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How did they do it? And why were so many independent analysts so wrong? I put those questions to Parker Poling, the executive director of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the party's House campaign arm.

Cillizza: Every political handicapper predicted losses for House Republicans on Tuesday. That didn't happen. Were you surprised? Why or why not?

Poling: We were surprised but not shocked. Basing your informed opinions on public polls or data that is selectively shared with you is a fundamentally flawed way to handicap, but we'll see what accountability measures exist for that.

Clearly the Democrat conference is starting their own autopsy to try to figure out where their data operation went wrong. Our polling and modeled data of absentee and early vote returns said we realistically had a path to pick up seats. At our final staff meeting before the election, our consensus was that we would net +4 seats. Our data showed that we were within striking distance in nearly every competitive race, with most of them trending in our direction. The President closed strong in our battleground districts and our candidates had their own unique appeal that won late deciding voters.

Cillizza: Did you see a single message or issue break through with voters in swing districts? Was there an attack that particularly hurt Democrats?

Poling: If you put all of the messages into a single broad category, it would be the extreme leftward lurch of the Democrat Party.

That was messaged in different ways in different districts. In New York state, bail reform was extremely unpopular and meshed well with defund the police, so a public safety angle was the most effective. In some districts, it was "Medicare for All" and the loss of private health insurance. In a number of suburban districts, we talked about pocketbook issues like higher taxes under Biden. And in other districts, we focused on the extremism of the "Green New Deal." And in south Florida especially, it was socialism more broadly. All of those messages fit within the rubric of extremism.

Cillizza: President Trump was a major anchor for House Republicans in the suburbs in the 2018 midterms. Why wasn't he this time?

Poling: I disagree with the premise of your question.

Many of President Trump's voters (8.5 million, to be more exact) stayed home in 2018. Those are by and large votes for House Republicans as well, which would have more than kept us in the majority. Yes, base Democrats in the midterms were motivated by animus toward the President to turn out, but Democrat candidates ran and won because they had no voting record that was tied to Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the far left of their party. Their candidates got to portray themselves as whatever they wanted and that helped them win independent and persuadable voters.

When the President's supporters didn't match base Democrats turnout and they won independents, it was easy to see how they won in both Trump territory and districts Hillary Clinton carried in 2016. They showed up again in 2020 and independents broke to our candidates when these Democrats exposed their ties to the extreme of their party.

Cillizza: Polling was, again, way off -- particularly at the House district level. Why? And how do you fix it?

Poling: Not all polling was wrong. There are polls either the NRCC, our candidates or allied groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund released publicly in every one of our pickup districts that showed where we would win.

I think there ought to be a real reckoning in the media and among the prognosticators about why they believed Democrat partisan polling more than Republican partisan polling. In general, most of our competitive races were within the margin of error. Democrats kept saying they were beating some of our incumbents, and our data was not showing that.

Cillizza: Finish this sentence: "The biggest lesson for House Republicans out of the 2020 election was ________." Now, explain.

Poling: "The biggest lesson for House Republicans out of the 2020 election was this is a center-right country."

The American people, and particularly swing voters, want to elect representatives who reflect the values this country was founded on. They will reject radical propositions like defunding the police and destroying the American economy. They want to safely reopen the country. Those are the values reflected by House Republicans and our candidates.

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How House Republicans shocked the political world - CNN

Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, said that President Trump was wrong to say the election was rigged, corrupt or stolen and that doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions.

The Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, a state that could send Mr. Biden to the White House but where Mr. Trump has baselessly claimed there had been fraud, said, The presidents allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated.

And Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, another Republican, wrote that there was no defense for Mr. Trumps comments undermining our democratic process.

A growing number of Republicans were speaking out against Mr. Trumps false allegations that the election had been rigged against him, especially after he delivered a rambling jeremiad filled with conspiracy theories in the White House briefing room on Thursday.

I saw the presidents speech last night, Mr. Toomey said Friday morning. It was very hard to watch.

A few hours later, Mr. Romney, a semi-frequent Trump critic, wrote on Twitter that while the president was within his rights to request recounts and to call out irregularities where evidence exists, his statements were reckless.

Some Trump allies did rally around the president. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina appeared on Fox News on Thursday to defend Mr. Trumps claims of fraud. I dont trust Philadelphia, he said, referring to the city where Mr. Biden has gotten more than 80 percent of the vote. He offered no evidence for his statement.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas also appeared on the network and accused Democrats of trying to steal the election. He also offered no evidence to back his assertion.

Many prominent Republican lawmakers remained silent, declining to cross Mr. Trump over the results of an election that was slipping away from the incumbent.

