On the Republicans’ decision to choose extremist candidates in high-profile close races

I’m pointing you to this post from last month as it’s relevant to yesterday’s election in Georgia.

Ok, did you follow the above link and read last month’s post? Good. Now for the update (which isn’t really an update, just a reinforcement) after yesterday’s election:

Paul Campos talks about the related issue of “candidate quality.” In the case of Herschel Walker and some of the other Republican candidates for office there seems to be some connection between political extremism and personal issues that would make them unpopular. In theory it would seem that the party could’ve picked a candidate with extreme political views who did not have such a troubling personal history, but perhaps one lesson that far-right Republicans drew from the 2016 campaign was that apparent personal disqualifications can actually be a political plus (in a sort of parallel to a lesson that far-left Democrats seemed to have drawn from the 2016 campaign, that far-left issue positions were political winners). Hard to untangle in any particular election. I continue to think that (a) moderation offers moderate political benefits, (b) in an election that’s not predicted to be close, it can make sense to run more extreme candidates if you have a strong goal to push policies one direction or another, (c) personal candidate qualities don’t matter as much as people often think (again, consider that Walker received only a few percentage points of the vote less than other Republican candidates in Georgia this election) but in a close election this can make a difference. I can see how, from the perspective of Donald Trump and others, the benefit of having another senator with absolute loyalty would be worth the a slightly increased risk of losing. And, remember, as discussed in the above-linked post, if you go back six months or a year ago, the congressional elections didn’t seem like they’d be close. In the interim, the Supreme Court swung the pendulum to the right and changed the meaning of midterm balancing. Sending Walker, Oz, etc., to the Fox News green room instead of Washington, D.C., even while their co-partisans take control of the House of Representatives.

20 thoughts on “On the Republicans’ decision to choose extremist candidates in high-profile close races

  1. > I can see how, from the perspective of Donald Trump and others, the benefit of having another senator with absolute loyalty would be worth the a slightly increased risk of losing.

    I think trying to analyze Trump’s decisions from a rational actor perspective is very flawed. Would Dr. Oz even be that loyal to Trump?

    • I’m surprised no one complained about Oz’s dual citizenship. Turkey is not on our side on everything, and that’s their right. And it’s our right to be unhappy about it. But in the meantime, we shouldn’t have a Senator who is loyal to a country that’s inimical to some of our interests and ideals.

      Personally, I dislike the idea of anyone with dual citizenship being a US Senator. That’s giving that other country high-level access to US secrets. That’s a really bad idea…

  2. While you would probably call DeSantis “extreme”, I wouldn’t. However, he appears to be a bit of a counterexample to your claim. Where does “provides great leadership, listens to his people, and delivers” fit into your analysis?

    • Adrian:

      1. When I refer to Republicans’ decision to choose extremist candidates in high-profile close races, I’m not talking about all those races, just some of them. I don’t think DeSantis would be considered an extremist in the current political context.

      2. Leadership, listening, and delivering are important, and they fit into the general “candidate quality” bin: they make a difference, maybe more of a difference for a race for governor than for congress.

  3. The simplest interpretation of the connection sounds like just a selection effect or Berkson paradox. When you screen on a litmus test (being a MAGA here), you get fewer good candidates (of which political parties are never overblessed with an embarrassment of even in the best of times), and thus they will be worse in some way and come with drawbacks.

    • Yeah, but the parties don’t actually pick the candidates. Walker had to win a primary. The MAGA filter doesn’t operate at anything other than a individual voter level in the primaries.

      • Jonathan:

        Party leaders have an influence over which candidates get press and $. Just to be clear, in writing “Republicans’ decision” in the title of this post, I was referring to the joint decision of Republican leaders and Republican voters.

    • Roger:

      Walker promoted politically extreme hard-line election denial positions, for example claiming “Country wide election fraud”; see for example here. I guess that’s one reason that Trump endorsed him. As discussed above and in the political science literature, extremism does not generally come with a huge electoral cost, but the cost is not zero, and in a close election this can make the difference.

      Oz, yes, I agree with you, he did not take extreme political positions. He just had the misfortune to run as a Republican in a state where more people wanted to vote for the Democrats.

