Rank reasons for R Senate Hold and general D disappointment despite winning POTUS

[bagelman]

I rank

1. Defund the Police inner city teenage morons poisoning the well for small town swing voters
2. Low information voters easily swayed by tough incumbent Trump (this is what caused most of the Latino swing outside Miami)
3. Lockdown anxiety
4. Biden/R downballot conservatives
5. Muh socialism (Miami swing)
6. Memories of a good 2019 that Trump had nothing to do with (NE Ohio job growth)

There were other factors like Biden's advanced age but they weren't as important. Kamala Harris was a wash, she's a bad candidate but representation matters. QAnon brainwashed some people but mostly just made the Trump side look weirder from the outside.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

1. Cal Not-so-cunning Ham and his scandal
2. Susan Collins's YUGE personal vote

(3. if you want a margin of error, Biden/Perdue and Biden/Hazel Moderate Heroes™)

Everything else is irrelevant. Flip those and you have a Democratic trifecta.

[Kalimantan]

Trump pulling out a huge number of low-propensity voters who voted straight-ticket R.

[Catalyst138]

1. Cal Not-so-cunning Ham and his scandal
2. Susan Collins's YUGE personal vote

(3. if you want a margin of error, Biden/Perdue and Biden/Hazel Moderate Heroes™)

Everything else is irrelevant. Flip those and you have a Democratic trifecta.

Did the scandal really make the difference? Because Biden also lost the state, so it wasn’t just a matter of Cunningham underperforming Biden.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

1. Cal Not-so-cunning Ham and his scandal
2. Susan Collins's YUGE personal vote

(3. if you want a margin of error, Biden/Perdue and Biden/Hazel Moderate Heroes™)

Everything else is irrelevant. Flip those and you have a Democratic trifecta.

Did the scandal really make the difference? Because Biden also lost the state, so it wasn’t just a matter of Cunningham underperforming Biden.

Well 1. can be substituted with whatever reason you want to attribute Cunningham's loss to.

[DaleCooper]

1. Cal Not-so-cunning Ham and his scandal
2. Susan Collins's YUGE personal vote

(3. if you want a margin of error, Biden/Perdue and Biden/Hazel Moderate Heroes™)

Everything else is irrelevant. Flip those and you have a Democratic trifecta.

Did the scandal really make the difference? Because Biden also lost the state, so it wasn’t just a matter of Cunningham underperforming Biden.

Given that Tillis about on par with Biden right now, and underperforming Trump, I think Cunningham could've won while Biden lost had the scandal not broken.

[dspNY]

1. Defund the Police from the "progressive" wing of the Democratic Party caused rural areas to stick with Trump and suburban areas to not swing to Biden as hard as we thought they would. This cost Democrats a lot of suburban House seats we should have held.
2. Trump/GOP tying Biden to Bernie/AOC cost us big time with Cubanos in South Florida and Tejanos in Texas
3. Trump might have gotten a sympathy bounce for recovering from COVID
4. Incumbents in general are never easy to defeat (AKA the lowest information voters who are apolitical tend to vote for the incumbent anyway)

[Ferguson97]

Low-information voters like the idea of a “split” government because they think it’ll mean they have to work together to get things done. Since people thought Biden would win, they voted downballot R. It’s really as stupid/simple as that.

[Del Tachi]

Democrats in 2020 had no identifiable policy platform, and running exclusively **against Trump** really only works for the top of the ticket. 

[KaiserDave]

I can tell this thread will be full of informed opinions and fact based conclusions.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

By far the biggest reasons Republicans held the Senate (pending the Georgia run-offs) is that the Senate is atrociously malapportioned in a way that benefits white, rural votes, and these voter have become base of the Republican party.

The second biggest reason is the nationalized polarization of politics, which makes it impossible for good candidates like Bullock and Bollier to run significantly ahead of the presidential vote in red states.

Third would be a couple of very obvious candidate specific-factors in North Carolina and Maine.

The failure of the party to appeal effectively to Latinos on either a presentation or policy basis was a big factor in both the presidential and House results in Florida, Texas, and California, but probably made very little difference in the Senate.

I don't think covid really help Republicans, but it also didn't really hurt them, because Democrats never presented an appealing and specific alternative.

BLM protests and such were not really a factor.

[Roronoa D. Law]

I think after that first debate many moderate and indepenets thought it was clear Biden would win and wanted a "check".

[SWE]

The democrats strategy of treating this as solely a referendum on Trump and treating him as uniquely bad as opposed to a typical Republican.

[Beefalow and the Consumer]

1. The center-right voters who tend to decide these elections were just as angry with how Democrats handled the Trump White House, impeachment, and SCOTUS confirmations as they were with Trump himself.

2. Pro-life moderates are elated with the new SCOTUS makeup, and don't want to place that in jeopardy by giving a Democratic President a Democratic Congress to work with.

3. White Americans surrounded by other white Americans in a bubble have bought into the idea that Democrats represent fringe ideas outside of the mainstream. This, in fact, is not the case, but Trump won white voters by 17 points. If the only people you interact with are other white people, this belief in the radical nature of Democratic politics gets constant reinforcement.

4. Getting committed Republicans to vote for a Democrat for President and Democrats for Congress is an uphill battle.

I think it's mostly about party identity and branding than it is about particular issues. There were probably Biden voters who were spooked by BLM protests and calls to "defund the police," but I have a feeling that if you're predisposed to being scared by this, you probably weren't voting for a Democratic trifecta in the first place.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

Democrats in 2020 had no identifiable policy platform, and running exclusively **against Trump** really only works for the top of the ticket. 

Of the two parties, I think it's pretty clear that the Republicans were the ones not running on issues.