6 THE NEW AMERICA STRIKES BACK
THE DEMOCRATS WON A SWEEPING VICTORY IN THE 2018 midterm elections. They won the highest share of the popular vote in any national election since 1946. They defeated the Republicans by 9 million votes and their 8.5-percent winning margin represents what Ron Brownstein describes as “the most emphatic repudiation of a president in modern history.”1
The Democrats as a result picked up forty House seats—the biggest Democratic gain in House seats since Watergate, electing a record-breaking 102 women to the House, and flipping six statehouses, nearly four hundred legislative seats, and seven governors’ mansions. Democrats now occupy nearly half of the fifty governors’ mansions, including in all the Blue Wall states that allowed President Donald Trump to win the Electoral College. The Democrats’ winning House margin exceeded that for the Republicans in the 2010 Tea Party wave election. They shifted the average vote margin by ten points, compared to President Trump’s in 2016, though by fully twenty-one points in the seats that flipped to the Democrats. The enormity of this cannot be understated.
This was an unprecedented off-year election. The turnout hit 50.1 percent, up a third from 2014 and the highest since 1914. Tea Party and Evangelical Republicans raised their turnout. But that was overshadowed by the surge in activism and fund-raising catalyzed by the Women’s March and response to Donald Trump’s election, and carried through by progressive groups, including the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund (WVWVAF) and the Voter Participation Center that I worked with.2
President Trump also went through what may be a realigning election. He nationalized the election around himself, producing an intense anti-Trump reaction that consolidated the Democrats and the “Rising American Electorate”—unmarried women, persons of color, and millennials—who demanded elected leaders be a check on Donald Trump. All varieties of women turned against the president. African Americans and unmarried women pushed the promise of the Rising American Electorate (RAE) to its highest off-year vote share and Democratic support. President Trump who promised to govern for the “forgotten Americans” lost a lot of white working-class and rural voters and fractured his own party. And President Trump declared war on immigrants and on multicultural America and lost.
NATIONALIZED ANTI-TRUMP VOTE
The shift toward the Democrats was produced in the first instance by an intense anti-Trump reaction among women, particularly those in the Rising American Electorate (minorities, millennials, and unmarried women) and in the suburbs, as the president nationalized the election around himself. Fully 46 percent of the country strongly disapproved of Trump—compared to only 34 percent who strongly approved. That intense negative reaction reached 84 percent with African-American women, 64 percent with millennial women, and 59 percent with unmarried women and college women.
The president’s campaign raised his strong approval to 73 percent among Republicans, but that pales next to the 85 percent of Democrats who “strongly disapproved.”
President Trump’s personalization and nationalization of the election succeeded in raising the stakes for parts of his loyalist base, such as white working-class men: two thirds said this off-year election was much more important than prior midterms. But Trump’s championing of white men proved an affront to college women and African Americans, who came to view the election as even more important than Trump’s strongest base supporters did. Trump’s provocations pushed Hispanics and unmarried women to the same level of urgency.
The pro- and anti-Trump sentiment was so strong that three quarters of those voting for candidates for the House and nearly 90 percent of Senate candidate voters never considered voting for another candidate.
The top reason that Democratic House voters gave to vote against the Republican and for the Democrat across the presidential battleground was to have leaders who would be a check on President Trump. That was also the strongest reason to vote for the Democrat in the U.S. Senate elections in those contested states. So, Donald Trump succeeded in making himself the most important factor in people’s vote, though not with the intended result.
WOMEN
Democrats won not just because white college women rebelled against Trump’s misogyny and disrespect of women. Nearly every possible category of women rebelled. Yes, House Democrats increased their vote margin nationally among white women with at least a four-year degree by thirteen points compared with the Clinton-Trump margin in 2016. But Democrats also pushed up their vote margin among white millennial women by eighteen points, white working-class women by thirteen points, and white unmarried women by ten points.
In fact, the white college women who were supposed to be the “fuel for this Democratic wave” played a smaller role in the Democrats’ increased 2018 margin than white working-class women, because the former were 15 percent of midterm voters and the latter 25 percent.
This gender dynamic produced a House Democratic caucus that was 39 percent women. It produced a House GOP caucus that was at least 90 percent white men.
