Trump’s backing was a 5% penalty with voters
Nate Cohn at the NY Times reports:
Overall, his preferred primary candidates underperformed other G.O.P. candidates by about five percentage points.
| A penalty of five points is a big number in today’s polarized era. Five of the last six presidential elections have been decided by a margin less than that. As findings like these are revealed, they may add to the consternation of some Republicans who in recent days have blamed Mr. Trump for the party’s poor performance. |
| The analysis is based on an unusual measure: The Cook Political Report’s primary scoreboard. The Cook report scored each contested Republican primary as a victory for either the “traditional” wing of the Republican Party or for the “MAGA” wing of the party. With the benefit of the final results, we can gauge how well the MAGA candidates fared compared with other Republicans. The five-point penalty measure controls for how the district voted in 2020 and whether the district was an open seat or held by a Democratic or Republican incumbent. |
This is a very good analysis. The Republican’s actually won the actual overall vote for the House by close to 5% it seems. But they barely scraped in with a majority as in the competitive districts the Trump endorsees under-performed – in fact they went backwards from 2020.
This analysis didn’t include the Senate but there six of the seven competitive seats were lost by Trump nominees.
Hopefully for 2024 they will select better candidates.