US Vice President Vance on Republican failure in the election: One of the things our data analysts obsess over is "voter composition": whether the electorate looks similar enough to 2024 for the Republicans to win. And despite polls predicting a crushing defeat for the Democrats, the numbers kept telling us the same thing: Turnout was fine in some states, absolutely amazing in others, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was honest optimism in our team: our people arrived at the sites.
So I asked the smartest data scientist I know: Does this mean we're going to rock the world? "No," he answered me. "We can do more than the polls show. But the data suggests that many Trump/Vance 2024 voters are angry and plan to vote for their opponents. Our voters are coming, but maybe they won't vote for us." Well, now it seems prophetic. Our voters really showed up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 percent more Republican than Democratic—just a few points worse than in 2024. There is no doubt that there were places where we could have done better in terms of turnout. But the main problem is not the turnout. The main problem is that many of the people who voted Trump/Vance in 2024 voted Democrat in 2026.
There will be many internal conflicts and arguments about what happened and why. One of the sociologists I greatly respect told me that our economic messages at the finish line are not accurate enough. I'm sure that's true.
But the real reason for our defeat is clear to almost everyone. Another pollster - one of the smartest people I know in politics - told me yesterday that we would lose by 13 points in the generic ballot. I was in a negative mood before Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this.