Data shows dire election postmortems could soon be in store for GOP: columnist

If recent political history is any indication, examinations into Republican electoral defeats up and down the ballot may not be far off, according to a political columnist.

In fact, they could be one presidential election cycle away.

Take for example the elections in 2008, 2016 and 2020, when voters gave the prevailing party governing trifectas, MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen wrote.

Of course, the GOP was handed the coveted political situation this year, but four years ago it was Democrats who were handed back control of Congress and the White House after Republicans wrestled it away in 2016, the same way Democrats turned the tables in 2008, Cohen noted.

“Quite simply, it might not be long before the election postmortems are being written about the GOP,” Cohen told readers in an opinion piece published Monday for MSNBC.

While Cohen is not doubting the scope of the “bad outcome” the 2024 elections produced for the Democratic Party, he says the data shows some bright spots for the party, including that “Democrats outperformed the presidential ticket in several key Senate races.”

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“The Democrats’ defeat has led to a host of postmortems and renting on what went wrong and what the party needs to do differently going forward,” he wrote. “But a deep dive inside the numbers suggests that while the election results were bad for Democrats, they aren’t quite as awful as they seem.”

He continued to establish his argument by reminding readers that Democrats were facing “an uphill battle” this year in the face of anti-incumbent sentiment worldwide and that President-elect Donald Trump’s victory was not the landslide win that MAGA world wanted to portray.

“His margin of victory, 1.6 points, was the fifth-smallest in the last 100 years,” Cohen noted.

The columnist concluded by writing that even as Democrats “lost four Senate seats and control of the chamber, considering the 6-point shift in national voting and Trump’s victory, they did better than expected.”

“Going forward, the ubiquity of the occasional Trump voter should concern Republicans,” according to Cohen, a senior fellow and co-director of the Afghanistan Assumptions Project at the Center for Strategic Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. “Can they hold the White House — and their advantages in the House and Senate — if Trump is not on the ticket (and constitutionally, he cannot run for president again)?”