The Winston Group’s David Winston writes in today’s Roll Call about the media narratives that “simply did not pan out, as the results and exit polls show.”
Pundits also argued that because the country was so polarized, there were no neutral voters; everyone leaned toward one party or the other. There was no true political center, independents weren’t really independent, and anyone following the election should use that lens if they wanted to understand it. Their conclusion: The key to this election wasn’t appealing to the middle; it was going to be turnout operations.
But if that were true, what happened to the vaunted Democratic Party get-out-the-vote effort? In this election, Democrats’ share of the electorate fell to a historic low, and they are now a smaller portion of the electorate than both Republicans and independents, according to the Edison exit polls.
Read the full piece here.