Mid-Term Lessons for 2024

It's on to Iowa...

There is a big difference between “votes and “ballots.” The Republicans focused on winning votes; the Democrats focused on gathering ballots.  The ballots won.

Conservative Treehouse (November 2022)

To those Republicans who believe it’s not worth winning if we can’t win big, get over it. Yes, an awful president (37% approval) and hurting nation (72% say it’s on wrong track) should have resulted in a checkmate election, but control of the House, gains with Democrat voting blocs, and lessons learned (misses and hits) set the table for GOP wins in 2024.

Minus One – Republicans lost voters under 30. Exit polls show Democrats won 65% of voters age 25-29 and 61% of voters age 18-24. Part of this is (understandably) the repercussion of the high court’s Dobbs ruling. An unfortunate consequence that must be kept in perspective: is it an issue Democrats cannot rely on forever? Probably not, as abortion gets sorted out state by state and becomes a secondary issue (as it was before Dobbs).

The bigger concern for Republicans is the Democrat revival of widespread voter registration events on college campuses – often with pizza and beer – and free bus rides to the polls to vote Democrat. It worked in 2018 to create the anti-Trump wave, was shelved in 2020 because of COVID, and worked again in 2022. It’s a built-in advantage for the DNC – no college kid says “no” to beer – that the GOP must offset with other voting blocs.

Minus Two – Trump’s candidates under-performed in 114 swing districts. Republicans endorsed by Trump under-performed their baseline by 5 points. To wit, despite PA-8 being rated R+4, Jim Bognet lost 48.8% to 51.2%. In CO-3, Lauren Boebert barely won in comparison to 2020 (9,319 fewer votes and 9 fewer percentage points). In contrast, candidates running without Trump’s blessing over-performed their baseline by 2.2 points (source: The Washington Post).

Trump wasn’t the ONLY reason a red wave did not occur, but he is ONE reason independent voters broke 49-47 for Democrats. Love or hate the man, but don’t dismiss the drag of 54.3% of voters viewing him unfavorably (source: FiveThirtyEight polling average). And, when a GOP-funded poll by The Winston Group finds Mr. Trump at 58% unfavorable and only 39% favorable, MAGA voters must ask what price loyalty? Clearly, this must be resolved before 2024.

Minus Three – Republicans botched the harvesting of early ballots. Election Day is now Election Month, because 42.5% of voters (47 million) in 2022 cast early ballots. Democrat lawyers got states to increase voting days and loosen voter standards. Aided by left-leaning unions and Big Tech, Democrats found many ways to harvest 21,200,000 early ballots; collecting ballots, filling them in if necessary, and dropping them into roadside bins. They won 45% of the early votes, while the GOP won only 35% (16.5 million).

Democrats also targeted swing states for big early-ballot-harvesting hauls to build huge firewalls in states like Michigan (+339,132), Washington (+483,562), and Pennsylvania (+655,000). Thus, by delaying Fetterman’s debate, his campaign could harvest from un-informed voters. Out in Arizona, Hobbs (D) refused to debate because of this strategy. Why persuade voters, when you can harvest ballots from Democrat leans?

Minus Four – Democrats in 30 states preserved the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) to maintain voter rolls. Election agencies fund and a few officials operate ERIC, which was first promoted by Big Tech (red flag). Time and again it has been found to preserve “phantom” addresses (empty lots) and voters (deceased) that should be purged from state voter rolls. ERIC is supposed to tie each ballot to a real someone, but too often ballots are just tied to a name on a list (source: American Thinker).

As through this life you travel, you meet some funny men. Some rob you with a six gun, and some with a fountain pen.

Bob Dylan (2010)

It’s one thing that every state’s voter list has thousands of phantom addresses and quite another when votable ballots go to addresses where the indicated voter doesn’t live, are gathered and cast in the name of the phantom. This is, of course, the crux of the 2020 stolen election claim the GOP cannot prove. A debate for another day; except to note few blue-state voter rolls have been scrubbed of dead voters and addresses that are now empty lots (source: The Spectator).

Plus One – Ron DeSantis and Ron Johnson beat Democrats at their own game. Florida’s Republican governor should be the GOP front runner to oust President Biden because he has shown the most political skill and will since Ronald Reagan. All DeSantis did was crush Democrats with party registrations (+800,000), early voting (+205,000), election-day votes (+1,213,314), and knock all 30 “woke” liberals off Florida’s school boards. The man’s an American Caesar – and isn’t that called for in these times?

