Independents will make or break Biden and the Democrats in November

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… Anyone who studies election results in depth understands a couple of key points. First, the base will turn out. It always does in both parties. Second, elections are won in the middle. Yet most political strategies, ad buys and messaging center on base issues with a heavy dose of “fear and loathing” designed to energize the people most likely to turn out anyway. Biden’s recent “Red Speech” is a perfect example.

Yet consultants and the media who focus on which party’s base voters are the most motivated continually miss the larger point. Neither party’s base is big enough to win an election, because winning is not all about the base. It’s about the political center of the country — those people who are not affiliated with either party, namely independents.

For those who resist this reality, even a cursory look at recent elections proves the point. CONTINUED

David Winston (Winston Group), Roll Call

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Wisconsin: Johnson and Evers hold slim leads as races for senator and governor tighten

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A new Marquette Law School Poll survey of Wisconsin voters finds close races for governor and for the U.S. Senate.

Among likely voters, in his race for reelection, Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican, is supported by 49%, while his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, is the choice of 48%. In August, immediately after the primary election, Johnson trailed Barnes by 7 percentage points, 52% to 45%, among likely voters. All vote results include undecided voters who lean to a candidate.

In the governor’s race, 47% of likely voters support Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, while 44% favor Republican Tim Michels. The independent candidate, Joan Beglinger, is chosen by 5%, with 3% who don’t know. Beglinger ended her campaign on Sept. 6 but will remain on the November ballot. In the Marquette Law School Poll’s August survey, Evers received 48%, Michels 44%, and Beglinger 4% among likely voters. CONTINUED

Charles Franklin, Marquette University Law School Poll

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Pennsylvania: Economy, abortion shape midterm races

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Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman leads Mehmet Oz by five points among Pennsylvania’s likely voters, in a Senate race that seems still fluid, with Republicans less enamored by the candidates they nominated, and Democrats fighting economic headwinds. It’s a race in which voters are thinking about the national implications, even as it is the candidates’ personal qualities that have come to the fore. …

Of the four major-party candidates running for Senate and governor, Democrat Josh Shapiro has the highest personally favorable ratings of all. That, combined with strong support from women, has him up 11 points on Republican Doug Mastriano. CONTINUED

CBS News

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Americans’ Civics Knowledge Drops on First Amendment and Branches of Government

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After two years of considerable improvement, Americans’ knowledge of some basic facts about their government has fallen to earlier levels, with less than half of those surveyed able to name the three branches of government for the 2022 Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center’s annual, nationally representative survey showed notable increases in 2020 and 2021 after tumultuous years that put the role of government and the three branches under a media spotlight. In those two years, the survey was run amid a pandemic and government health restrictions, two impeachment inquiries, a presidential election, an attempt to disrupt congressional certification of the electoral vote, criminal trials of the individuals charged in the assault on the U.S. Capitol, and waves of social justice protests, among other events.

The current survey, released for Constitution Day (Sept. 17), found the first drop in six years among those who could identify all three branches of government, and declines among those who could name the First Amendment rights, though knowledge remained high on some other questions. Additional findings on the Supreme Court will be released next month. CONTINUED

Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania

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Republicans tried to sidestep the issue of abortion. Now they’re seeking a reset.

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Republicans’ first step was admitting they had an abortion problem. Now, GOP candidates are racing to limit self-inflicted damage — and trying to blunt Democrats’ edge on the issue — before November’s midterm elections.

For some, that has meant walking back support for a total ban, embracing more limited restrictions on abortion and trying to reverse the tide by painting Democrats as the radicals. …

By 51% to 32%, battleground state voters say Republicans are more extreme on abortion than Democrats, according to polling exclusively provided to NBC News by WPA Intelligence, a GOP political consulting firm. The poll showed 41% of likely voters surveyed said the Dobbs decision, which did away with constitutional protections for abortion, made them more likely to vote for a Democrat; 24% said it made them more likely to back Republicans. Asked which group they identified with in the abortion debate, 54% said “Pro Choice,” compared to 39% who identified as “Pro Life.” CONTINUED

Jonathan Allen, Marc Caputo & Allan Smith, NBC News

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Arizona’s Latino voters and political independents could spell midterm defeats for MAGA candidates

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Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona marches in a Fourth of July parade in Arizona on July 4, 2022. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

Gina Woodall, Arizona State University

Two years after the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump’s resentment over losing continues to energize his supporters in Arizona.

That resentment played out during the Aug. 13, 2022, Republican primaries that saw Trump-endorsed candidates for U.S. Senate, governor, secretary of state and state attorney general sweep the GOP ticket.

While each of the candidates made Trump’s false claims that he won the presidential contest a central part of their campaigns, it’s unclear whether that message will resonate among Arizona’s increasingly diverse registered voters in the general election on Nov. 8, 2022.

Trump-endorsed Blake Masters beat his Republican challengers and faces incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly. In the governor’s race, Kari Lake, the former television anchor endorsed by Trump, is facing Democrat Kati Hobbes, the sitting Arizona secretary of state, for the governor’s office.

In the state’s attorney general’s race, GOP candidate and another 2020 election denier Abraham Hamadeh, faces Democrat Kris Mayes.

