In the 2016 election, Democrats seemed to assume that Donald Trump’s unpopularity would be enough to keep him out of the White House. True, most Americans viewed him unfavorably, but the same was true of Hillary Clinton. Given such an unappealing choice, millions of voters decided Trump was the lesser of two evils.
In a series of special elections in 2017, Democrats have continued to make the same mistake. They look at the president’s low job ratings and assume that simply standing up to President Trump should be enough to win the election. That was the theory behind Tuesday’s special election in Georgia, in which Democrats across the country funded the most exorbitant congressional campaign in history and still got nothing done.
Blinded by anger at the president, many Democrats are struggling to come to terms with how this could have happened. Convinced that the constant headlines about Russia, special counsel and James Comey made impeachment a real possibility, they failed to notice that the president’s job approval rating has been flat for three full months.
Perhaps the most succinct justification came from Representative Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat: “Our brand is worse than Trump.” In other words, the president may be unpopular, but many voters in the middle still see his team as the lesser of two evils.
Data from earlier this year backs up his claim. Simmons Research found that 17 percent of voters were unhappy with Trump being president but elated with Clinton not being president. At the time Simmons conducted his survey, 52 percent of voters were elated with Trump being president, or at least elated that he kept Clinton out of the Oval Office. That data was collected a little over a month into the Trump administration, between Feb. 27 and March 5. At the time, Trump’s approval rating was just 44 percent, so the difference between job approval and total approval for a Trump victory was 8 percentage points.
There is currently no data to measure the difference. But it may be even greater today than it was a few months ago. The president’s dwindling job performance ratings may have been offset by a rise in the number of people who still see him as the lesser of two evils. If so, it’s not unreasonable to say that a narrow majority of voters are glad Clinton isn’t president.
Tuesday’s election results in Georgia suggest some support for that theory. The final tally was very similar to the president’s performance in the district last fall. Anecdotal evidence also comes from the fact that many Republicans and conservatives are complaining about the president while expressing relief that he added Justice Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court.
So for Democrats, opposing Trump won’t be enough. They need to convince Trump’s reluctant supporters that the situation has changed enough that Democrats are considered the lesser of two evils. That will require paying less attention to the president and more attention to the legitimate concerns of those who voted for him.