At a news conference on Thursday night in Atlanta with Donald Trump Jr., in which Republican supporters chanted stop the steal, Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia congressman who just lost a bid for Senate, suggested without evidence that something was awry in the election. Transparency only seems to be good when the Democrats like the transparency, and the media are willing to go along with it, he said.

And Tommy Tuberville, a senator-elect from Alabama and a former Auburn University football coach, echoed the president on Twitter.

The election results are out of control, Mr. Tuberville wrote. Its like the whistle has blown, the game is over, and the players have gone home, but the referees are suddenly adding touchdowns to the other teams side of the scoreboard.

Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, at first sidestepped questions on Wednesday about whether he agreed with Mr. Trump that election officials should halt their tabulations.

But by Thursday evening, he grew more vocal, writing in a tweet: Republicans will not be silenced. We demand transparency. We demand accuracy. And we demand that the legal votes be protected.

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More Republicans assail Trumps false claims of election fraud, while others defend them. - The New York Times

President Trump won this election, Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California and the top Republican leader in the House, falsely told Laura Ingraham on Fox Thursday night.

Far from over. Republicans will not back down from this battle," McCarthy declared via Twitter on Friday.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close Trump ally and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, defended and even echoed Trumps unsupported claims that Democrats and their allies had rigged the election against the president.

Philadelphia elections are crooked as a snake, Graham told Fox News personality Sean Hannity. Youre talking about a lot of dead people voting. Youre talking about in Nevada a lot of people voting who are not legal residents." Graham offered no evidence to support those claims.

Graham, who just won his own reelection victory, also told Hannity that everything should be on the table when the host suggested that GOP-controlled state legislatures in Pennsylvania and elsewhere might invalidate the election results over corruption concerns.

Other prominent GOP officials raised their voices to refute directly the steady drumbeat of misinformation coming from Trump, his children, and his campaign.

For example, Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, pointed to Trumps contradictory calls to stop counting ballots in states where hes ahead and keep counting in states where hes behind.

You cant stop the count in one state and decide you want the count to continue in another state, Blunt told reporters. That might be how youd like to see the system work, but thats not how the system works.

And Senator Pat Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, perhaps the most critical battleground in the presidential race and a target of many of Trumps unfounded claims of malfeasance, called the presidents Thursday night speech very disturbing" in an interview Friday with CBS News.

Theres simply no evidence anyone has shown me of any widespread corruption or fraud," said Toomey, who has announced he wont seek reelection in 2022. The presidents speech last night was very disturbing to me because he made very, very serious allegations without any evidence to support it.

But most Republicans appear to be hewing to their well-worn habit of tiptoeing around the controversy at hand, expressing any disagreement with the president obliquely for example, by not even mentioning Trump in their responses.

Heres how this must work in our great country: Every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally-submitted ballots must not. All sides must get to observe the process. And the courts are here to apply the laws & resolve disputes," tweeted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has otherwise declined to publicly address Trumps baseless claims of electoral wrongdoing. Thats how Americans' votes decide the result.

States have the authority to determine the specific rules of elections. Every valid vote under a states law should be counted. Allegations of irregularities can be adjudicated by the courts. We must all respect the outcome of elections," Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said in a statement released Friday morning.

The continued reluctance of many Republican officials to renounce Trump more directly may reflect their view that even if he loses, the president will remain a powerful force in the Republican Party.

Trump performed much better than the polls and many pundits had predicted, garnering the second-largest share of the popular vote in history, after Biden. And he continues to command the loyalty of tens of millions of voters across the country.

Congressional Republicans also defied expectations, picking up seats in the House and very likely holding on to control of the Senate, helped in many cases by the surge of Trump voters to the polls.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who just won a House race in Georgia and who has expressed support for the conspiracy theory QAnon, went after one of her future GOP colleagues on Twitter Friday for daring to even raise the prospect that Trump might lose.

The time to STAND UP for @realDonaldTrump is RIGHT NOW! Republicans cant back down. This loser mindset is how the Democrats win," she wrote, replying to a tweet from Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Republican from Texas.

"President Trump has fought for us, we have to fight for him. We wont forget. Trust me, she vowed.

Among those willing to condemn Trumps comments, many of the harshest rebukes came from a handful of regular Trump critics, including Mitt Romney, the Republican partys 2012 presidential nominee.

Romney, now a senator from Utah, said Trump was within his rights to request recounts and call for investigations where evidence of irregularities exist.

But Trump "is wrong to say the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen, Romney said on Twitter. Trumps claim damages the cause of freedom here and around the world ... and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions, he said.

The presidents comments that theres some national conspiracy around this arent supported by any facts, added Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, a Republican who did not vote for Trump in either 2016 or 2020. And theyre damaging to democracy. They cheapen all of those of us who serve in public life and who ran, and who were either elected or defeated based on the will of the people.

