How Republicans Can Learn From Election Disaster

This article was originally written by Kate Plummer for Newsweek.

Republicans must appeal to a wider base if they hope to avoid further electoral defeats, experts have suggested.

On Tuesday, the GOP lost a number of competitive elections to Democrats, with the party's stance on abortion emerging as a key issue in several votes.

Democratic governor for Kentucky Andy Beshear won another term against his Republican challenger Daniel Cameron, who supports the near-total abortion ban in the state. This is despite Kentucky being a red state where Biden lost to Trump by 26 points in 2020.

Meanwhile, electors voted for a constitutional amendment to enshrine abortion protections in Ohio, while Democrats in Virginia won control of both the state's chambers of government by flipping control of the General Assembly, which will make it difficult for Republican Governor Glenn Younkin to introduce a 15-week abortion ban in the state.

There were similarly successful Democratic performances in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and these votes followed the GOP's poor 2022 midterm performance, in which the party failed to regain control of the Senate and only achieved a narrow margin in the House.

Speaking to Newsweek, a number of political commentators and experts pointed to extreme views on topics including abortion within the party as causes for their poor performance.

Nicholas Creel, assistant professor of business law at Georgia College and State University, said that there is a disconnect between "extreme factions" controlling the GOP, the American public, and their base.

He said: "The simple fact is that the more extreme factions of the GOP that have largely gained control of the party hold policy views on abortion that solid majorities of Americans reject, making the issue electoral poison for them all. However, given that Evangelicals are the core of their base and are totally unwilling to bend on this issue, the party can't really do anything about it. The party is between a rock and a hard place with no obvious way out of this predicament."

Javier Palomarez, founder & CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council (USHBC), agreed that Republicans should seek "to find middle ground".

He told Newsweek: "Perhaps [Democratic] success lies in the extreme stances the GOP decided to champion, especially when it came to divisive topics. If they had chosen to find middle ground, they may have prevented the bleeding of voters.

"A key takeaway for the GOP is that a majority of the electorate does not align with either side's extremes. When it came to the key issue of this cycle, they slammed the door on compromise. This in turn closed the door to countless voters. The GOP must acknowledge the growing centrist movement and better align with the majority of the electorate. Democrats ought to heed the same warning."

The view was also echoed by people within the Republican Party.

Matt Shoemaker, a GOP Congressional candidate for North Carolina, said: "The party needs to get younger and wider. For the past few cycles, Republicans believed they can win back the majority by just appealing to the base."

The votes this week also followed a recent poll from The New York Times/Siena College that showed that President Joe Biden is behind former President Donald Trump in five swing states.

Commentators also pointed out that Republicans ought not to rely on perceptions about Biden's age and unpopularity to beat Democrats.

"Republicans were counting on Biden dragging down his party in this election but, just as happened in the midterms, that never materialized," Creel said.

"If anything, we see that Americans are willing to hold their nose to vote for Democrats if only to prevent the GOP from gaining power for fear of their radicalism."