As Republicans look ahead to 2024, perhaps the greatest lesson we can take from the 2022 midterms is how we speak to independent voters. As a data and finance campaign veteran, I am at my most comfortable with data points and dollar amounts, and the path to 270 cannot be secured without independent voters.
Despite what you may hear on primetime cable news, Republican voters turned out in 2022. I know this because the proof is in the numbers – nearly 4 million more Republicans than Democrats voted in the last midterm elections. Let’s take that even a step further – in every battleground state, outside of Pennsylvania, a Republican won statewide. And even further, in Nevada, Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo became the only candidate from either party to oust an incumbent at the statewide level.
And how did Gov. Lombardo accomplish that? He won over independents.
Gov. Lombardo, like any good candidate, knew that independents were going to show up to vote. Going into Election Day, Lombardo and his team knew that Republicans made up 38 percent of registered voters, Democrats made up 36 percent, and independents made up the remaining 26 percent. If we assume a Republican candidate wins every Republican vote, and vice versa for a Democrat, the GOP candidates only needed to win 45 percent of independents to win.
With the help of data and voter scores provided by the Republican National Committee, Lombardo and his team started targeting those undecided voters right out of the primary. It’s important to note that while Republican candidates are busy jockeying for the nominee in races across the country, that is where the party infrastructure excels in harnessing data and voter scores for the eventual nominees to use the day after their primary win.
From the onset, Gov. Lombardo and his team placed engaging with independent voters on a level equal to that of engaging the Republican base.
And that game plan paid off. By Labor Day, there were just shy of 63,000 Nevada voters who were still undecided. Looking at the results and voter scores after Election Day, we know that Lombardo won 46 percent of those undecided voters.
Gov. Lombardo is not the only candidate who successfully won over independents last cycle: Just look at the success of J.D. Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, or Ron DeSantis in Florida. Bottom line – any candidate who won their seat, whether in the governor’s mansion, the Senate, or the House, did so by winning independents.
For this cycle, I encourage all candidates, from the top of the ticket to the county level, to look at how Gov. Lombardo turned out his base, appealed to independents, and peeled off just enough Democrats to secure victory. With Biden’s approval ratings continuing to be underwater, there is a path to victory for every Republican candidate on the ballot, from the ruby reddest of states to the deepest blue districts.
To take back the White House and Senate and expand our majority in the House, Republicans must win over independent voters. That groundwork is already being laid out by the RNC, and our nominees from the president all the way to the state legislature will be better off because of the permanent infrastructure our ecosystem has built.
Katie Walsh Shields is a political and public affairs consultant in Washington, D.C., with more than 15 years of experience working at the highest levels of national politics and government, including serving as White House deputy chief of staff and chief of staff to the Republican National Committee. This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