Unmarried women comprised 23 percent of the national electorate and played a decisive role in the 2018 wave. Like other women, many unmarried women decided early to oppose what was happening in the country, but some decided in the fall and as late as the final week not only to vote but also to vote out the Republicans, especially in the Rust Belt where Democrats made such big gains. We know this story because of the web panel that Democracy Corps conducted for WVWVAF, which interviewed the same respondents four times in the twelve states with competitive statewide races.3
African Americans too were engaged, consolidated, and played a parallel role in getting the Rising American Electorate to deliver to its full potential. Critical work done by progressive groups and, perversely, President Trump’s own stance on immigration, helped dramatically move up the Democratic vote among millennials and Hispanics, though their turnout failed to keep up with the surge among other progressive groups.
The story of unmarried women voters was unique. Unmarried and white unmarried women gave the Democrats at all levels landslide numbers. Reacting to President Trump and the Women’s March, many decided early to vote for Democrats by big margins, but a large proportion decided this election was very important only in September and October and shifted to the Democrats in the final week, especially in the Rust Belt. That gave the Democrats big wins in the House and Senate. These voters were reached heavily by phone and mail. At the end of the day, unmarried women turned out at their highest level since WVWVAF has worked to put them center stage in progressive strategies.
Unmarried women were resolute in their determination to vote against the Republicans, supporting the Democratic House candidates by 68 to 31 percent in the more conservative battleground states.4 White unmarried women, too—who are two thirds of unmarried women—helped to produce this powerful repudiation of Trump and the GOP. In 2014 and 2016, they had divided their national votes evenly between the parties, but in 2018, they supported Democrats with nearly a two-to-one margin (61 to 37 percent).
A lot happened for those strong numbers to be translated into the November wave. The RAE as a whole, particularly millennials and Hispanics, as well as unmarried women, shifted their vote margin for the Democrats by nine points in the fall in the Rust Belt states. Unmarried women supported Democrats then by 73 to 25 percent, the biggest margin of the year. The election crystallized in the Rust Belt for all the RAE groups then.
The Rising American Electorate played an even more powerful late role in the U.S. Senate contests in the Rust Belt. Between Labor Day and Election Day, the RAE pushed up its vote margin for the Democrats by seventeen points. The Democratic Senate candidates in the Rust Belt battleground states won by 67 to 30 percent. They won with the votes of unmarried women there by 72 to 21 percent.
It was hardly certain that unmarried women would turn out in large enough numbers to offset President Trump’s effort to turn out his base. Unmarried women had disappointed in 2010 and 2014. But the campaign and organizational efforts of progressives began to change that. The proportion of unmarried women saying that voting in this election was much more important than prior midterms jumped eight points between September and the election. It jumped eight points for white unmarried women and seventeen points for white millennial women, too.
It was not TV ads that reached these voters to get out their vote. Three quarters of unmarried women said that candidates, campaigns, and other organizations reached them with “print materials in the mail”—outpacing those indicating they saw an ad on TV by nine points—and 44 percent of unmarried women reported receiving phone calls.
We now know from the series of interviews I conducted with the same respondents in the Rising American Electorate battleground panel that nearly half of those voters in the Rust Belt decided their vote before or during the summer. The unmarried women who decided how they would vote before the fall voted straight ticket during that period, giving nearly 75 percent of their votes to Democratic candidates for the House, Senate, and governorships.
In the fall, when the Brett Kavanaugh hearings were held, over 40 percent of the Rising American Electorate in the diverse battleground states made up their minds. The unmarried women who decided then gave two thirds of their votes to Democrats in the House races but were less consolidated in the races for the Senate and for governor.
The last week before the election was decisive for the Rising American Electorate and the blue wave. Fully 27 percent of the RAE in the Rust Belt battleground states made their vote choices in the last week.
The unmarried women who decided in the final week gave Democrats two-to-one support in the races for the House, Senate, and governorships.
This report makes clear that there was nothing foretold in the role that unmarried women would play in 2018. Yes, these women gave Democrats landslide support and they participated at historic levels, but they responded to mobilizing events and intense campaign activity to shape the wave.
Will this shift of white women be durable? Mr. Trump is the leader of the Republican Party as it heads toward 2020. Like Mr. Trump, Senate and House Republicans were animated about white males being victimized by the PC police. The new Republican House caucus is 90 percent white men; near 40 percent of the new Democratic members are now women.
