A GOP postmortem: What went so wrong in Pennsylvania?
PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania GOP is trying to figure out what went so horribly wrong in 2022.
After the party’s disastrous midterm races, Republicans in the critical battleground state are conducting a postmortem, holding focus groups throughout the state and interviewing thousands of voters about everything from abortion to former President Donald Trump in hopes of getting to the bottom of their losses. As a sign of the seriousness of the effort, the state party has enlisted Public Opinion Strategies, a D.C. area-based firm, to conduct the review of the 2022 election.
Republicans also said their analysis isn’t shying away from examining how the end of Roe v. Wade affected the election. Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, made a central part of his campaign his Republican opponent Doug Mastriano’s support of an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. In exit polls, a plurality of voters in Pennsylvania ranked abortion as their top issue. “Clearly that issue played more of a role than most political pundits, particularly Republicans — no, let’s just rephrase that, Republican pundits — gave it weight,” said Meuser. The question, he added, is, “What’s the way you can say it without being offensive? … To me, there’s definitely a reasonable way of maintaining my pro-life position without being offensive to others.”
Other initiatives that Pennsylvania Republicans are embarking on in the wake of the 2022 midterms include establishing a vote-by-mail strategy.
After last year’s races, many Republicans in the state and nation came to the determination that their recent war against mail voting cost them. The state GOP is launching a mail-in ballot task force to look at the problem. “Most folks now on the Republican side recognize that if one party is voting for 50 days and the other party is voting for 13 hours, the party voting for 50 days is going to have a higher turnout,” said Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member in Pennsylvania who has also been tapped to sit on the task force. “We have to embrace it and convince the Republican voters that there’s integrity with the mail-in voting process, i.e. that their vote will count.”
Much more at the link.
PHILADELPHIA — The Pennsylvania GOP is trying to figure out what went so horribly wrong in 2022.
After the party’s disastrous midterm races, Republicans in the critical battleground state are conducting a postmortem, holding focus groups throughout the state and interviewing thousands of voters about everything from abortion to former President Donald Trump in hopes of getting to the bottom of their losses. As a sign of the seriousness of the effort, the state party has enlisted Public Opinion Strategies, a D.C. area-based firm, to conduct the review of the 2022 election.
Republicans also said their analysis isn’t shying away from examining how the end of Roe v. Wade affected the election. Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, made a central part of his campaign his Republican opponent Doug Mastriano’s support of an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. In exit polls, a plurality of voters in Pennsylvania ranked abortion as their top issue. “Clearly that issue played more of a role than most political pundits, particularly Republicans — no, let’s just rephrase that, Republican pundits — gave it weight,” said Meuser. The question, he added, is, “What’s the way you can say it without being offensive? … To me, there’s definitely a reasonable way of maintaining my pro-life position without being offensive to others.”
Other initiatives that Pennsylvania Republicans are embarking on in the wake of the 2022 midterms include establishing a vote-by-mail strategy.
After last year’s races, many Republicans in the state and nation came to the determination that their recent war against mail voting cost them. The state GOP is launching a mail-in ballot task force to look at the problem. “Most folks now on the Republican side recognize that if one party is voting for 50 days and the other party is voting for 13 hours, the party voting for 50 days is going to have a higher turnout,” said Andy Reilly, a Republican National Committee member in Pennsylvania who has also been tapped to sit on the task force. “We have to embrace it and convince the Republican voters that there’s integrity with the mail-in voting process, i.e. that their vote will count.”
Much more at the link.
