There’s a simple reason the GOP’s Senate contenders are underperforming compared to Trump.
There’s a simple reason the GOP’s Senate contenders are underperforming compared to Trump.
R ecent polls show Republican Senate candidates trailing in key target states even when they also show President Trump ahead. But Republicans shouldn’t worry yet for one simple reason: candidate name identification.
Even in this polarized era, people tend not to say they will vote for someone they have never heard of. Despite many GOP candidates’ spending millions of dollars on television ads, they still are usually less well-known than their Democratic opponents. The result is that many people who say they will vote for Trump either go with the Democratic name they know or say they are undecided.
A recent Ohio poll is an excellent example of this. It shows Trump beating Biden by eight points, but also shows longtime incumbent Sherrod Brown leading the GOP nominee, Bernie Moreno, by six points. Sound the sirens, Moreno is going down!
Or is he? Look at the less-reported name-identification figures, and one finds Brown is much better-known than Moreno. Eighty-eight percent have heard enough about Brown to have an opinion of him (47–41 favorable) while only 67 percent have an opinion about Moreno. 21 percent have no opinion regarding Moreno, while 12 percent of Ohio voters have never even heard of him. No wonder Brown leads.
This finding is confirmed when one looks at the poll’s partisan breakdowns. Moreno leads Brown by 80 points among Republicans, not much less than the 88 points Trump leads by. He trails Brown by 96 points among Democrats, compared to Trump’s 94-point deficit. The difference comes among independents. Trump leads among them by four while Moreno trails among them by 18.
This is exactly what one would expect given the two candidates’ histories. Brown has been a senator since 2012, while Moreno just won his first statewide race, the Republican primary. Independents tend not to vote in party primaries, and thus tend not to pay much attention to those campaigns. They will start to pay attention as the general election nears, and that is when Moreno and his GOP allies will be saturating the airwaves with the ads.
The same phenomenon occurs in other states. An early May Wisconsin poll had Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin ahead of the likely GOP nominee, Eric Hovde, by a 54–42 margin. It also showed she had 84 percent name ID (49–35 favorable) compared with Hovde’s 48 percent. As with Ohio, both party candidates have large leads among their partisans, but the better-known Democrat leads among independents. A May Pennsylvania poll showed Democratic incumbent Bob Casey leading GOP nominee Dave McCormick by four points, while also showing that he had a significant 17-point advantage in name identification.
We know from history that GOP candidates can overturn even substantial summer polling deficits once they start advertising. A summer 2018 poll of Tennessee showed the Democratic candidate, former governor Phil Bredesen, leading his GOP opponent, Representative Marsha Blackburn, by six points. But that was entirely due to a large 14-point lead in historically Republican Eastern Tennessee. It was obvious that this would disappear once Blackburn advertised in that region. That’s exactly what happened, and Bredesen carried only three counties en route to an eleven-point defeat.
Arizona’s Senate race stands out as the exception that proves the rule. Here the likely Republican nominee, Kari Lake, is exceptionally well-known owing to her narrow gubernatorial loss two years ago. A May Noble Insights poll showed 88 percent of Arizonans have an opinion of her — and her favorability rating is six points under water. Her Democratic opponent, Phoenix-area representative Ruben Gallego, leads her by ten points even though only 74 percent of Arizonans have an opinion of him. There’s surely room for the race to tighten as Lake hits Gallego’s liberal record, but she’ll have a hard time rehabilitating her own image as Gallego hammers her with ads.
The fact is that it is much too early to begin seriously writing off any party nominee’s chances in a potentially competitive race. Campaigns matter, and television advertising is especially important for the challenger to a longtime incumbent. Don’t rush to judgment on any of these contests. We’ll have a much better sense of these races in early October, after the campaigns have begun in earnest.