RISING AMERICAN ELECTORATE
The New America joined the battle for the country in ways that made 2018 a turning point for President Trump and the GOP. What I have called the Rising American Electorate of African Americans, Hispanics, unmarried women, and millennials was 60 percent of the voting-age population, 57 percent of those registered to vote, and 53 percent of those who voted in this off-year election. They produced unprecedented turnout and an unprecedented midterm vote for the Democrats.
Look at what they did at the ballot box in the 2018 election! African Americans gave Democrats near universal support (90 percent). Seven in ten millennial women and Hispanic voters supported Democrats, putting them at the center of the base with the two thirds of unmarried women who supported Democrats. You had to get to white unmarried women and white millennials before you got below 55 percent and double-digit leads. The suburbs were impressive but they gave the Democrats a modest ten-point win.
African Americans and unmarried women delivered their highest midterm vote share ever, thanks in no small part to the work of WVWVAF and the Voter Participation Center. Young people and Hispanics also managed to raise their share by one point each in a high-turnout midterm, but they fell back from their share in past presidential election years. Others in the New America have shown you can break that mold when the stakes are that high, and 2020 is just on the horizon.
MESSAGE: CORRUPT TAX DEAL FOR RICH THAT THREATENS RETIREMENT AND HEALTH CARE
The Democrats for the first time in decades ran with a clear attack on a GOP that governed for big corporations and the rich at the expense of the middle class. They exposed the corrupt tax deal that enriched the 1 percent and blew up federal deficits that put Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and education investments at risk. While the 1 percent loved this economy, the middle class struggled with skyrocketing health care and prescription drug costs and the uncertainty of lost protections for preexisting conditions.
Elites, pundits, and the GOP trumpeted that this was the best economy in living memory, yet they were totally out of touch with the ordinary voter, who was living on the edge and struggling financially. The majority of voters said that their wages were not keeping up with rising costs, particularly rising health care costs. They were angry and scared about prescription drug costs. Republicans failed to understand just how “out of control” health care costs had become for working families and how they were causing them the greatest uncertainty.
The fear that Republicans would take the country back to the days when people could be denied health insurance for preexisting conditions or forced to face unbearable premiums was made real by the Republicans’ ideological assault on the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid. Democratic candidates’ support for protections for preexisting medical conditions was the second most important reason to vote for the Democrat for Senate in the battleground states.
Meanwhile, majorities reported that the so-called middle-class tax cut had not benefitted them personally, and, indeed, benefitted the rich and corporations at their expense. No wonder six in ten voters said Donald Trump is “self-dealing and looking out for himself”—including two thirds of independents, half strongly.
The Democrats ran against the Trump economy and opposed the Trump tax cut for the rich that threatened Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That became the core content of national Democrats’ closing arguments, and voters’ desire for an economy for all became one of the top reasons to support them on Election Day.
In Democracy Corps’s survey for WVWVAF, I asked what should be the top priorities for the new Congress. The message and mandate of the election could not be clearer. Over 70 percent said the top priority and/or near the very top of the list should be preventing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security from being cut. Almost 60 percent said lowering prescription drug costs should be such a priority. About 50 percent wanted to make investigating President Trump and impeachment and repealing the tax cut such a priority.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Democrats’ ad buys were focused predominantly on health care, tax fairness, and jobs. They were impactful in the 2018 election and in defining the mandate of the election.5
THE WORKING CLASS
Mr. Trump and the GOP’s base were still deeply invested in the white working-class voters. Nonetheless, Democrats got their wave in part because a significant portion of male and female white working-class voters abandoned Mr. Trump and his Republican allies.
In the 2016 presidential election, the white working-class men in particular, whom Trump spoke most forcefully of as the “forgotten Americans,” gave him 71 percent of their votes, with only 23 percent going to Hillary Clinton. In the 2018 off year, the Republicans won their votes with a still-impressive margin of 66 to 32 percent. And immigration continued to push these voters to the Republicans. A three-to-one balloon was deflated to two to one, still a daunting margin if Democrats are to compete everywhere.
Nonetheless, the Republicans watched their margin fall off fourteen points with white working-class men and thirteen points with women, which affected a lot of races.
Working people are no fools, and Mr. Trump had promised them a Republican president who would never cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid; who would repeal Obamacare but provide “insurance for everybody”; who would get rid of bad trade deals and “drain the swamp,” as he never tired of saying. Instead, had Trump’s effort to replace Obamacare passed, it would have imposed vast cuts in retirement programs and driven up health insurance costs. His tax reforms were heavily weighted to benefit large corporations and the top 1 percent.
