The revolt of the “normies”

AMERICAN pollsters and political consultants are known for the colourful terms they coin to help them detect electoral trends by identifying certain demographic groups.

The classic example would be “soccer moms”, which came into widespread use during the 1996 presidential election and referred to middle-class suburban women who spent a significant amount of their time transporting their school-age children to sporting events, and who had favoured then Democrat president Bill Clinton by a large margin over his Republican challenger Bob Dole.

Another way to identify voters would be by their proximity to either Whole Foods, a supermarket that caters to upscale and educated Americans who lean heavily to the Democrats, or to Chick-fil-A, a fast-food restaurant chain that is popular in the South and in rural areas – parts of the country tend to be “red” or Republican.

So it’s time to add another term to this political vocabulary – “normies”, like in normal people, which describes conservative Republican voters who reject Donald Trump, to distinguish them from fans of the former president, “MAGA Republicans” or “MAGAs” (the term short for Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again”).

That distinction became clear during the recent midterm elections, and may explain why a large number of Republican candidates who identified with Trump and Trumpism have failed to win close races in “purple” or swing states, including in Philadelphia, Arizona, Nevada, and even in red ones, like Georgia.

There is no doubt that MAGA Republicans would remain a powerful force in the GOP. But it seems that when it comes to urban areas and to the suburbs, white voters who have traditionally voted for Republicans and who identify as “conservatives” have rejected those candidates who insisted that Trump had won the 2020 presidential race.

Their votes helped avert the red “tsunami” that many expected would ensue at a time when inflation was soaring and the White House was occupied by an unpopular Democrat president; the majority of voters had actually told pollsters that the country was moving in the wrong direction and that they favoured the Republican Party over the Democrats.

The rise of the Republican normies goes back to 2021, when two progressive Democrats ended up being elected to the Senate in a run-off race in the very red state of Georgia.

What triggered the shift in the vote of many educated middle-class Republicans in the state were the television images of the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol, by the fans of the former president who was promoting the “big lie” about the 2020 election that was supposedly stolen from him by the “elites”.

Yet the MAGAs decided to employ that same theme in this month’s midterms, nominating as candidates for congressional and gubernatorial races a bunch of election deniers. Many of them were promoting radical right-wing agendas, aka Trumpism, with its familiar themes including white nationalism, homophobia and strict opposition to abortion.

Demonstrating their opposition to Trumpism, the normies rejected Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano in the race for governor in Philadelphia and refused to elect Trump’s pick for the Senate contest, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz.

Similarly, Trumpist Republican Senate candidates lost the races in two other purple states, Arizona and Nevada, results that together with the outcome of the contest in Philadelphia, ensured that the Senate would remain in Democratic hands. MAGA Republicans were also rejected in several important gubernatorial races where they had been expected to do well, including in Wisconsin.

That Republican Senate candidate and former football star Herschel Walker, a Trumpist who didn’t seem to be ready for prime political time, has failed to carry Georgia and will now be forced to face a run-off with his Democrat rival, was a reflection of the ability of the normies to determine election results.

In fact, the same normies helped Republican Governor Brian Kemp to win re-election by a margin of 10 percentage points. Kemp has embraced a centrist-conservative agenda but refused to buy into the stolen-election lie, and was therefore denounced by Trump.

But Kemp’s win in Georgia, and most significant, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ victory in the gubernatorial race in Florida, where he crushed his Democrat opponent by 19 points, should make it clear to the Democrats that the midterms didn’t mark a turn to the political left, but were more an indication that American voters seek to halt the shift to the radical right headed by the Trumpists, and to return politics to the centre.

If anything, DeSantis demonstrated that a “normal” and popular conservative Republican candidate can actually expand his party’s electoral coalition, carrying Hispanic voters by 13 points and working-class voters by 27 points. DeSantis also carried Miami-Dade county, a traditionally Democrat electoral base, by 11 points.

And a year after a centrist Republican was elected as governor of the purple state of Virginia, Republicans also did very well in the races for governor in the competitive states of New Hampshire, Iowa and Ohio.

At the same time, while Democrats won among Black, Hispanic and Asian voters in the midterms, Hispanic and Asian support for the GOP jumped by 10 and 17 points, respectively, while Black voters shifted about 4 points to the right, compared to the 2018 midterms, suggesting that the GOP is in a strong electoral position to win the 2024 presidential election – but only if they can get rid of Trump.

In a way, Trump proved once again to be the Democrats’ secret weapon. But they might not be so lucky the next time, with leading Republicans urging that their party retire the former president as soon as possible.

For example, Senator Mitch McConnell from Kentucky tweeted after the election: “How could you look at these results tonight and conclude Trump has any chance of winning a national election in 2024?”

But if the Democrats want to defeat a Republican presidential ticket led by DeSantis or Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, they will have to restrain the members of their party’s progressive wing – with their emphasis on identity politics – and nominate as presidential candidate a centrist Democrat.

One such Democrat who comes to mind is Jared Polis, the popular governor of the purple state of Colorado. An openly gay Democrat who has rejected many of the ideas promoted by the progressives, Polis won re-election in an 18-point landslide on Nov 8, benefiting from the support of many Republican normies.