The myth of the Trump-only voter

When no one votes Democrats win, redistricting a wash, 40% of young women would leave the U.S. if they could, scary AI progress, the rise of the long-range kicker

No. 383 | December 5th, 2025

🐘 The myth of the Trump-only voter

Readers will be shocked to learn that I think there’s a media narrative about recent elections that doesn’t get it exactly right.

This is the idea that Trump voters will only show up for Trump, and not for regular Republicans running in off-year elections.

I’ve covered the unfolding turnout problem for Republicans in depth. I wrote that the Virginia elections were consistent with 80% of Harris voters voting and 70% of Trump voters voting. In TN-7, I think this was 60% of Harris voters and between 45% and 50% of Trump voters — lower in the rurals, higher in the suburbs.

Turnout in deep-blue Nashville outpaced rural red areas in TN-7 — thanks to ChatGPT for making this chart off of a couple of screenshots of NYT election results

But this is also normal midterm turnout dynamics at play. The Virginia numbers were an exact mirror image of the 2021 turnout, where the pattern was almost exactly reversed from when it favored Republica…