The 2022 midterm congressional elections should be good ones for the Republican Party. Capitalizing on President Biden’s unpopularity and voter concerns over inflation, crime, and border security, GOP candidates are widely expected to capture the House of Representatives, and stand at least an even chance of taking the Senate as well. The party, however, stands in many ways at a crossroads in 2022; the outcomes of various races on Election Night will tell much about the party’s agenda, coalition, and prospects going forward.
While he is not on the ballot, former President Donald Trump looms over this midterm election almost as much as the current president. Trump and his allies successfully backed unconventional GOP Senate nominees over more establishment choices in critical battleground states including New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona. According to the polls, many are now underperforming expectations, locked in tight races in what should be a strong electoral environment for Republicans. If these candidates come up short in what should be winnable races, allowing Democrats to retain their tenuous control of the Senate, Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement will widely be seen as having squandered a prime electoral opportunity for the party. If, conversely, the polls have been understating support for these candidates—as they did in both 2016 and 2020 for Trump himself—and many or all of them win, the more combative MAGA tone and posture will appear vindicated, strengthening both Trump and his faction within the party going into the 2024 presidential race.
Just as important as how many Republicans win on November 8th will be how they win. To what extent will we see the emergence of new electoral coalitions? Perhaps no group is more critical in this regard than Hispanic voters. Somewhat surprisingly, Donald Trump in 2020 improved on his 2016 showing among Hispanics by several percentage points (as he did among African- and Asian-Americans; he lost because of erosion among non-Hispanic white voters). Republicans hope to expand on these inroads in 2022, benefitting from Biden’s low approval in the Latino community and Hispanic aversion to Democrats’ heavy lean-in to the abortion issue. Hispanic voters are a key constituency in contested Senate races in Florida, Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada; if Republicans take three of those four, they likely win the Senate. In addition, strategists in both parties will be keeping a close eye on three key heavily Hispanic House districts along the Texas-Mexico border. In all three, Republicans have fielded conservative Latina candidates in areas that have traditionally been heavily Democratic, but that shifted strongly toward Trump in 2020. To win even one of these seats would be an important breakthrough for the party; capturing two (or even all three) would constitute a political earthquake, not only in Texas but in the nation more broadly. Widespread predictions of an “emerging Democratic majority” are largely predicated on Hispanics continuing to give about two thirds of their votes to Democrats; if Republicans are able to achieve closer to an even split, their long-term prospects are brightened considerably.
If Hispanic voters present a great opportunity for Republicans, white suburbanites—especially women—give cause for concern. Once a great bastion of GOP strength, the suburbs have become much more competitive in recent years, as many affluent, college-educated voters have been turned off by the bombastic, pugnacious tenor of Trump and the MAGA movement. Many of these suburban voters, particularly female ones, chafe at the cultural wars priorities of the GOP, especially on issues surrounding guns and abortion. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision over the summer, which struck down the federal guarantee of abortion rights and allowed states to legislate in the area as they see fit, galvanized many female voters and signaled at least a temporary up-tick in Democrats’ poll numbers and electoral fortunes. While much of that seems to have receded, with abortion now ranking well below the economy and crime in voters’ lists of concerns, it remains an open question whether pro-choice sentiment will drive higher-than-expected turnout among moderate and liberal women, and thus blunt GOP gains in suburban districts where Biden is fairly unpopular. If this does happen, the party will have to wrestle with how to present its pro-life convictions—so dear to critical elements of its base—going forward.
A final issue that bears watching is how Republican candidates who do lose close races—and, even on a good GOP night, there will be some—handle their defeats. One of the central Democratic talking points of this electoral cycle is that voters should not trust Republicans because they pose a “threat to democracy.” Will losing Republican candidates play into this narrative by pushing wild conspiracy theories about electoral fraud and manipulation? Or, alternatively, will they defy Democrats’ expectations by conceding graciously and urging their supporters to focus on the political battles to come?
For those Republican candidates who win, the critical test will be how they conduct themselves in office. The best-case scenario, for the party and for the country, would be for them to advance a forward-focused agenda, offering plausible, realistic proposals to combat inflation, reduce crime, and tackle the chaotic situation at the southern border. Even if President Biden vetoes, or Senate Democrats filibuster, many of these efforts, the party will at least have shown itself to be serious about governance, and will have a positive agenda to run on in 2024. The more problematic path would be for them to look backward, indulging President Trump’s near-obsessive fixation on the “stolen” 2020 election and pursuing various investigations into the Biden administration and family. Such an approach would ignore the issues of most concern to voters, serve to raise even further the level of political acrimony in the country, and lend credence to Democratic assertions that the current GOP is not a credible governing party. The extent to which the party can resist this temptation, if they do (as expected) win at least one house of Congress, will say much about their prospects going forward.