Working people, not just the white working class, were struggling with wages not coming close to keeping up with the rising cost of living. That is what elites had failed to understand for more than a decade. Two thirds of African Americans, unmarried women, and Hispanics said that, half with an intensity that suggests anger and resentment. Over 60 percent of white working-class women and millennials agreed they can’t keep up, as well as 55 percent of white working-class men, a third with intensity. Three quarters of the white working class believed strongly that health care costs are out of control, starting with prescription drugs. And by a big margin, white working-class women (44 to 22 percent) and men (39 to 24 percent) respond warmly to “raising taxes on the rich and corporations.”
So, it is no surprise that more than half of white working-class men said that Trump is “self-dealing and looking out for himself.” The Democratic Senate candidates delivered that critique and romped to victory across the Midwest. The Republicans’ House margin with white working-class men was cut in half in the Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio races, and Democratic Senate candidates won these states by double digits.
Democrats still lost white working-class men in the 2018 wave election by thirty-four points and the women by fourteen, so they have a lot of work ahead, but 10 percent of 2016 Trump voters supported Democrats in 2018, and 40 percent of moderate Republicans either voted Democratic or stayed home.
This setback will be corrosive unless a post-wave President Trump decides to acknowledge the “shellacking” and starts to actually “drain the swamp.” Don’t hold your breath.
RURAL GAINS
Democrats could not have picked up as many House seats as they did in 2018 without raising their share of the vote by four points in the suburbs, which have grown to encompass 50 percent of voters. Hillary Clinton had won many of these districts in 2016, so it was clear that any further shift in the Democrats’ direction would prove consequential. But counter to the prevailing narrative, Democrats made their biggest gains not there, but in the rural parts of the country.
Democrats cut the Republicans’ margin in rural areas by thirteen points, according to the Edison exit poll, and by seven points in one by Catalist. Democrats still lost rural America by somewhere between fourteen and eighteen points. The top-of-the-ticket Senate candidates in more rural states received on average seventeen points less support than President Trump did in 2016, but he knocked off key Democrats by pressing his base to punish these dangerous politicians and vote a straight GOP ticket.6 That left those Democratic officeholders exposed, with implications for the Senate.
Democrats still need to run stronger there. But it shouldn’t conceal the fact that Democrats actually made progress in rural areas and pushed back against the insufferable polarization.
WAR ON IMMIGRANTS THAT TRUMP LOST
Democrats made historic gains because Mr. Trump declared war on immigrants—and on multicultural America—and lost. By sending 5,500 troops to lay barbwire at the border, warning of an immigrant invasion, and running a Willie Horton–type ad showing a Mexican who had murdered law enforcement officers, he succeeded in making immigration and the border a voting issue for his Republican base. When my poll asked voters why they had voted Republican, “open borders” was the top reason given for voting against a Democratic candidate. But it backfired among other voters.
On Election Day, a stunning 54 percent of those who voted said immigrants “strengthen our country.” The GOP lost the national popular vote by eight points, but Trump lost the debate over whether immigrants are a strength or a burden by twenty. Trump got more than half of Republicans to believe immigrants were a burden, but three quarters of Democrats and a large majority of independents concluded that America benefits from immigration. For the broad Rising American Electorate, immigration has become a kind of civil rights issue that produced almost identical and intense responses in support of the immigrants’ role among Hispanics, African Americans, and millennials. By a two-to-one ratio, white millennials and women college graduates embraced America’s immigrant future.
The idea that America is an immigrant country and that immigrants strengthen the country transcended political boundaries. It was embraced in the East and West, the metropolitan areas and the suburbs. Even in the South, it was seen to benefit, 52 percent to 38 percent. And even male and female white working-class voters were just evenly split on the issue. They showed ambivalence about immigration and a multicultural America that was not shared by the mostly white working-class Republican Party.
For their part, the Democrats owned their diversity. They supported comprehensive immigration reform and the acceptance of Dreamers, opposed Trump’s border wall, and opposed the separation of children from their families at the border. They nominated African-American candidates for governor in Georgia and Florida and fought the suppression of minority voters. When it was over, the Democrats got more votes and created a new Democratic House majority that was roughly 40 percent women, 40 percent white men, and 40 percent people of color, with eight LGBTQ members and two Muslim women.
The Republicans lost badly in the House in 2018 by running as an anti-immigrant party, while the Democrats made major gains as a self-confident diverse party, which might have the most durable impact on the character of the country.
