STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Let's get some analysis from Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and host of "The Focus Group" podcast, also someone who talks with voters in focus groups and has done so for years. Welcome back.
SARAH LONGWELL: Hey, thanks for having me. What a morning.
INSKEEP: What do you make of the parts of the Republican coalition, or the Trump coalition, I should say, that seem to have gone away last night?
LONGWELL: Well, let's start with the Trump part. So Trump insisted that people put him on the ballot, and I'll tell you that certainly worked for Democrats. And then I think that this was about anger at Trump. It was anger about the war. It was anger about gas prices. It was anger about grocery prices. It was anger about data centers. It was anger about not releasing the Epstein files. I listen to voters all the time. And the thing that Republican voters would talk about is, especially as it related to the candidates that they had to vote for, was whether or not that candidate was too attached to Donald Trump.
What happened in Maine last night with Susan Collins losing was that people saw her as having lost her independence, that she was too much of a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. And all across these races, you know, whether it was Darline Graham - Darline Graham was somebody that Donald Trump installed, Ken Paxton was somebody that Trump had backed over John Cornyn and, you know, anger at Vivek Ramaswamy in Ohio. And that anger at all of those things, and especially at Donald Trump and the candidates who would not stand up to him, is the reason that Republicans lost last night.
INSKEEP: Did the president's super focus and the administration's super focus on diversity, equity and inclusion backfire?
LONGWELL: I don't know that it backfired so much as that that wasn't what people cared about, right? Donald Trump didn't know how to focus on the issues that really mattered to Americans, which is what they wanted. And instead, he focused on all of the social fighting that he likes to do, as well as all of his personal enrichment. I mean, one of the things that was interesting to me is how voters really understood that Donald Trump is behaving with corruption at a scale that they have not seen, and they are angriest about it because of the contrast, because their lives are getting worse while he is enriching himself and his friends. And they see his focus on the reflecting pool, where he chose to close the argument, which was sort of a shocking move from him. And again, goes to how out of touch he is.
INSKEEP: What happened to Latinos, Arab Americans, other groups where Republicans seemed to be making inroads before?
LONGWELL: I think Republicans had this sense, and you can see it in the way that they gerrymandered Texas, right? They did that mid-cycle redistricting, thinking that they had a lock on Hispanic voters. But Hispanic voters swung toward Trump in 2024, again, because of high prices, because they wanted something done about the economy, and they were the ones to swing the hardest back against him. Just looking at what happened in Texas, the repudiation of all of the Republicans in Texas, I think, is just - the Hispanics are going to be an enormous part of that story, the level of turnout and all the new voters that came into the system to vote for James Talarico, who'd never voted before. I mean, to have a Democrat in Texas not just win, but win by a very comfortable margin.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
LONGWELL: That's an earthquake.
INSKEEP: Sarah Longwell publishes The Bulwark and is author of "How To Eat An Elephant: One Voter At A Time." Sarah, thanks.
LONGWELL: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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