Most disconcerting to Democrats was the primary win of Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, a 2020 election denier who won the Republican nomination for secretary of state over a more moderate Republican. If he beats Democrat Adrian Fontes in the November general election, Finchem would oversee the state’s elections.

That possibility has Democrats fearing repeats of political acts such as the Republican-backed review of the 2020 presidential election in Arizona’s largest county that ended without producing proof to support Trump’s false claims of a stolen election.

Changing demographics favor Democrats

As a native Arizonan who has studied Arizona politics for the past 20 years, I have seen the rise of political extremism in my home state.

The victories of extremist GOP candidates and open support of baseless conspiracy theories have added a volatile ingredient to the politics of Arizona, where a historically conservative electorate is undergoing dramatic political shifts due to changing demographics.

Over the past 10 years, residents who identify solely as white saw their numbers shrink from 73% in 2010 to 60% in 2020. At the same time, the number of residents who identified as more than one race grew from 3.4% in 2010 to nearly 14% in 2020.

In all, Arizona has close to 7.5 million residents, and over 30% of them identify as Latino. Over the past decade, the state’s Latino population grew from 1.9 million to 2.2 million. By some estimates, Latinos could make up as much as 50% of the state’s population by 2050.

As in many other states, a voter is walking by Election Day signs that are written in English and Spanish.
Election signs in Arizona are written in both English and Spanish. Ralph Freso/Getty Images

If national statistics are any indication, Latino voters tend to support Democrats. In a March 2022 poll, about 48% of Latinos nationwide considered themselves Democrats, and only 23% identified as Republican.

In Arizona, the numbers are similar.

According to a 2022 study, Latinos are more likely to be Democrats than non-Latinos are, with 45% of Latinos affiliating with the Democratic Party, compared with 28% of non-Latinos. Less than 15% of Latinos are registered as Republicans, the report found, and 40% are registered as “other” and are not affiliated with either major party.

The growth of Latino voters in Arizona contributed to Joe Biden’s win in 2020 – and also the elections of Democrats Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema to the U.S. Senate.

MAGA state?

For the past 70 years, Arizona has been a reliable state for Republican presidential politicians. Bill Clinton was the only Democratic candidate to win a presidential race there since the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952.

That changed in 2020 with Biden’s surprising win over Trump. Though the election saw a record turnout of about 3.4 million voters, it was ultimately decided by a mere 10,457 votes.

Since then, Republican leaders in Arizona and around the nation have taken a hard right.

The party that was once dominated by conservative leader Barry Goldwater and John McCain, a moderate Republican who believed in fighting against climate change, has been taken over by leaders who support the notion that Trump somehow won the state and the last presidential election.

A white man dressed in navy blue suit with a white shirt and red tie hugs a smiling woman on stage.
Former President Donald Trump embraces Kari Lake, the Arizona GOP candidate for governor, at a rally on July 22, 2022. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Given the increase in Latino voters in the state, it is no surprise that tightening immigration laws is an issue among the GOP, especially among Trump supporters.

In fact, Lake wasted little time after her primary win to use incendiary language in proclaiming her first goal if elected governor in November.

“Day 1,” she wrote on Twitter. “I take my hand off the Bible, give the Oath of Office and we Declare an Invasion on our Southern Border …”

As part of her campaign, Lake has attempted to paint Hobbes as someone who would be ineffective on border security. It’s unclear whether that strategy will work in a state with a fast-growing Latino population.

While Lake is fully embracing her MAGA support, Masters is doing the opposite in the U.S. Senate race against the incumbent Kelly. In one of the most competitive U.S. Senate races in the country, Kelly, a moderate Democrat, is favored to win. As a result, Masters has started moderating his image and toning down his extremist rhetoric after beating his GOP rivals.

On abortion, for instance, Masters has gone as far as scrubbing his own website of previous hard-line, anti-abortion stances and support for Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

“We need to get serious about election integrity,” Masters posted on his site in August. “The 2020 election was a rotten mess – if we had had a free and fair election, President Trump would be sitting in the Oval Office today and America would be so much better off.”

After the primary, Masters’ site only says, “We need to get serious about election integrity.”

Counting the political numbers

Heading into November, one thing is clear: The 2022 midterm elections in Arizona cannot be won by one party alone, but requires a combination of Republicans, Democrats and independent voters to win in this evenly divided state.

A Black and a white woman sit side by side at a table with a desktop computer in a crowded room.
Two election workers, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, sit side by side in Arizona during the 2020 presidential election. Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Among registered voters, the GOP has about 1.5 million residents, or 35%. Nearly 1.3 million voters are registered as Democrats, while about 1.4 million, or about 34%, registered as other or independent.

With such an equal split among political parties, election outcomes rely more on voter turnout. In the past two presidential elections, the number of registered voters who cast ballots jumped from about 2.6 million, or 74%, in 2016 to 3.4 million, or nearly 80%, in 2020.

The state GOP is counting on President Biden’s low approval ratings, high inflation and the typical midterm referendum on the incumbent’s party to get its voters out on Election Day.

The Democrats are focusing on get-out-the-vote efforts, particularly among young Latinos, and painting the Trump-endorsed candidates as too extreme for Arizonans.

Given the changing demographics in Arizona, that strategy may appeal to not only independent voters but also mainstream Republicans disillusioned with the extreme wing of their party.

Gina Woodall, Principal Lecturer at the School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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