Why would Trump have success in 2024 when Trump-aligned candidates struggled so much in 2022?

[Beet]

Democrats are now the party of whites, the educated, upper middle class, and suburbanites, who favor the police, the establishment, and war. Basically the Reagan coalition. Republicans under Trump have become the party of the poor, uneducated, minorities, anti-establishment, anti-war. Basically what the Democrats used to be until Biden.

One of these coalitions has higher turnout only in GEs and we know which one that is.

[CheapDollarEra?]

Most 'undecided' voters on the polls are between Biden, a third party or not voting.

[Skill and Chance]

Why would Obama have success in 2012 when Obama-aligned candidates struggled so much in 2010?

[ann-clayborne]

Democrats are now the party of whites, the educated, upper middle class, and suburbanites, who favor the police, the establishment, and war. Basically the Reagan coalition. Republicans under Trump have become the party of the poor, uneducated, minorities, anti-establishment, anti-war. Basically what the Democrats used to be until Biden.

One of these coalitions has higher turnout only in GEs and we know which one that is.

This is misleading. Despite some shifts, Republicans remain the party of whites and Democrats remain the party of the poor and minorities. From CNN's 2022 exit poll:

White voters: 58% R
Black voters: 86% D
Latino voters: 60% D
Asian voters: 58% D
Income < 50k/yr: 52% D
Income > 50k/yr: 53% R
Suburbanites: 52% R

It's absolutely true that minorities are moving towards the Republican party, but Democrats are still winning them overall. Suburbanites are a swing demographic; neither party decisively wins them, but Democrats are doing much better than they used to. (And these numbers were taken in a year which, despite everything, was still R+2 overall).

The middle-classification of the Democrats is a trend which is happening, but not the dominant force in the party.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Democrats are now the party of whites, the educated, upper middle class, and suburbanites, who favor the police, the establishment, and war. Basically the Reagan coalition. Republicans under Trump have become the party of the poor, uneducated, minorities, anti-establishment, anti-war. Basically what the Democrats used to be until Biden.

One of these coalitions has higher turnout only in GEs and we know which one that is.

This is misleading. Despite some shifts, Republicans remain the party of whites and Democrats remain the party of the poor and minorities. From CNN's 2022 exit poll:

White voters: 58% R
Black voters: 86% D
Latino voters: 60% D
Asian voters: 58% D
Income < 50k/yr: 52% D
Income > 50k/yr: 53% R
Suburbanites: 52% R

It's absolutely true that minorities are moving towards the Republican party, but Democrats are still winning them overall. Suburbanites are a swing demographic; neither party decisively wins them, but Democrats are doing much better than they used to. (And these numbers were taken in a year which, despite everything, was still R+2 overall).

The middle-classification of the Democrats is a trend which is happening, but not the dominant force in the party.

Yeah someone people equate more Republican to voting outright Republican.

Another good example - it may be true that less reliable black voters are more likely to vote for Trump, but this group has 0 chance of outright breaking for Trump.

It is true that Dems can now win college educated whites as a group, but still not by enough to have as extreme of a dynamic as many on here suggest.

[Spectator]

Why would Obama have success in 2012 when Obama-aligned candidates struggled so much in 2010?

Not really the same analogy at all since Biden was the sitting President in 2022, not Trump. No Democrats in 2022 ran as "Biden Democrats" LOL. Nor did Democrats in 2010 run as "Obama Democrats". People in 2022 definitely ran as "Trump Republicans" though, and they for the most part got destroyed/underran the rest of the ticket by significant margins.

[Mercenary]

Those candidates werent running against Biden.
And people are more sick of the incumbent party now than in 2022.

[heatcharger]

Nobody cares about midterms.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

And even if 2022 is repeated, it's still not that great for Biden. Trump doesn't still doesn't lose any ground, and GA, NV and WI are still tossups. Biden probably wins MI and PA with ease and narrowly carries AZ. But it's still somewhere in the range of 235-267 for Trump. 

[President Johnson]

Good thread. The truth is Trump pretty much lost Republicans everything after 2016: First the House, then the presidency and then the senate. In 2022, they underperformed and all his preferred candidates in swing states lost. In some states, Democrats even performed better across the board than in 2018.

Trump nonetheless stands a relatively decent chance so far should Biden continue to struggle with consolidating support. I think if Trump wins, it won't be a huge mandate for him or his party, just that Democrats and Biden failed to assemble a coalition and (potentially) bleeding votes to third party candidates. That how Trump can again get to 270.

[darklordoftech]

The sense of national crisis is passed. Republicans themselves contributed to it, first with January 6th, then the massive reaction in the states, with a view spreading that you might have chaos in 2024 if Lake/Mastriano/Finchem won.

The wider environment has calmed down from inflation, to the culture wars over schools(itself a legacy of covid) to even the post-election threats of violence.

Instead we are left with two things

1. Malaise - things are bad, getting worse, and no reason to believe Biden himself won't continue to deteriorate. In this respect, he has come to symbolize a situation many Americans find intolerable

2. I know this will be unpopular on this board, but Democrats have negated a lot of their 2022 pitch of "if you elect MAGA governors/SOS then they will use the power of their offices to disrupt the 2024 election triggering chaos". Now with the efforts to remove Trump from the ballot, it is Democrats who, having won election on a platform of not using their control of the electoral machinery to cause chaos, are actively using it to cause chaos. The legal pursuit of Trump has also seemed to fall into chaos, partially due to the tactics of Trump's defense team, but also because folks like Willis screwed up. But it doesn't matter who is at fault.

In short, Democrats have badly undermined one of their two strongest 2022 messages(the other being Dobbs) at the same time its resonance was falling anyway.

