Win or lose, then, Trump’s candidates are winning about a third of the vote. That’s...
Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., speaks to the crowd before former President Donald Trump takes the stage at a rally, April 9, 2022, in Selma, N.C.Let’s be clear about the lessons that can be drawn so far from this year’s Republican midterm primary elections: Republican voters are not behaving like zombies who automatically do what former President Donald Trump tells them to do.
Trump’s endorsed candidates did better in two other contests. In North Carolina, Ted Budd won the Senate primary with almost 60 percent of the vote, but experts attributed that more to heavy spending from the conservative Club for Growth than to Trump’s endorsement, which was one of many for Budd. And Trump jumped very late onto the bandwagon of gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, but I doubt many will attribute much of his 44 percent showing to the last-minute endorsement.
Trump’s real effect is surely smaller than that. Yes, there’s a good chance Vance would have wound up as a single-digit also-ran without the endorsement. But McGeachin is lieutenant governor of Idaho and the radical portion of the party that backed her challenge to the sitting governor is strong in that state; it seems likely that Trump added very little there. Surely Oz’s fame as a celebrity TV doctor would have won him some votes in Pennsylvania, Trump or no Trump.
What I’d add is that party actors — the Club for Growth, big individual funders such as the Silicon Valley billionaire and Vance backer Peter Thiel, politicians with local clout such as Republican Senator Thom Tillis in North Carolina, a big player in Cawthorn’s defeat, and most of all Republican-aligned media such as Fox News and talk radio hosts — are probably a much bigger story in terms of actually moving votes than Trump is.
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