January, named for that two-faced Roman god, brings us into a midterm election year. And Janus makes a good emblem for these biennial contests, which are full of double meaning.
For the broad electorate, particularly the persuadable voters who decide our elections on a national level, midterms are backward-looking. They are about the implicit and explicit promises of the previous presidential election and the realities of their implementation by the party in power.
For the politicians and die-hard partisans who vote in primary elections, midterms are forward-looking: Who's in charge? What's working? What isn't? They're looking for wins now, but with an eye on how to get power for themselves, their factions and their ideas in the bigger battle to come for the presidency. And with a lame duck in the White House, both parties will have open nominating contests in 2028 for the first time in 12 years.
This year, the past and future collide in the present challenges and opportunities — and good or bad luck — of the political moment. And just like every four years, it's a mismatch. How do a bunch of politically obsessed partisans demonstrate their superiority within their parties? By convincing 50 million normies to vote for their team in general elections.
That's directionally true in presidential years, too. But it's in midterms, when the universe of potential voters is about a third smaller, that the contradictions between past and present are the most jarring.
Primary turnout is pretty similar in presidential and midterm cycles, so it's the same kinds of voters who are choosing the candidates. But unlike a presidential year when constant coverage and social pressure pushes weak partisans and wishy-washy leaners into the pool, the midterms belong to the unicorn voters — those with a high likelihood to vote but a low partisan attachment.
Twenty years ago, that phenomenon favored Republicans in midterms and Democrats in quadrennial elections. It's been the opposite in the Trump era as Republicans have dominated with blue-collar voters and Democrats have become the party of the managerial class. The missing 50 million or so voters from 2024 who won't show up in 2026 skew red, giving more power to the college-educated, more affluent voters who turn out the most reliably.
Consider the Republican performance in 2022 and 2024. The party didn't change its approach, message or brand. It fizzled in the midterm but was gangbusters in the presidential. Yes, conditions changed to the GOP's benefit, but the electorate changed more.
Look at the four states — Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin — where President Trump won but the Republican Senate candidate lost in 2024, the most Senate ticket splitting since 2012. There's a strong case to be made that "undervotes" (ballots without every race selected) made a substantial difference. Republican Mike Rogers lost in Michigan by 19,006 votes in a contest that had nearly 100,000 fewer participants than the presidential race. I can't say that Rogers's missing voters were all in Trump's 80,103-vote margin over then-Vice President Kamala Harris in Michigan, but I'd be surprised if it wasn't an almost perfect correlation.
A similar story in Wisconsin: The Republican Senate candidate lost by 28,701 votes. Trump won by 29,397 votes. There were 35,079 fewer votes for Senate than for president. In Nevada, undervotes alone couldn't have made the difference, but the trend is there: 20,112 undervotes in the Senate race, a 24,059-vote margin of loss for the GOP Senate candidate and a 46,008-vote margin of victory for Trump. Arizona is the exception. The Republican candidate was such a lulu — and a well-known lulu — that she underperformed Trump by more than 107,000 votes outright.
Republicans are going to be focused very much this year on getting those missing Trump voters to show up for the GOP in midterms for a couple of reasons.
First, it's the easy way out. Rather than looking for distance from a president still very popular with primary voters in order to appeal to those unicorns, Republican candidates will say the smart move is actually to turn Trump to 11. Second, it is the forward-looking approach. The evident GOP consensus going into this year's elections is that 2028 will be a battle over continuing Trump's policies and persona. That may prove to be wrong, but the current conventional wisdom as displayed in the MAGA apotheosis of Vice President Vance tells us that's what the Republican collective consciousness is expecting.
Chasing those low-propensity, Trump-but-not-necessarily-Republican voters is foolish from the point of view of winning with the midterm electorate. Likely midterm voters have a lot of complaints about the current form of Trumpism and, while not enamored with the Democrats, seem very eager to vote for change, divided government and a curb on presidential power. Janus's backward-looking face does not like what it sees, even as the forward-looking one envisions greater glories than ever.
And that's the heart of the contradiction. What partisans want is status and influence for 2028. The way to get that is by winning in difficult races: states and districts that are toss-ups or typically the other party's turf. The way to do that is by sacrificing on the personalities and issues one's faction hopes to advance in the next presidential cycle.
You want to show your party that your faction is in power? Win surprise victories. Want to win surprise victories? Choose candidates with broad appeal beyond your faction.
That was the test that Republicans largely failed in 2022; now it's Democrats' turn to try. The ascendant progressive and socialist left wing may be thinking so much about the future that it fails to live in the present. And here, they have to remember that there's no figure to hold their party together like Trump did for Republicans after the 2022 debacle. Should Democrats fumble in 2026, whichever faction is perceived to be to blame will likely get the cold shoulder in 2028.
Of course, that's true for Republicans, too. If the GOP gets smoked in the midterms, the inevitable MAGA future and the coronation of Vance will look like less certain prospects. A surprise success for Republicans, on the other hand, would put the party even more fully in the thrall of Trump's movement. That's what happened to Democrats after escaping the worst expectations of 2022. It shored up former President Biden's standing in the party and delayed the eventual reckoning with his evident deficiencies.
What Janus sees in the future next January will depend a great deal on what he's looking back on from this year.
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