A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence is not only dangerous & wrong, it undermines the very foundation this nation was built upon, Representative Will Hurd, a Texas Republican set to retire in January, tweeted.

Some Republicans seemed to be recalibrating their reactions as Trumps claims drew more and more scrutiny.

Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, initially tweeted out a neutral statement Thursday about ignoring overheated rhetoric."

On Friday his office shared a more direct response. Voter fraud is a poison to self-government, so these are major allegations. If the Presidents legal team has real evidence, they need to present it immediately to both the public and the courts," Sasse said. "In the meantime, all legal votes need to be counted according to relevant state laws. This is our American system and it works.

Even Graham, who on Thursday night said he had given $500,000 to Trumps legal efforts, tempered his stance somewhat Friday.

President Trumps team is going to have a chance to make a case regarding voting irregularities, Graham said in a video message The Hill posted. They deserve a chance to make that case. Im going to stand with President Trump. If a Democrat were doing this, itd be cheered on.

This story includes material from the Associated Press.

Victoria McGrane can be reached at victoria.mcgrane@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @vgmac. David Abel can be reached at david.abel@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @davabel.

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Republicans face their biggest loyalty test of all - The Boston Globe

WASHINGTON (AP) Some Republican lawmakers on Thursday criticized President Donald Trumps unsupported claim that Democrats are trying to steal the election, saying Trumps comments undermine the U.S. political process and the bedrock notion that all Americans should have their vote counted.

Trump, who has complained for weeks about mail-in ballots, escalated his allegations late Thursday, saying at the White House that the ballot-counting process is unfair and corrupt. Trump did not back up his claims with any details or evidence, and state and federal officials have not reported any instances of widespread voter fraud.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, tweeted that the presidents claims of fraud are getting insane. If Trump has legit concerns about fraud, they need to be based on evidence and taken to court, Kinzinger said, adding, STOP Spreading debunked misinformation.

Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan, a potential 2024 presidential hopeful who has often criticized Trump, said unequivocally: There is no defense for the Presidents comments tonight undermining our Democratic process. America is counting the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before.

No election or person is more important than our Democracy, Hogan said on Twitter.

Other criticism, though less direct, came from members of Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who spoke at a recent Trump campaign rally, said in a tweet that if any candidate believes a state is violating election laws they have a right to challenge it in court & produce evidence in support of their claims.

Rubio said earlier: Taking days to count legally cast votes is NOT fraud. And court challenges to votes cast after the legal voting deadline is NOT suppression.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah., the partys presidential nominee in 2012, sought to provide a reassuring note. Counting votes is often long and frustrating, Romney said.

If any irregularities are alleged, they will be investigated and ultimately resolved in the courts, Romney tweeted. Have faith in democracy, our Constitution and the American people.

The comments by the Republican lawmakers and other GOP leaders were rare, public rebukes of Trump, who has demanded and generally received loyalty from fellow Republicans throughout his four-year term. Most in the GOP take pains to avoid directly criticizing Trump, even when they find his conduct unhelpful or offensive to their values and goals.

Trumps tweets earlier Thursday declaring victory and calling for officials to STOP THE COUNT were a test of how strongly he can keep Republicans in line as he tries to challenge the voting process in court.

Before Trumps speech in the White House briefing room, several Republicans challenged his attempts to halt vote-counting in Pennsylvania and other battleground states.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Trump ally who won reelection Tuesday in Kentucky, told reporters that claiming youve won the election is different from finishing the counting. His office declined to comment after Trumps address Thursday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, urged everyone to be patient as results come in. It is critical that we give election officials time to complete their jobs, and that we ensure all lawfully cast ballots are allowed and counted, she said in a statement.

Rep. Will Hurd, a Texas Republican who did not seek reelection, called Trumps comments about corruption dangerous and wrong. Trumps remarks undermine the U.S. political process and the very foundation this nation was built upon, Hurd said. Every American should have his or her vote counted.

While Biden was close Thursday to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, it was unclear when a national winner would be determined after a long, bitter campaign dominated by the coronavirus pandemic and its effects on Americans and the national economy.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told The Associated Press earlier Thursday he hopes Republicans step up their response to Trumps unsubstantiated claims. While Republicans may want to give Trump time to make his arguments, when it becomes clear that claims are without basis, My hope is that Republicans will put public and private pressure on him, Murphy said.

But one of Trumps top congressional supporters said he supports efforts to question the vote counting process and is donating money to shore up legal challenges. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Fox News Thursday night he would donate $500,000 to the presidents legal defense fund and urged people to go to the Trump campaigns website to pitch in.

Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Virginia Republican who lost a GOP primary this year, addressed Trump directly on Twitter: Count every vote, yes, but stop the Bravo Sierra, Mr. President, and respect the democratic process that makes America great. Riggleman, a former Air Force officer, was using a military euphemism for falsehoods.

In remarks Wednesday at the White House, Trump baselessly claimed victory and alleged major fraud on our nation as state election officials continued counting ballots amid a huge increase in voter turnout.

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump ally who is an analyst for ABC News, said there was no basis for Trumps argument. Christie called Trumps attack on the integrity of the election a bad strategic decision and a bad political decision, and its not the kind of decision you would expect someone to make ... who holds the position he holds.

Trumps family, never shy about expressing their support, took to Twitter to question why GOP lawmakers were not rushing to the presidents defense. Where are Republicans! Have some backbone. Fight against this fraud. Our voters will never forget you if your sheep! Trumps son Eric tweeted.

Some GOP governors responded. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis urged the president to Fight on, exhaust all options. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that Trump was fighting rigged election systems.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said states administer U.S. elections, not the federal government. We should respect that process and ensure that all ballots cast in accordance with state laws are counted. Its that simple, Portman said in a statement.

Its best for everyone to step back from the spin and allow the vote counters to do their job, added Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Meg Kinnard in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.

Excerpt from:
Some in GOP break with Trump over baseless vote-fraud claims - The Associated Press

Following an election mired in chaos and confusion, this at least is clear: Donald Trumps political career will soon be coming to an end, but Trumpism his inchoate brand of conservative populism is here to stay.

The narrative would surely be different had Trump lost in the resounding landslide foreseen by professional pundits and pollsters. In that universe, the president and everything he represents would have been repudiated, creating an immense temptation for the Republican party to revert back to its lily-white, elite-driven comfort zone.

Instead, Trump defied expectations by winning the largest share of non-white voters of any Republican since 1960. This ranged from modest gains among African American men, to major swings in party preference within working-class Latino communities and not just in Miami-Dade, where Cuban-American turnout helped secure Florida for Trump while unseating two Democratic incumbents. In Starr county, Texas, for example, Biden beat Trump by five points down from Hillary Clintons 60 a 55-point swing in a border town thats 95% Hispanic and which has a median income of only $17,000.

The Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a rising star within the GOPs populist faction, was quick to offer his interpretation on Twitter. Republicans in Washington are going to have a very hard time processing this, he wrote. But the future is clear: we must be a working class party, not a Wall Street party.

The Florida senator Marco Rubio concurred. #Florida & the Rio Grande Valley showed the future of the GOP: A party built on a multi-ethnic multi-racial coalition of working AMERICANS.

Ironically enough, the primary demographic Trump lost relative to 2016 was non-college-educated white men. A key factor seems to have been the Biden campaigns strategic positioning on issues that resonate with rust belt voters from a Buy America plan so supercharged that it made Steve Bannon blush, to tax incentives for manufacturers that reshore. Thus even in defeat, the ideas behind Trumpism were on some level victorious.

All that said, the gap between Trumpism in theory and practice remains enormous. Despite campaigning on a rejection of conservative economic orthodoxies in 2016, once in office Trump pursued an agenda of tax cuts and deregulation that was almost comically conventional. And by the final days of the 2020 campaign, Trump scarcely talked about policy at all, much less his core issues of trade and immigration.

Trumps narrow loss thus marks the beginning of an internal struggle for the soul of American conservatism

Trumps narrow loss thus marks the beginning of an internal struggle for the soul of American conservatism. Many in the Republican party long for a return to the socially moderate, fiscal conservatism of a bygone era. Others, like Hawley and Rubio, are calling upon their peers to embrace the working-class realignment that Trump grasped at an intuitive level, even as he failed in execution.

Between deindustrialization and the steady exodus of college-educated voters to the Democratic party, the Republican partys shift toward the working class has been decades in the making. A similar trend can be seen elsewhere, too, from Boris Johnsons blue-collar supporters, to the unabashedly pro-union platform of Erin OToole, the newly minted leader of the Conservative party of Canada.

The main difference in the US case has been the failure, if not outright resistance, of the Republican partys political machinery to adapt in real time. Indeed, for all of Trumps capacity for disruption, he was no match against the institutional edifice of the so-called conservative movement the dozens of free-market thinktanks, law firms and leadership organizations that were called upon to staff his administration and define his agenda.

So while the notion of the Republican party becoming a multiethnic working-class coalition may seem farcical now, the longer-term trend speaks for itself. The only question is whether the partys elite will continue to deny this reality, or take the next four years to rebuild and realign conservative institutions to better reflect the actual interests of their rank and file.

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Democrats beware: the Republicans will soon be the party of the working class - The Guardian