Equally important is how Wisconsin Republicans ensured Sen. Ron Johnson’s re-election. A GOP voter integrity team scrubbed the voter rolls, deprived Mandela Barnes (D) of tens of thousands of phantom addresses and voters, and crashed the Democrat’s ballot-harvesting system. Central to their feat was Fractal Programming technology at scale, which quickly and easily exposed the junk ERIC had on file. This must be replicated before 2024.

Plus Two – Republicans re-took the House. The material win in these elections was creating gridlock in Washington. House Republicans will cut off the Biden ATM and force the President to seek bipartisan solutions. Further, White House staff will fear GOP-led hearings and legacy media will be forced to cover Hunter Biden.

Plus Three – Republicans won more popular votes than Democrats. This was presaged by pre-election polls and party registrations, but the GOP has won 51.2% of popular vote for the US House (3.9 points more than Democrats and 2.8 points more than the GOP win in 2016). That’s 4.1 million more votes in 2022 than its rival; an 8.7 million vote swing from 2020, and 13.8 million vote swing from 2018. This is huge, because the anti-Trump wave in 2018 gave Democrats their largest popular vote win ever – something Trump’s supporters must consider heading into 2024.

Plus Four – Exit polls found a material shift of key voting blocs – away from Democrats toward Republicans. Compared to 2018, the GOP grew 11 points with all women (14 with Latinas, 8 with Blacks, and 8 with Whites), and 10 points with all men (21 with Latinos, 11 with Blacks, and 7 with Whites). A bigger and better shift was the 17-point jump with Asians, the fastest-growing voting bloc in America (source: NEP).

Republicans also gained with every age group (15 points with ages 30-44, 10 with ages over 65, 9 with ages 45-65, and 7 with ages 18-29), and across locales (up 16 points with urban, 15 with rural, and 6 with suburban voters). The GOP improved with college-educated voters (up 5 points with whites and 17 with non-whites) and voters with no college (up 10 points with whites and 15 with non-whites).

Challenge One – Is there life with Trump? The Hill now reports 62% of Republicans say they “support the party” and 30% say they “support Trump.” This aligns with numerous polls that show Republicans moving away from Trump. Many blame him for discouraging strong candidates (Arizona’s Gov. Ducey) from entering winnable races, and recruiting weak candidates (Dr. Oz) who lost big. That’s why many Republicans fear Trump’s effect on their party; even those who believe he did his country, and his party, a lot of good. Whatever – he’s announced.

2024 won’t be 2016: if Trump can defeat a GOP field of DeSantis, Haley, Pence, Pompeo, and Youngkin, many’ll be surprised, impressed, and supportive. Further, Republican governors Kemp (GA), DeSantis (FL), Dewine (OH), and Sununu (NH) won big without Trump’s help. The obvious point here is how the strength of the Republican bench compares to the 2016 primaries and Joe Biden. May the best Republican win!

Challenge Two – Did the GOP learn from its mistakes? Florida proved early voting should be embraced, and Wisconsin proved how to defeat Democrat ballot-harvesting. After the results of 2018, 2020, and 2022, Lee Zeldin (R-NY) should probably replace Ronna McDaniel at the RNC.

The path to 2024 is simple. Continue winning the “new registration” and start winning the “early ballot” battles. Have voter-integrity teams force every state to purge “phantom” addresses and voters. Identify vulnerable Senate Democrats and groom (fund and support) Republicans in statewide offices to defeat them. Above all, beat Democrats at the ballot-harvesting game.

Democrats now focus their ballot-harvesting tactics on 54.5 million voters in three loyal voting blocs; 24.6 million in black churches, 15.9 million on college campuses, and 14 million in worker unions. That’s easily offset by harvesting Republican ballots at gun shows (77.5 million US gun owners), evangelical churches (73 million conservative Christians), and 52,000 retirement communities and facilities (too many seniors to count). This is how the California GOP re-took the “lean red” precincts in 2020 that it had lost in 2018; out-harvest the Democrats.

Note: with the election season over, the Conservative Guardian will return to its one-post-per-week schedule – until the 2024 election season is upon us.