Chasing ‘meh’ voters

OAKVILLE, ONT.—As we all know by now, the recent U.S. midterm election delivered a mild surprise. Basically, the Republicans didn’t do nearly as well in the various congressional and gubernatorial races as everyone thought they would. In other words, the much-anticipated “red wave” was more like a “red trickle.” The question is, what happened? Why did the supposed Republican juggernaut fizzle out? Well, according to one analysis put out by The Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter, the election hinged on what she termed the “meh voters.” These “meh voters” could be defined as independents, i.e., Americans not registered as either Republicans or Democrats, who slightly disapproved of U.S. President Joe Biden. In theory, since these voters didn’t like Biden, they should have been open to voting Republican. But the post-election numbers tell us that didn’t happen. As a matter of fact, Biden or no Biden, the majority of American “meh” voters actually ended up supporting the Democrats, which is one key reason as to why the Republican electoral effort underperformed. Keep in mind, for a political party to succeed in an election, it must keep its own base motivated and energized and win over a large chunk of undecided voters. That last bit, i.e., winning over voters who lack a strong loyalty to any particular partisan brand or to any political ideology, is the real challenge. In the case of American independent voters, for instance, they’re, generally-speaking, neither conservative fish nor liberal fowl. That’s to say they tend to be socially liberal, but fiscally conservative. So, given this reality, you can see how tricky it would be for Republicans to win over “meh” voters. True, in these tough economic times, “meh” voters might have found the Republican stances on deficits and taxes to be appealing, but it’s also possible they perceived the party’s conservative views on issues such as abortion or gay rights to be troubling. Another factor which may have complicated Republican election plans is that independent voters tend to have a status quo bias. That means, all things being equal, independent voters are a little bit antsy about changing horses midstream. Now imagine how those feelings of antsyness might be greatly exacerbated if you thought the horse you'd be changing onto was the unpredictable and volatile Donald Trump? Indeed, I suspect a fear of a Trump resurgence may have been on the mind of many “meh” voters. As one election analysis put out by the Cook Political Report put it, “The common thread among the GOP candidates who lost independent voters and went on to lose their races is that they claimed former president Trump’s MAGA label.” Call it the Trump effect. Anyway, one final problem the Republicans may have faced in the midterms is they likely had a hard time getting their message out to “meh” voters. After all, one main reason why independent voters are independent in the first place is that they don’t really care too much about politics. Consequently, they don’t watch the news, they don’t read campaign literature, they don’t watch candidate debates on TV, and they tune out political ads. As a political consultant friend of mine put it, “they don’t know anything about anything.” Thus, to win them over you need to basically bludgeon independents over the head with a smart, efficient, and simple campaign message. Maybe the Republicans simply couldn’t afford to launch that kind of concentrated effort. At any rate, as is always the case, Canadian politicians can learn from what happened to the Republicans down south. More specifically, they too might have to chase “meh” voters. Gerry Nicholls is a communications consultant. The Hill Times

Chasing ‘meh’ voters

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Chasing ‘meh’ voters

The much-anticipated Republican 'red wave' was more like a 'red trickle.' The question is, what happened? Why did the supposed Republican juggernaut fizzle out?

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