Candidate quality matters
Recent elections point to voters being 'sick of the crazy.'
“Voters are sick of the crazy.”
—overheard at the grocery story after the mid-term elections
There’s a saying I’ve heard often over the last five years.
“The worst Republican is better than the best Democrat.”
On the surface, I understand this logic. But, beginning in 2020, however, I started pushing back against this line of reasoning, sometimes to awkward looks or stares.
“That might be the case,” I say, “but shouldn’t the goal be to pick the best Republican, not merely any Republican?”
I’m not sure I’ve won any folks to my side of thinking, but I’m hoping Hershel Walker’s loss to Sen. Raphael Warnock and Kari Lake’s embarrassing gubernatorial showing was a proof of concept. Despite his popularity and the endorsement of the former president, Walker couldn’t overcome frequent gaffes, a reputation for violence against women, a party never fully committed to his candidacy, and the loss of confidence that ensued each time he opened his mouth.
“Throughout the campaign, voters from all political stripes expressed concerns about the myriad controversies that bogged down Walker's first time running for office, including: allegations he pressured ex-girlfriends to seek abortions despite publicly opposing abortion rights; lying about his resume and business dealings; and making nonsensical statements about public policy,” wrote Stephen Fowler of Georgia Public Broadcasting. Walker's underperformance in the runoff was concentrated the most around Georgia's more educated cities and suburbs.”
Walker during his lone debate with Sen. Raphael Warnock.
Still, Walker received 48.6% of the vote. Selfishly, I hope this sounds the alarm that candidate quality matters. Locally, at the state level and nationally.
Further corrobboration…
Recently, the Washington Post ran an article with the following title: How bad a candidate was Kari Lake? This bad. In it, they shared a study showing Lake and several other Republican candidates lost a vast number number of votes from voters who otherwise backed mostly Republicans.
“Those voters didn’t just skip those contests, mind you; they voted in large numbers for Democrats. And in some cases, including Lake’s, that appears to have been decisive.
In her case, there were nearly 40,000 voters who didn’t vote for her but otherwise mostly voted Republican across 14 other contests. And about 33,000 of them voted for now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D). (Some didn’t vote or cast ballots for write-in candidates.)”
The most eye-opening part of the article, however, was the following:
“It’s true that we often see a certain number of crossover voters in a given election. But in this case, it’s not a symptom of voters simply being registered as a Republican and voting Democratic, whether because they failed to update their registration or for any other reason. This was voters going to the polls and proactively voting for mostly Republicans, but deciding that each of these Republicans were a bridge too far for them.”
More interesting news from the mid-terms
“Younger Black voters moved a substantial 22 percentage points toward Republicans in 2022.”
What I’m reading…
Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away, by Annie Duke
This was the first book I read in 2023; I did not disappoint. In fact, it provided support for a line of reasoning I’ve shared for years, albeit without data to back it up: Quitting can often be the best option. Duke, who is a professional poker player and decision scientist, doesn’t mince words, making the case that, in many instances, stubborn sticking to our goals prevents us from making real, valuable progress.
Quitting, she says, when done right, allows us to achieve our goals more quickly. This seems counterintuitive, because we think of quitting as stopping our progress.
“But that’s not true when the thing you started isn’t worthwhile. If you quit, that frees up all of those resources to switch to something that will actually help. The only time that quitting would slow your progress down is when you quit an option that’s really good for you.”
I’m not doing the book justice here. It’s a true must read. I discovered Duke via an interview she did with Adam M. Grant. She’s a phenomenal thinker and writer. In fact, right now I’m reading her book Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts.