Trump and the Abortion Issue Won’t Go Away (Analysis)

(CNN) — Donald Trump finds himself in the strongest position to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in months as his party rallied behind him following his indictment by a New York grand jury on fraud charges.

But the actual results on the ground suggest that the former president may not bode well for the Republican Party’s brand among the general electorate.

Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat, celebrated her victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on Tuesday, the day Trump appeared in Manhattan.

That result means that Democrats and Democratic-backed candidates across the country have done better than Joe Biden in their states or districts in 2020 in this year’s elections. In 2024.

Lessons from Wisconsin

He END IN WISCONSIN Sums up the Republican Party’s problem. Biden won the state Less than a point in 2020, after Trump won by a similar margin four years ago. The Badger State is one of the few to have voted for the winner of the last four presidential elections, and is one of the few to have a U.S. senator from each party.

Compared to Biden’s performance in Wisconsin in 2020, he won by an 11-point margin over his Republican opponent.

Another election on Tuesday could see a win for Democrats in Wisconsin, a state Senate race in the Milwaukee area. While not much has been said about the state Supreme Court race, Republicans need to keep the seat open to gain a majority in the state Senate.

The Republican candidate won, but only by 2 points. That marked a 3-point high performance for the Democratic nominee Biden lost the district 5 points in 2020.

Wisconsin’s results match up well with what we’ve seen so far in 2023 special elections across the country.

In the only federal special election so far this year, Democrat Jennifer McLean topped Biden’s 2020 margin in Virginia’s 4th Congressional District by 13 points.

On average in nearly 20 special state legislative elections, Democrats did about 4 points better than Biden’s margin.

The president, of course, won the 2020 election, so it’s good for his party that the political climate looks better for Democrats now than it did then.

It also makes a big difference What we saw in 2019 When Democrats’ margin in special elections was roughly equal to Hillary Clinton’s in 2016. It came after Democrats defeated Clinton in the 2018 midterms. This is a sign that the 2020 elections may be around the corner.

An unpopular president

What’s so rare about Democrats’ strong showings this year is that they’ve stuck in the low 40s with Biden’s approval rating. Normally, you wouldn’t expect an unpopular president’s party to do so well in an election. Year

This suggests that the factors at play now are similar to those in the second half of 2022. Following the US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Democrats began to overtake Biden’s 2020 margins in districts where Wade held special elections in the middle of the year.

Democrats had a historically exceptional night in the November midterms. Despite Biden’s approval rating hovering above 50%, they held their own.

The Interim exit surveys They revealed that many voters who didn’t like Biden or Trump voted for the Democrats. All major races in states that could decide the presidency in 2024 are Democratic. Put another way, Biden isn’t the deciding factor he can count on among swing voters. Trump made his votes count even though he wasn’t president.

Neither abortion nor Trump seem to be going away as an issue in 2023.

Abortion was the frontrunner in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race, and liberals hoped a Protasiewicz victory would give them the majority to legalize the practice statewide.

Despite Trump’s impeachment and continued unpopularity with the general electorate, he remains the clear favorite for the Republican presidential nomination.

If those things don’t change by 2024, Republicans could be in big trouble.