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Can anyone explain to me this chain of Trump primary victories? Normally I find myself pretty in the loop and things make sense, but I'm having trouble here. Trump as we all know has approval ratings in the doldrums and that extends even to a decent amount of historical loyalist, electorally - recent surveys show his endorsement is a drag in general elections in battlefield states. He also has a mixed at best record of picking primary winners. Yet he's scored several notable wins recently.
He has endorsed former Texas AG Paxton (and dogged by significant simmering corruption allegations), endangering the Texas Senate seat and going against sitting incumbent Sen. Cornyn. His pick for Kentucky Senate seat won the primary despite opposition from both Rep. Massie and retiring incumbent Sen. McConnell (notably, opposite wings of the party despite being somewhat anti-Trump). Rep Massie himself, they are reporting, has lost a primary as well (the most expensive House primary in history, in fact, drawing both Trump and AIPAC opposition) despite drawing support from other somewhat Trump-skeptic but influential right-wingers such as Tucker Carlson, MTG, and Boebert. Trump-opposed incumbent Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy finished third and didn't even make the runoff. In Georgia, perennial enemy (of 2020 election fame) Brad Raffensperger lost the primary for governor. Trump even took out five state senators in Indiana merely over their refusal to jump in the redistricting fight!
So why amid generalized disaster is Trump scoring so many primary victories?
We don't have any numbers from yesterday yet, but one of the underreported stories about this primary cycle is how low Republican turnout has been. This isn't always a great metric, since it's dependent on whether there are any competitive races, but the numbers from Texas are illustrative. About 7% more Democrats voted in the Senate primary than Republicans, despite both parties having competitive elections. The last time Democrat turnout was higher in a Texas primary was 2020, but the Republicans weren't running any competitive statewide elections that year, while Democrats had Senate and President. I don't want to read too much into this, since local elections can skew the statewide totals, but there seems to be a lack of enthusiasm among Republican voters as compared to Democrats. One thing I've noticed in the races in my neck of the woods is that the Republicans have all been trying to out-MAGA each other.
Illustrative of this is a PA Senate race for a district in the southwestern corner of the state. Camera Bartolotta has been representing the district since 2014, and she's always come across as a moderate who was good at constituent service. In 2024 she responded to Trump's comments about Hatians in Charleroi by saying that she was disheartened because they were constituents and taxpayers. This was enough to get her a vote of no confidence from the Washington County Republican Committee, which vote was later voided by the state committee as the rules prohibit them from disparaging a sitting officeholder. Al Buchtan seized on this by mounting a primary challenge based on her alleged disloyalty to Trump. Bartolotta decided to head this off at the pass by running a series of early attack ads questioning Buchtan's credentials and his own loyalty to Trump. Buchtan didn't start running ads until later in the race, but yesterday was the first time in a while that you could watch television in the Pittsburgh area without seeing multiple commercials per ad break.
Bartolotta ended up winning, but that's not the real story. What I find more interesting is that in a district that favors Republicans by a 3 to 2 margin, a race this hard-fought didn't drive turnout at all. I can't offer any previous elections for turnout comparisons, since this is the first primary challenge Bartolotta faced, but one only needs to compare the Republican votes to the Democratic votes. A total of 17,000 and change voted in the GOP primary; 15,00 and change voted in the Democratic primary. That they managed fewer that 15% more votes despite a 25 point registration advantage would be enough of a story, but the Democratic candidate was running unopposed. This isn't due to other races, either; Democrats had one other competitive primary compared to three for the Republicans. A greater percentage of Democrats turned out to participate in a box-checking exercise than Republicans showed up to vote in at least two elections that actually mattered.
I don't want to read too much into this, but one explanation is that more moderate GOP voters simply aren't showing up to primaries. And it makes sense that they wouldn't, because these primaries offer the voter nothing. You have races where the candidates argue over who will be more loyal to Trump, and you have outliers like the Massey race where a contrarian offers a referendum on Trump. To nearly half of Republican voters in her district, the fact that Bartolotta had an impeccable record of ruthless effectiveness in doing uncontroversial things that benefited the district was irrelevant in the light of the comments she made defending her constituents. So who is left voting in these primaries? The dyed-in-the wool Trump supporters who would still consider him to be one of the greatest human beings who ever lived and for whom adherence to MAGA principles (as defined by him) are paramount above all else. The question may not be whether he has an iron grip on the Republican Party so much as whether he has one over what's left of it.
I'm the Bartolatta case, were there any particularly spicy ballot measures this year? Democrat turnout was unusually high in my district, but it was due to local school board drama rather than anything related to the primaries.
There were no ballot measures. This is Pennsylvania and when we do get ballot measures, they're usually pretty boring. (Do you support the ability of the Bubb County Joint Authority to reduce the hearing notice period from 30 days to 20 days provided the notice is advertised in both print and digital media?)
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