The GOP’s sad addiction to low turnout could spell trouble in 2024

Pauline Kael knew she wasn’t a representati🎀ve American.

The onetime New Yorker film critic is famous in folk memory for hav🎀ing said s✃he didn’t know anyone who voted for Richard Nixon in 1972, when he won a 49-state landslide.

The way her words are misremembered, she was surprised someoneꦓ so reviled by her social set could win the White 🍌House.

In fact, she wasn’t surprised: Kael told the Modern Library Association in a Dec. 28 💜speech that year, “I live🅘 in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they [i.e., Nixon voters] are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken.”

Kael’s example is worth keeping 🙈in mind when thin💫king about next year’s election.

Donald Trump shocked Democrats — and elite Republicans — in 2016 because they didn’t know any Tꩲrump voters; or, if they did, they never suspected there could be so many of them.

Trump voters felt the same way about turnout for Joe Biden in 2020: Where could all these people, 🉐81 million of them, have come from?

Democrats underestimate support for Trump in the sorts🧸 of places most Democrats never think about, rural and post-industrial America.

Republicans similarly underestimate the magnitude of opposition to Trump in places that don’t elect Republicans: The GOP knows cities are blue, but✃ it doesn’t appreciate just how blue they can be if the right (or wrong) candidate is on the ballot.

Barack Obama drew blue-city voters ou🦂t in droves because th🐭ey loved him.

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Urban voters came out in even greater numbers against Trump in ꦿ2020.

Yet if Republicans were amazed by the scale of the anti-Trump vote, Democrats were astonished by how well House and Senate Republicans performed anyway. Why weren’t t𝓀hey drowned by the tide that flooded Trump?

Republicans gained seat🧸s in the House of Representatives and kept their losses in the Senate below wh🌄at pollsters predicted.

The difference between expectation and reality was down to Trump: The man is great for democracy, ꩲin the simple sense of getting people out to vote. He drives turnout for Republicans and Democrats alike.

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Thಌat explains the mixed verdict of the 2020 election and the weak GOP showing in last ye💮ar’s midterms.

Without Trump on the ballot 🐭in ’22, many of his voters simply stayed home, so the GOP struggled to win back the House and lost seats in the Senate.

With Trump on the ballot in 2020, Republicans outside urban areas flocked to the polls, lifting theꦺ House GOP.

Unfortunately, Trump maximized urban Democratic turnout as wꦏell, whi𝔍ch was fatal to him in purplish-red states like Arizona and Georgia.

Maximize th🌼e urban vote in Phoeni🦂x and Atlanta and those states are lost to the GOP.

The same isﷺ true for Pennsylvania when 💧Philadelphia votes in force.

(Wisconsin’s story was slightly different: Milwaukee’s urban turnout dropped in 2020, but Democrats made up the difference with huge margins in Madison — home to ♕liberal student🍬s and state government employees.)

House Republicans looking to 2024 are comfortable with Trump because few of them represent disꦯtricts that will flip if the urban vote explodes.

Instead, they reap every benefit from Trump’s capacity to turn out ꦦthe GOP base.

Senate Republicans are more nervous, a♊nd Republicans with an eye on gubernatorial and other state contests are even more worried, because in most competitive states a sudden surge in the cities can tip the election.

That applies to the Electoral College, too.

Trump’s head-to-head national numbers against Biden look fine. But if voting against Trump gives urban Democrats a stronger reason to go to the polls than voting for Biden, states like Arizona and Georgia will💜 again be in jeopardy.

Republican strategists would prefer to make the election about Biden, not Trump, and to keep ꧃turnout low.

They’re optimistic that just the prospect of throwing Biden out of office will deliver the GOP all the turnout it needs — and Democrats won’t be equally eag🦹er t꧅o show up to keep an aged and uncharismatic incumbent in office.

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The only flaw in the plan is the Republican base, which adﷺores Trump and appears determined to nom𝓡inate him.

In truth, it’s never safe to build a strategy on the assumption thatꦛ voters won’t vote.

Whatever happens next year, the rural-urban divide will continue to bedevil both parties, ea♛ch fearful that the voters it doesn’t know will show up in unexpected numbers.

T𒅌he GOP’s problem, though, is that the cities are growing whi🥀le rural and post-industrial America is withering.

The party can’t ditch the base Trump has cultivated — but it can’t win with those voters a🦩lone.

Trump reconnected Republicans to Americans💜 the Democrats had written off; soon some GOP leader will have to reconnect the party with voters who don’t know any Republicans.

Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.