Conservative GOP governors outpaced GOP Senate candidates by a wide margin in some key states. Georgia governor Brian Kemp, for example, won by 7.5 points in November while GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker was bested by Democratic senator Raphael Warnock by one point. While some of that difference can be chalked up to some voters’ preferring GOP governance at the state level and Democratic governance at the federal level, that preference does not actually explain why GOP Senate candidates failed in four key states: Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.
Nate Cohn writes:
Republican candidates won the most votes for U.S. House in all four of the crucial Senate states where Republicans fell short: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada.
Or, put differently: Republicans would have won the Senate, and fairly decisively, if only the likes of Dr. Mehmet Oz or Herschel Walker had fared as well as Republican House candidates on the same ballot.
In other words, the weakness of Trump-backed GOP Senate candidates really was the main factor that cost Republicans control of the Senate.
"Republican candidates won the most votes for U.S. House in all four of the crucial Senate states where Republicans fell short: Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and Nevada."https://t.co/MvcsGjM0jY pic.twitter.com/SYtNcFWIYz
— John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) December 14, 2022