TRUMP’S ANTI-IMMIGRANT CAMPAIGN UNITED BUT FRACTURED THE GOP
President Trump made immigration the top reason to vote against Democrats among all off-year voters and succeeded in making the Democrats’ support of “open borders and sanctuary cities” the top reason to oppose them in every faction of the GOP, including the moderates. That ugly campaign successfully raised hostility to immigrants and foreignness and pushed up President Trump’s “strong approval” with all types of Republicans.
But critically, the divisive ultra-nationalist campaign was a step too far for some in the GOP. The 2018 campaign pushed some Republicans not to vote or to vote for Democrats, leaving the Republican Party more fractured and polarized. We know this because of the Democracy Corps and Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund web panel in twelve contested battleground states, which interviewed the same Republican voters before and after the election, including those in the GOP who pushed back hard against the Tea Party that had dominated the party for a decade.7
President Trump no doubt feels satisfied that he pushed up intense hostility to “immigrants to the U.S.” in every faction of the party—up seven points to 43 percent with moderates, up thirteen points to 59 percent with secular conservatives, up fourteen points to 61 percent with conservative Catholics, up fourteen points to 59 percent with Evangelicals, and up sixteen points to 52 percent with the Tea Party GOP. Before the election, all segments of the GOP were very uncomfortable with “coming into contact with people who speak little or no English.” Half of every segment remained intensely negative after the election, except conservative Catholics, some of whom became uncomfortable with the anti-foreign drumbeat.
But the Trump campaign in 2018 went much further. It ended up encouraging a fervent Trump supporter and ultra-nationalist to send pipe bombs to Democratic politicians and to shoot up a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Stunningly, every segment of the GOP was less warm to the idea of “preventing discrimination against white people” in their second post-election interview. Trump’s “white nationalism” had lost steam within his own party.
It would reverberate globally, with white nationalists using social media platforms to share his worries about America being invaded by Muslim terrorists. The white nationalist who murdered fifty worshippers in the New Zealand mosque in 2019 described President Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.”8
President Trump successfully used his campaign rallies and Fox News to mobilize his Evangelical, Tea Party, and Catholic conservative base, and they also reached secular conservatives who got more on board with Trump at the close. About half of those groups watched a rally on TV or watch Fox News frequently. By comparison, only 26 percent of moderates watched a rally and only 18 percent watch Fox News frequently. A not inconsiderable 7 percent of Republicans attended a rally, but one quarter posted on social media, 11 percent displayed a sign, and 9 percent wore a shirt or hat. Among Evangelicals, one fifth discussed politics at church or Bible study.
President Trump and the Republicans’ off-year campaign increased the polarization within the party on abortion and gay marriage. The Evangelical conservatives, Tea Party, and Catholic conservatives ended up much more favorable to pro-life, anti-abortion groups, while moderates and secular conservatives became much more negative.
The polarization around the Tea Party was even more dramatic and meaningful. The Tea Party symbolizes the take-no-prisoners, partisan campaign championed by President Trump. The proportion of secular conservatives viewing the Tea Party negatively jumped ten points to 55 percent and negative views of the Tea Party jumped twenty-three points with moderates. In the election week poll, over 70 percent viewed the Tea Party negatively. That gives you a view of the profound fractures in this Trump-led GOP.
Big stuff happened on Election Day. Nationally, a noticeable 12 percent of conservative Catholics and secular conservatives did not vote. Among the moderates, one quarter of the GOP, just 69 percent voted Republican, 12 percent defected to the Democrats, and 19 percent stayed home. The “persuadable GOP”—a group of targetable Republicans developed by Democracy Corps—was 40 percent larger than the moderates and may have played an even bigger role in this wave: one quarter voted for Democrats and 14 percent stayed home.
Those Republicans who considered voting for a Democrat said they were motivated “to make the economy work for everyone, not just the rich and corporations” (48 percent), to “send a message that we need decency and honesty in government” (48 percent), and to have a “check on Donald Trump” (38 percent). That sentiment has blended into the tough message to the GOP that emerged from this election.
The Democratic wave exposed Mr. Trump’s vulnerability and suggests a less polarized country. His divisive campaign lost parts of rural and working-class America and peeled off those parts of the Republican Party that are looking for something less divisive. I thought it would take Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020 for America to be liberated from this suffocating polarization, but it may have already begun.