The reason there is so much focus on Trump's abortion position is that it is more or less what is left.

If not inflation, what's causing the malaise?

[Spectator]

The sense of national crisis is passed. Republicans themselves contributed to it, first with January 6th, then the massive reaction in the states, with a view spreading that you might have chaos in 2024 if Lake/Mastriano/Finchem won.

The wider environment has calmed down from inflation, to the culture wars over schools(itself a legacy of covid) to even the post-election threats of violence.

Instead we are left with two things

1. Malaise - things are bad, getting worse, and no reason to believe Biden himself won't continue to deteriorate. In this respect, he has come to symbolize a situation many Americans find intolerable

2. I know this will be unpopular on this board, but Democrats have negated a lot of their 2022 pitch of "if you elect MAGA governors/SOS then they will use the power of their offices to disrupt the 2024 election triggering chaos". Now with the efforts to remove Trump from the ballot, it is Democrats who, having won election on a platform of not using their control of the electoral machinery to cause chaos, are actively using it to cause chaos. The legal pursuit of Trump has also seemed to fall into chaos, partially due to the tactics of Trump's defense team, but also because folks like Willis screwed up. But it doesn't matter who is at fault.

In short, Democrats have badly undermined one of their two strongest 2022 messages(the other being Dobbs) at the same time its resonance was falling anyway.

The reason there is so much focus on Trump's abortion position is that it is more or less what is left.

I agree with a lot of this, but I’d be willing to bet if you re-ran the 2022 elections now you’d still have all those controversial gubernatorial/Senate/SOS nominees lose. I think it more boils down to when other Republicans try to copy cat Trump that they come off as weirdos and even bigger nutcases than him, so naturally they’d do worse than him. You’re losing all the non-Trump voters off the bat and then some Trump voters. The Republicans that didn’t brand themselves as Trump Republicans tended to win, particularly in House races.

[It's Time.]

Trump's greatest strength, apart from his massive cult, is that by virtue of being a New York billionaire, he neutralizes the Abortion issue moreso than 90% of other Republican candidates.

[The Economy is Getting Worse]

Biden

[Respect and Compassion]

The problem with this thread is your premise is arguably already proven false with Burt Jones', an alternate elector during the Stop the Steal, outperforming Trump 2020 by 5 points in Georgia. Ken Paxton also outperformed Trump 2020 enough in order to win by double digits. There were multiple Congressional candidates who were election deniers in 2022 who nevertheless outperformed 2020 results. Therefore, being an election denier isn't this magic bullet that guarantees an underperformance of Trump 2020 results.

I posted some relevant thoughts in this other thread: https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=584285.0

In general, it's a combination of Trump having more crossover appeal than 2022 Republicans due to many voters viewing their financial situation and the foreign policy situation as being better under Trump than under Biden, along with a greater proportion of low propensity (mainly noncollege) voters turning out in 2024 than they did in 2022. Yes, some states in 2022 had more registered R's turn out relative to 2020, but the lower noncollege turnout meant that overall the electorates had proportionally more Biden voters relative to 2020, because right-leaning independents and Trump voting D's did not turn out as much as left-leaning independents and Biden voting R's.

Biden has less crossover appeal than 2022 Democrats because he is being scapegoated for peoples' hardships, whereas many 2022 Democrats (e.g. Maggie Hassan who ran ads of herself at the border months before the R primary concluded) distanced themselves from Biden. Trump has more crossover appeal than 2022 Republicans because he's considered to be more moderate on abortion and had a Presidential tenure where many people had less financial hardship than they do now (in contrast, 2022 Republicans were spouting boiler plate talking points and were newcomers who had a harder time proving that they would improve voters' financial situations).

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Another thing not talked about in 2022 was Dems had a significant amount of incumbency advantage that Rs struggled to break through. All their senators in competitive states ran for re-election and they had incumbency in most of the governor races as well. The only key statewide races without incumbency were Pennsylvania G+S, NC Senate, and AZ Gov. Bidens incumbency is far weaker and might even be a disadvantage considering Trump was also a President as well.

[Respect and Compassion]

Another thing not talked about in 2022 was Dems had a significant amount of incumbency advantage that Rs struggled to break through. All their senators in competitive states ran for re-election and they had incumbency in most of the governor races as well. The only key statewide races without incumbency were Pennsylvania G+S, NC Senate, and AZ Gov. Bidens incumbency is far weaker and might even be a disadvantage considering Trump was also a President as well.

to add onto your point: Americans tend to scapegoat the President when times are hard financially and when both immigration & foreign policy is going poorly, compared to their Senators and Governors. Especially when the aforementioned Senators and Governors (and House candidates) distance themselves from the unpopular President of their own party.

[Spectator]

The problem with this thread is your premise is arguably already proven false with Burt Jones', an alternate elector during the Stop the Steal, outperforming Trump 2020 by 5 points in Georgia. Ken Paxton also outperformed Trump 2020 enough in order to win by double digits. There were multiple Congressional candidates who were election deniers in 2022 who nevertheless outperformed 2020 results. Therefore, being an election denier isn't this magic bullet that guarantees an underperformance of Trump 2020 results.

Using downballot row offices that flew entirely under the radar is always a bad point of comparison. I’d use downballot races as a pure measure of a state’s natural lean in a given cycle instead. The November 2022 Georgia electorate was Trump +5 in the recalled 2020 vote, and that was about the median statewide outcome. Kemp and Raffensperger outperformed it and Herschel Walker significantly underperformed it. Remember that Kris Kobach won by 20 points in 2014 for his SOS race. That didn’t mean he was strong by any means in the 2018 gubernatorial race, and he went on to defeat. Same with Martha Coakley and Bill Schuette off the top of my head.