Reacting to a Politico report that the Republican Party is having difficulties in recruiting down-ballot candidates because they think their odds of winning will be hampered with Donald Trump as the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, one election analyst said they good reason to be worried.
According to the earlier Politico report, "Many of their prospective recruits are wary of running alongside Trump, who dominates the spotlight, repels crucial independent voters and forces his fellow Republicans to answer for his unpredictable statements. It’s a dynamic that candidates don’t relish, and it has only come into sharper focus since Trump’s CNN town hall, when he spent 70 minutes on primetime television this month unleashing a torrent of incendiary remarks."
Writing for the Cook Political Report, Amy Walter said the numbers are not in Republican's favor in 2024 and a major factor is the "Trump drag."
The largest problem, she notes, is the fact that the former president is highly unpopular with the growing segment of independent voters who will have a major impact in swing districts, making it an uphill battle for the Republican nominee.
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As she explained, Public Opinion Strategies "released the results of a swing-state survey they conducted showing a ticket led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis produced a generic ballot advantage of one point for Republicans, while a Trump-led ticket produced a down-ballot advantage to Democrats of three points."
That may be too much for a Republican in a highly contested district to overcome.
"To hold the House, Republicans are going to need to beat Democrats in districts where Trump will likely lose," she explained. "In 2016, when Trump was a novelty, 23 Republican candidates won in districts Trump lost. Four years later, only nine Republicans were able to do the same thing."
She continued, "In 2022, Democrats effectively branded the GOP as the party of MAGA and Trump, helping them to pick up a Senate seat and hold down their losses in the House," before predicting, "This is why many Republicans are correctly worried that Trump on the top of the ticket could risk their majority."
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