Candidate Quality Still Matters
ewerickson.substack.com
Multiple news headlines today suggest that Republicans are learning the wrong lesson from the midterm elections. The headlines point to Republicans accepting that telling their voters to not vote yearly cost them votes and possibly the Senate. While early voting is important for any party that wants to win, Republicans did not suffer from an early voting or election day turnout shortage in the midterm or the subsequent Georgia Senate runoff. In fact, newly released voter data shows that more Republicans turned out than Democrats. The problem was a significant portion of swing state Republicans voted for the Democrat when facing a Trump-affiliated Republican. The lesson learned is candidate quality matters. Take a moment and listen.
Speaking as a Democrat who once proudly served in a Republican gubernatorial administration, in the age of Trump, "poor quality Republican candidate" is usually redundant.
I hated Walker as a candidate but I had to vote for him. Why o why couldn't they have offered a competent candidate? If Walker forced a runoff then a decent candidate would have won without a runoff.