Many various words have been used to describe the Republicans’ poor showing in the midterm elections, including failure, rebuke, error, etc., but rarely “price.” But that’s exactly what took place.
Republicans suffered a setback in the polls as a result of their significant policy victory, the Dobbs decision that ended the nation’s right to an abortion earlier this year.
Politicians are occasionally characterised as acting like “single-minded searchers of reelection,” in the words of renowned political scientist David Mayhew. Though obviously oversimplified, that nevertheless conveys a lot about what they do. Most of them aren’t particularly risk-takers, and if it means keeping their jobs, they’ll usually try to make people happy.
However, things get trickier when we add parties to the mix. Parties, and especially the movements that support parties, have objectives beyond simply securing the reelection of their members. They seek for possibilities to achieve their idea of what a great country should look like.
Since Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, if not earlier, overturning Roe v. Wade has been a top aim for the Republican Party. Conservative groups like the Federalist Society, Moral Majority, and Focus for the Family campaigned to make sure that the GOP’s primary goal was to reverse Roe. Every Republican president’s agenda has included abortion as a key policy objective for many years. Republicans wanted to appoint anti-abortion judges to the Supreme Court and other federal courts, and through a string of tragic deaths and unheard-of power plays by Mitch McConnell, the unlikely figure of Donald Trump was able to do just that.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that overturning Roe would spark a backlash; polls had consistently showed that this was a divisive notion. Even many pro-life campaigners just argued for tighter limitations on abortion rather than the outright bans that several states have already passed or are working to do.
Voters have been characterised as acting like a thermostat in important political science research. In other words, when policy shifts drastically and sharply in one direction, they respond by voting to bring back some semblance of balance or moderation. The people is responding to recent changes the president and his party have implemented and pushing back a little by voting for the other side. This is part of what drives the typical pattern in midterm elections where the president’s party loses seats.
But 2022 was different. On a variety of areas, including climate change, health care, income support, education loans, and more, Biden and congressional Democrats have made some significant policy reforms in recent years. However, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court’s decision to overrule a 50-year-old precedent and eliminate a privilege that Americans had enjoyed for years was by far the most visible and visceral change.
People responded to that by casting more Democratic or at least less Republican votes in the midterm elections than they typically would have. No, it wasn’t the congressional Republicans that reversed Roe, but voters don’t frequently distinguish between different departments or levels of government when giving credit or blame, and participating in a midterm election is one of the rare chances they get to voice their disapproval. Without Roe on the books, access to abortion in every state throughout the nation was also a hot topic, providing people another chance to voice their opinions and oppose an unsettling policy change.
In 2010, you might observe something similar among Democrats. Obama and congressional Democrats achieved a long-standing party objective when they passed the Affordable Care Act. Lyndon Johnson campaigned for Medicare despite wanting universal healthcare. Clinton pushed for a piece of it but was unsuccessful. The law was really passed by Obama. And as a result, his party suffered a loss of more than 60 seats in the midterm elections. According to one analysis, Democrats who supported the ACA suffered greater political consequences than those who did not, and this may have been sufficient to cost Democrats the majority. However, for those who had been advocating the idea, that cost might still have been justified.
Comparably, when Democrats pursued civil rights legislation in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was not particularly well-liked by the majority of Americans, but it was a commitment the party had made and intended to see realised. LBJ predicted his party had lost the South for a decade even as he celebrated passage. Although unpopular, the 2017 Trump tax cuts were crucial for the Republican Party. Parties are aware that they must be aware of public opinion and that they cannot always ignore it, but because their fundamental objectives are not always supported by the public, they occasionally are prepared to take risks and pay a price to achieve them.
There is little doubt that Republicans’ underperformance in the 2022 elections was due to other notable factors as well. His preferred candidates appeared to lose support as Trump received more attention. Additionally, his influence led to a field of weak Republican nominees. Candidates who sought to weaken election laws—often Trump supporters—seemed to suffer consequences as well.
But abortion has just become more visible than it had in the past. About 27% of respondents to exit polls cited abortion as the primary reason they voted, second only to inflation. Usually, abortion isn’t even among the top five.
Republicans’ disappointment with this year’s election results is understandable. But one of the main explanations is that they achieved a significant policy victory that they had been fighting for for almost 50 years. And despite those artificial obstacles, Republicans still won the House, albeit by a slim margin. In that case, the GOP may have gotten a good deal.