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The close of the 2022 campaign for Congress also marked the opening of the 2024 Republican campaign for the presidency. As Election Day neared, former president Donald Trump took aim at his presumed rival-in-waiting, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, dubbing him “DeSanctimonious” and threatening to disclose “things about him that won’t be very flattering.”
Trump, who also hinted at an announcement of his 2024 presidential run next week, seemed to be taunting DeSantis from a position of strength. But on election night, the balance of power between the two leading politicians in the Republican Party shifted in DeSantis’s direction.
Trump’s grip on the GOP had tightened as the 2022 elections approached. In most high-profile primaries (the Georgia governor’s race was an important exception), Trump-backed candidates prevailed. Several seemed poised this week for victories over Democrats in key states, as Republicans hoped for an inflation-driven red wave.
But despite political and economic tail winds, Trump’s loyal candidates managed only a mixed performance against Democrats. J.D. Vance in Ohio was the top performer, securing a Senate seat by about a seven point margin, according to the latest results — less than that of other Republican officials elected statewide. Don Bolduc, Trump’s pick for Senate in New Hampshire, lost by a current margin between nine and 10 points. In Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz fell short. Blake Masters, another Trump-endorsed candidate, is trailing as votes are counted in Arizona.
Meanwhile, DeSantis won reelection as governor of Florida in a more than 19 point landslide, exceeding by seven the margin predicted in FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. While Republicans lagged or barely met expectations in most of the country, DeSantis blew out even bullish forecasts for the GOP in Florida, where Trump won by three points in 2020.
It’s not over. A win for Kari Lake in Arizona’s close governor’s race would bolster Trump’s prestige in the GOP, while a defeat would compound the damage. The fate of Trump’s Senate candidate in Georgia, Herschel Walker (who slightly trails incumbent Democrat Raphael G. Warnock) will likely be decided in a runoff election next month.
The 2021 Georgia Senate runoffs took place in Trump’s shadow as he tried to overturn his presidential election defeat. Both GOP candidates lost. Trump will again loom large in this year’s runoff if he announces his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination while the Senate seat is still in play.
One difference: The lame-duck Trump may not have cared whether Georgia’s GOP senators won or lost their runoffs last year. This year, a Walker defeat would blunt the momentum of his freshly announced presidential bid.
It’s fair to say that this is not the start for his 2024 campaign that Trump imagined when he swiped at DeSantis. Florida’s governor now looks more like a winner than the former president, but there are three caveats. The first is that Trump was not himself a candidate for office this year. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait suggested that “a slice of arch-populist right-wing voters is inspired to cast a ballot only if [Trump] is on the ticket.”
Trump and his supporters will argue that the GOP’s lackluster performance proves, rather than refutes, the necessity of putting him on the ticket once again. It’s probably true that Trump’s singular model of politics-as-spectacle activates certain voters not always available to Republican candidates. But DeSantis backers will rejoin that the coalition the Florida governor assembled is a safer bet — and as that winning coalition is scrutinized, they’ll be able to press their case.
The second caveat is that many Republican primary voters won’t themselves make careful calculations about electability. A turn against Trump would likely be elite-driven. Trump in 2016 trounced the party establishment with ease, and could do so again. But having ideologically and stylistically remade the GOP, Trump might also have made its leaders more savvy. Reports that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) won’t seek the 2024 nomination suggest Republican politicians might be more attuned this time to the risks of overcrowding the field.
The third caveat is the Democratic Party. Its gamble on elevating Trump-backed candidates in primaries in the hopes that they would be easier to beat in a general election appears to have delivered some major returns. Why not try a polarize-to-win approach in the presidential contest as well? As the Atlantic Council’s Damir Marusic put it, “keeping Trump in the game for 2024 is the Dems’ best strategy if the economic fundamentals remain weak. Expect the ‘democracy is in crisis’ rhetoric to persist for two more years, despite democracy showing all signs of being quite healthy in the United States.”
As successful as it may have been, what Democrats’ democracy rhetoric ahead of the 2022 election missed is that it takes (at least) two parties for a democracy to function. If only one party buys into the electoral system, politics won’t remain peacefully competitive for long.
The most significant contest for America’s constitutional guardrails, then, won’t be between the Democratic Party and a Trumpified GOP, as progressive campaign rhetoric insisted. It will be within the Republican Party itself. Trump is itching for that fight, but DeSantis might be wise, for the time being, to let Tuesday’s display of conservative political strength in Florida speak for itself.
Georgia runoff election: Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D) won re-election in the Georgia Senate runoff, defeating Republican challenger Herschel Walker and giving Democrats a 51st seat in the Senate for the 118th Congress. Get live updates here and runoff results by county.
Divided government: Republicans narrowly won back control of the House, while Democrats will keep control of the Senate, creating a split Congress.
What the results mean for 2024: A Republican Party red wave seems to be a ripple after Republicans fell short in the Senate and narrowly won control in the House. Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential campaign shortly after the midterms. Here are the top 10 2024 presidential candidates for the Republicans and Democrats.