led his party’s efforts to keep the House, conceded his own race Wednesday morning to Mike Lawler, a Republican state assemblyman.
DeSantis is seen as Trump’s biggest threat for the 2024 presidential nomination. But even if party leaders prefer DeSantis, Trump has said he will run again. Opinion polls, at least for now, show him as the prohibitive favorite to capture the party’s nomination.
Jason Miller, an adviser to Trump, told the BBC on Wednesday morning that he was urging Trump to push back an announcement that he would run again from next week — as he has been teasing — to December, to avoid distracting from a potential Senate runoff in Georgia. But Miller said he remained 100% certain that Trump would run.
“Many of the people who are championing Ron DeSantis for president are the same people who were skeptical of President Trump ever since he came down the escalator in 2015,” Miller said, recalling Trump’s improbable 2016 announcement.
Miller predicted that Trump would “have his hands full” but ultimately win the nomination again.
