Did COVID-19 Kill Republican Midterm Chances?

David Thornton

David Thornton is a freelance writer and professional pilot who has also lived in Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia and Emmanuel College. He is Christian conservative/libertarian who was fortunate enough to have seen Ronald Reagan in person during his formative years. A former contributor to The Resurgent, David now writes for the Racket News with fellow Resurgent alum, Steve Berman, and his personal blog, CaptainKudzu. He currently lives with his wife and daughter near Columbus, Georgia. His son is serving in the US Air Force. You can find him on Twitter @CaptainKudzu and Facebook.

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12 Responses

  1. Philip H says:

    We’ve lost over a million Americans to Covid, mostly adults. That has all sorts of economic and political impacts we are only just beginning to sort.Report

  2. Saul Degraw says:

    COVID-19 seems quite marginal as a reason for the lackluster performance of Republicans in the midterms. Maybe you can find races here and there where it mattered but I would not put it as a big reason. The main reasons are:

    1. Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs. Dobbs is nearly universally unpopular. Kentucky voters reelected Rand Paul easily and also rejected an anti-abortion referendum. So there are clearly people who are willing to vote for Republican candidates and also dislike anti-abortion legislation and restrictions. In more purple states, the Republicans ended up losing ground because of Dobbs. Democrats gained the trifecta in Michigan and Minnesota for example.

    2. Horrible candidates. In all but the reddest states, voters nearly universally rejected candidates that fawned on Trump and/or backed the Big Lie and/or palled around with Nazis. Lake lost, Finchem lost, Marchant lost, Joe Kent lost, Tudor Dixon lost, Mastriano lost, etc. There are lots of examples.

    3. The strategy of doubling down and blaming all the single ladies and the gays is not going to work: https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/no-sex-please-were-republicans

    “Genius Ben Shapiro declared: “If you vote for the idea that society has an obligation to recognize male-male or female-female dyads in the same way that society has to recognize male-female, you should not be in the Republican Party.”

    In theory, that means that at least a dozen Republican Senators — and probably several dozen House Republicans — ought to be excommunicated. And, under the Shapiro Rule, several million Republican-leaning voters also ought to be shown the door, which seems an odd strategy for a political party struggling to figure out how to win elections.

    But maybe, just maybe, that’s part of the GOP’s problem.

    Check out this NYT chart on the radical transformation of public opinion on the issue of gay marriage. More than 7 in 10 Americans— including a majority of Republicans — think ‘marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriages.'”

    This is from Charlie Sykes, former mini-Rush Limbaugh of Wisconsin. He is not exactly anyone’s idea of a ragging liberal.Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    “Like the exit poll, VoteCast found that about 60 percent of the electorate—63 percent, in the VoteCast sample—said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But unlike the exit poll, it directly measured the effect of Dobbs. In the VoteCast survey, pro-choice voters (those who said abortion should be legal in all or most cases) were far more likely than pro-life voters (those who said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases) to say that the overturn of Roe had a “major impact” on which candidates they voted for. The gap was more than 20 points: 55 percent of pro-choicers said Dobbs was a major factor, compared to 32 percent of pro-lifers. When analyzed by party, the gap was more than 30 points: 65 percent of Democrats said Dobbs was a major factor, compared to 32 percent of Republicans.”

    https://www.thebulwark.com/the-data-have-spoken-abortion-was-a-decisive-issue-in-the-2022-midterms/Report

  4. John Puccio says:

    No.

    This is a theory in search of supporting data.

    Not to mention that it cannot account for the Republican over performance in New York, or the Red tidal wave in Florida. Two states that despite drastically different policies had the same death rate.Report

    • Saul Degraw in reply to John Puccio says:

      Florida has been trending red for a while now. Everyone talks about how DeSantis “barely” won in 2018 but I think that is a misinterpretation of the data. 2018 was a D+9 year that produced a 41-seat majority in the House. Basically, it was as favorable as possible an environment for Democrats and they still lost a Senate seat and could not gain the governorship in Florida. This is a sign of a red state. The equivalent is Jerry Brown winning 60 percent of the vote in 2014 despite it being a very good year for Republicans. Also his 2010 election as governor come to think about it.

      New York Democrats committed an own goal with the redistricting process despite the New York State constitution forbidding partisan gerrymanders (another own goal was the fact that the redistricting committee was designed to fail). Combine this with the generally antagonistic relationship the rest of the state to NYC (including people who commute to the city for work daily) and there you go. That being said, the state legislature is still supermajority Democratic in both houses. Democrats only lost one seat in the state Senate and 6 in the assembly. I think this will recorrect in 2024.Report

    • Philip H in reply to John Puccio says:

      the Red tidal wave in Florida

      Please explain how you have a red tidal wave in a state that had a Republican governor, two republican senators, and a republican controlled state legislature BEFORE the election and retains all those things AFTER the election? I mean picking up 4 seats in the House is certainly a thing, but in an already deeply red state I don’t think that’s a wave.Report

  5. Good piece. I think the vaccine resistance may have made a difference in a few very tight races. But overall, most races were not that close. BTW: The Vaccine Safety Datalink is the superior version of VAERS and does systematic analysis. It finds no excess deaths from the vaccines.Report

  6. Kazzy says:

    If any of this is true, it still doesn’t mean Covid-19 killed their chances. It means the Republicans response to Covid-19 had negative implications for their electoral chances.

    Big difference.Report