Pollsters analyze Republican 'shellacking' and 'remarkable rebuke' of Trump

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(The Center Square) - Six days after a midterm election rout of Republicans at both the state and federal levels, professional pollsters in Harrisburg on Monday produced statistics and snapshots to show how lopsided the result actually was.

Nationwide, 514 state legislative seats flipped to the Democrats, said Jefrey Pollock. In Pennsylvania, a far larger percentage of Republicans - 25% - deserted their party's gubernatorial candidate to vote for Democrat Josh Shapiro than had four years earlier, said Jim Lee. A third pollster, Berwood Yost, said the numbers that mattered most to people were dollars.

"Voters were deeply unhappy with their economic circumstances," said Yost, a pollster at Franklin & Marshall College.

The three, along with Natural Resources Defense Council political campaign organizer Jocelyn Steinberg, spoke at a post-election briefing held at the Harrisburg Hilton and organized by Susquehanna Polling & Research, where Lee is president and CEO. Pollock, a partner at Global Strategy Group and Shapiro's chief pollster, described the midterm as a "shellacking" that constituted a "remarkable rebuke" of President Donald Trump.

"We knew we'd win, but not like this," Pollock said.

Nearly every demographic went toward Democrats, he said. Those included men from 18 to 44 years of age, Hispanic voters, and young voters. According to Pollock, Republicans lost sight of the top issues with voters: Inflation and the cost of living; jobs and the economy; and health care.

Lee cautioned that Democrat-heavy though it might be, the election result would not provide a magic carpet for Democratic legislative success. Lee said he believed both national and Pennsylvania Democrats would be on a "short leash" in carrying out policies, and that they had to be wary of catering to the far-left portion of the party.

Lee cited CNN polling that showed 18% of voting Americans identified themselves as supporters of the Democratic Socialist agenda, while 24% identified themselves as "MAGA" Republicans. Later in the presentation, though, Lee said he believed the MAGA movement was on "life support."

Shapiro's swamping of Republican challenger Stacy Garrity by 22 percentage points went far beyond an anti-Trump expression by voters, according to Lee. He said post-election polling done by his company showed Shapiro had true "cross over appeal" to Republicans.

Nonetheless, Trump's policies and the war in Iran he led were dominant factors in the midterm, according to Lee. Those two things, Lee said, cost Pennsylvania Republicans the four seats in Congress that flipped to Democrats.

He said Trump "wanted people to think he was on the ballot, and they sure did."

Steinberg, whose organization has an environment-focused mission, said voters generally see data centers, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrency as connected.

The perception that "northeast Pennsylvania is ground zero for data centers" presented an opportunity for Garrity, according to Steinberg. That Garrity did not make best use of it was evident by a "donate with crypto" button being present on her campaign website, Steinberg said.

In Yost's view, Trump kept "pruning" the offering of candidates made by his party nationally, in effect reducing the positive effect of local variables and sentiments. "Republicans had no room to run on their own brand" and much of the election was focused on Trump-related issues, he said.

In Pennsylvania, Yost said he expected Shapiro and Democrats to follow through with promises to raise the minimum wage, ease access to housing, and legalize recreational marijuana.

The state has a structural budget deficit estimated at $5 billion. Yost said the Democratic legislature and governor would likely push hard on ways to create new revenue.