As Democrats overperform in off-year elections, GOP frets over Trump voter turnout

A trio of election results this week have Republicans confronting a new reality: not only are they facing political headwinds as the party in power but simultaneously grappling with a dramatic reversal in the partisan preferences of the country’s most reliable voters.

A trio of election results this week have Republicans confronting a new reality: not only are they facing political headwinds as the party in power but simultaneously grappling with a dramatic reversal in the partisan preferences of the country’s most reliable voters. For years, Republicans were seen as the party that dominated lower profile elections outside presidential years, while Democratic voters were less consistent. But under President Donald Trump, Republicans worry their base has shifted to include low propensity voters who turn out for him but are not as motivated as Democrats to show up when he’s not on the ballot. Democrats have overperformed the top of the 2024 ticket in nearly every special election this year, flipped control of two state Senate seats in Iowa and Pennsylvania, halved the margins for two open US House seats in Florida and won a high-profile Wisconsin state Supreme Court race by a resounding 10 points. While Democrats have said those results are a sign that voters are rejecting the Trump administration’s agenda, some top Republicans have raised alarms about turning out the base. “The political problem on the Republican side of the aisle is how to get our base to vote in off-cycle elections,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X, adding that it was time for the GOP establishment to learn from Trump’s political success. Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, argued that Republicans must acknowledge that they are the party of low propensity voters, or people who don’t consistently show up to vote. “Special elections and off-cycle elections will continue to be a problem without a change of strategy,” he wrote on X.