John Nantz: In the Beginning — Christmas

Republicans
‘ lack of a coherent message was the primary reason for the party’s underwhelming
midterm election
performance, a report from the
conservative
Heritage Action/Sentinel Action Fund has concluded.

In a presentation titled “The Seinfeld Election: An Election About Nothing,” Republican pollster Wes Anderson gave a postmortem of the Republican efforts in the midterm elections. The overarching problem that plagued Republicans, Anderson said, was a lack of a coherent message — something the
Democrats
managed readily. A failure to combat Democrats’ abortion messaging, a lack of resources, and the related loss of independents all helped lead to midterm results that sent shock waves throughout the GOP, he found.

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When Heritage Action asked voters what they thought the main campaign message from each party was, the Democrats were found to have a much more coherent message. Of those surveyed about the Democrats’ main message, 37% said it was abortion rights, 30% said threats to democracy, and 14% didn’t know. Meanwhile, 21% of respondents said they didn’t know what the Republicans’ main message was, including 27% of independents, a percentage that outmatched every other response. The other leading responses of spending/inflation, standing up to Biden, and border/immigration didn’t manage to reach even 25%.

“What was the main message from Republicans? ‘I have no idea’ was our No. 1 response,” Anderson said. “What was missing from our side was … a plan, a vision.”

Perhaps the Democrats’ greatest strength, which likely helped flip several states, was their
abortion
messaging. Heritage found that the Democrats outspend Republicans on abortion messaging by 45x — $450 million as opposed to just $10 million.

Anderson argued that
anti-abortion
positions aren’t actually unpopular. He said the most extreme anti-abortion position, banning all abortions without exceptions, is equally as unpopular as the most extreme pro-abortion rights position, allowing unrestricted abortions.

“The two ends of the spectrum on abortion are about equally unpopular,” he said but added that the Democrats’ near monopoly on abortion messaging allowed them to portray themselves as having the moderate position while casting all Republicans as extremists.

The strategy appears to have worked well, with 61% of respondents saying abortion was the most important issue. Of those, 58% voted Democrat, as opposed to just 38% who voted Republican. Abortion was also the only issue on which those polled answered that they trusted Democrats more than Republicans.

Though laughing at Democrats’ concerns over threats to democracy, Anderson said Republicans “probably should’ve paid more attention to that.”

When asked by the Washington Examiner as to his thoughts about a
key finding
from the Cook Political Report, which stipulated that a lack of positive messaging on the part of Republicans was a key factor in determining the midterm elections, Anderson said he partially agreed, with a catch.

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“I’m cautious. It didn’t have to be pure positive; you could’ve done it in contrast. But we didn’t even do that,” he answered. “You still have to offer a vision, and in our case, we didn’t.”

The one positive finding from the report was that, for the first time ever, a majority of Hispanics voted for Republicans, 51%, as opposed to 43% who voted for Democrats.