The GOP Cavalry Arrives

Not long ago, President Biden and congressional Democrats were riding high. They benefited from falling gas prices, a rash of legislation, a foolish but popular student debt bailout, several weak GOP candidates, and voter backlash to the reversal of Roe v. Wade. Now it’s autumn, and there is a chill in the air and a change in the political temperature. Republicans, the polls suggest, have a path to a Senate majority. They are on track to take the House. The GOP has recovered from its summer swoon.

The revival began two weeks ago. Encouraging words came from an unlikely source. On September 12, Nate Cohn of the New York Times wrote that polls may be underestimating the GOP yet again in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida. When a potential polling error is considered, Cohn went on, Republicans appear much more likely to take over Capitol Hill.

Cohn is neither a partisan nor an ideologue. He plays it straight. But his analysis launched the sort of conversation about polling error that Republicans love. Cohn reinforced the right’s longstanding suspicion that GOP voters do not talk to pollsters. So long as the final polls are within the margin of error, this thinking goes, Republicans have a chance of a victory.

Then, on September 15, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida upended the electoral cycle. His one simple trick: sending a plane of Venezuelan asylum-seekers to Martha’s Vineyard. Suddenly, Democratic-friendly topics vanished from the headlines. Abortion, student loans, and Mar-a-Lago disappeared from cable news chyrons. They were replaced by controversy over an issue—border security—that favors the GOP.

The stunt was a public relations coup. It reset the national debate. It sent the left into a frenzy. And it boosted DeSantis’s star power at just the right moment.

The timing was important. DeSantis’s move coincided with an increase in GOP Senate advertising. Between September 5 and September 26, according to AdImpact data reported by NBC News, Republicans outspent Democrats on the air in eight of nine competitive Senate races. Arizona was the exception.

Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) led the charge.