Posted on 03/31/2025 6:03:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
CNN’s Scott Jennings detailed Sunday why Republicans need to “come to grips” with their “new reality” of lower propensity voters ahead of key elections in Florida and Wisconsin.
Key special elections for two House seats in Florida and a seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court have Republicans eyeing the chance to gain more ground ahead of the midterm elections. Jennings, on “State of the Union,” highlighted to the panel how Republicans were able to gain new traction among lower propensity voters but must now motivate them to go out and vote despite their past record of not doing so.
“Here’s what I think about these elections, and the Republican Party has to sort of come to grips with the new reality, which is we’ve traded a lot of the highest propensity voters to the Democrats, but a lot of new, lower propensity voters have come to the Republican Party,” Jennings said.
“What is the real-world effect of this? Number one, it’s great for presidential elections. Ask Donald Trump, that’s how he won last November,” Jennings added. “But for off-year, off-cycle, special, midterm, anything not happening under a presidential election, these kinds of lower propensity voters just simply don’t have a history of turning out as much.”
Since November, congressional Republicans have held a slim majority with 218 seats to Democrats’ 213. Following former Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s November resignation and President Donald Trump tapping Mike Waltz as national security advisor, Democrats are eyeing Florida’s First and Sixth Congressional Districts.
While reports have indicated that Republicans are concerned about securing Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida-based GOP strategist Ford O’Connell have expressed confidence that Republican Florida State Sen. Randy Fine will secure the seat.
“ So one of the things Republicans have to do, and I think we will win in Florida, but one thing we have to do is condition these new people in the Republican Party, ‘Hey, voting in every election is vital. Don’t just turn out every four years. Turn out whenever there’s something on the ballot,’” Jennings continued.
“That’s something that I know the top strategists in the party are stressing, but it may take some time to condition these new folks to become regular voters,” Jennings concluded.
With early voting surging for Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court race, both Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have publicly backed conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel.
America PAC, a political action committee founded by Musk, announced on X that it would offer $100 to Wisconsin registered voters for signing a petition against “activist judges” and $100 for each signer a voter refers. In a poll released on March 20, Schimel was reported to be closely trailing his liberal opponent, Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, by 48% to 43%.
Voting for the special elections in Florida and Wisconsin will be held Tuesday.
If this were true, then what made those so called "high propensity" Republican voters decide to become traitors to the United States and vote Demonicrat?
What a load of caca.
Coming from CNN aka Constipated News Nerds = Grade “A” Bullshit.
“Lower propensity voters”.
Does he mean ‘Stupid’ voters?
That’s what the phrase ‘low information voters’ is for.
Ain’t that polite enough?
Steaming bovine excrement.
He’s 100% correct. Since 2016, Trump has significantly outperformed all other Republicans on the ballot. In short, people are voting for Trump, they don’t necessarily vote for Republicans. The party needs to figure out why. Trump is a once in a century candidate, but they need to start turning these Trump voters into reliable Republican voters. JD can do it in 2028, but that’s again, top of the ticket.
Yeah we are all dumb and ignorant, married to our relatives and living in caves.
“figure out why”? I think its pretty obvious that voters think they are not conservative enough
CNN has to chat about somethin’ or they’ll lose viewers.
I don’t know if “trade” is the correct term but for the last several election cycles since 2016 Democrats have been highly motivated to turnout for midterms, special, and municipal elections and Republicans have tended to only strongly turnout for Presidential elections. For some reason, this is the inverse of the way it has traditionally been throughout my entire life previously.
It’s because most Republicans are RINOs still. They MUST be removed from the party and replaced with MAGA Republicans. Trump needs a task force dedicated to targeting the RINOs before the midterms or he’ll never get his agenda accomplished.
They are older voters from the Bush-George Will-National Review mold who hate the “Trump tone”.
I challenge his assertion of “lower propensity”
What the GOP has going on is the MAGA base and the GOP base overlap but are not identical.
Run a traditional GOO establishment Wall Street/county club Republican with Trump on the ballot and and Trumps coattails will pull them over. (Re McCormick in PA). Run that same type of candidate and Trump isn’t on the ballot and you get a loss.
This is because the MAGA base won’t go out of their way for another establishment shill.. but if they are showing up for a Ma
aGA candidate anyway the establishment GOP downballot gets a benefit.
The establishment GOP still calls a lot of shots while pretending to be MAGA and they part of the MAGA base that is not in the traditions GOP base doesn’t largely fall for that con
I worked the elections for about 20 years, and definitely observed the shift in electorate.
Republicans tended to be older, mature, educated.
Democrats were the confused, unskilled voters.
Now, the confused, unregistered, messed up voters are often wearing MAGA hats and seem younger.
Those voters are giving us the Trump majority, but they may not bother and go to vote for some congressman.
He might have a bit of a point there.
Of course, the other option would be to stop the voter fraud, which would give the GOP more than enough voters in most elections.
I doubt anyone is switching to the unpopular democrat party. What is
happening is the media has ramped up their fear campaign and the liberals are more motivated to vote. Just like 2018. Fear is all they have.
I think the guy is right. We here at Freerepublic are political junkies and we tend to vote every election. There are people on the other side of the isle who do the same. But most people aren’t that much into politics and as he said only tend to vote it presidential elections. That’s a fact.
I know many of them. They don’t know who their congressman or senators are. They don’t know who is governor of their state. They may watch local news just to catch the weather forecast, but they never pay attention to national or international news. They just aren’t following events.
I wonder how hard it is to do an interview at CNN with all that echo coming back at you.
Doesn’t look good folks,the democrats are pulling the same election shenanigans in Wisconsin today
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.