    • I agree that there seems to be a lot of confusion coming from overloading the word “extreme”. The version that makes the most sense in partisan-balancing arguments is political extremity. (I don’t think any persuadable voter was thinking that we need to restore balance on the topic of Trump fealty.) The MAGA version of “extreme” makes more sense in arguments about energizing the base. I suppose the mid-term balancing argument could also be about base energy, but that balancing argument is more about anger at being left in the cold than the sort of policy-pendulum one put forth in the OP.

      The post also raised the topic of candidate personal qualities not mattering like they used to. I think there’s a lot going on with this one. On the one hand, Trump blew the lid off the old tradition of everyone acting scandalized by certain types revelations. Talking-head outrage has always has always included a lot of performative nonsense, so it probably felt good to a lot of people to at least change up the rules on what people could pretend to care about. But that doesn’t mean people don’t actually care about anything. Sure, a lot of voters are happy to blow off any given set of bad behaviors. But any particular set of bad behaviors (e.g., family abandonment) is going to matter a lot to *some* subset of voters. It might make sense to think more about the size of the electoral slice that could be persuaded to care a lot about a given set of sins. (Related: Could Clinton have gotten traction hammering Trump for screwing over subcontractors; maybe they did just that but I missed it because targeted ads correctly guessed that I’m not a contractor.)

      • If there was anything about Trump screwing over contractors, I missed it, too. That seemed odd to me at the time, because anybody who has been around the building trades knows stories about people like that.

        • Odd that you missed it, he’s famous for refusing to pay contractors and eventually offering to pay but only if they accept 20% less than the agreed price, saying if they refuse he will claim shoddy work and tie things up in court for years. I’ll do the googling, there are several stories, you can judge the credibility.

        • To be clear, my point is only that I’m unaware of a relentless ad campaign on the contractor issue. A lot of Trump’s voters decided that [insert favorite Trump flaw] wasn’t a deal-breaker for their vote, but they may have proved a lot more persuadable on underhanded treatment of plumbers and electricians. I saw a few stories on this for a few news cycles but no sustained ad campaign.

          More broadly, I’m just still not convinced that character has become a non-issue. I agree there’s not much mojo left in performative outrage on behalf of imagined viewers’ Victorian sensibilities or whatever. But this just means that we have to think harder about who will actually consider a given character flaw to be a deal-breaker. If the number approaches 1% of would-be supporters, it can be the difference between a win and a loss.

        • Phil,
          See Josh’s post below. What I didn’t see was the Clinton campaign talking about Trump’s treatment of contractors.

    • As for Walker not being an extreme candidate.

      Georgia voting:

      Governor: R+8
      Lt. Governor: R+5
      Sec. of State: R+9
      Attorney General: R+5
      Ag. Commissioner: R+8
      In. Commissioner: R+8
      State School Superintendent: R+8
      Commissioner of Labor: R+7

      Senate: D+2-4

      It certainly seems he was an outlier candidate.

      • Joshua:

        There are two dimensions here. One is political extremism (for example, Walker endorsing election conspiracy theories), the other is candidate quality (Walker’s general incompetence and aspects of his personal history). These can go together—for example, endorsing ridiculous conspiracy theories itself represents some combination of incompetence and corruption—but you can’t say that underperforming in an election is itself a sign of political extremism.

  4. You say, “… lesson that far-left Democrats seemed to have drawn from the 2016 campaign, that far-left issue positions were political winner.”
    A short look at the election results suggests far-left Democrats did well in this election; do you know of a detailed discussion of this issue?

    • David:

      I’ve not looked into the details with recent elections. Based on earlier research, I’d guess that a far-left Democrat would not do as well as a centrist Democrat would do, running in the same election. But, again, not all candidates are equal, and also if the election is not going to be close, then the effect of extremism or centrism probably wouldn’t make a difference in who wins.

      • > Based on earlier research, I’d guess that a far-left Democrat would not do as well as a centrist Democrat would do, running in the same election.

        “extreme” and “far-left” se awfully vague terms. But context matters. There are districts where a center-left candidate will not perform as well as someone significantly to his/her left. And visa-versa. I’m not sure I see the value in trying to extrapolate some general rule – since it won’t really be a general rule.

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