How frontline Republicans talk to swing voters

What to do when you don't have an affirmative governing agenda

Last week, we looked at the ad campaigns from frontline Democratic incumbents, who universally staked out popular positions on issues like cost of living, healthcare, abortion, and border security. Their strategic goal was clear: persuade swing voters, rather than mobilize certain segments of their base with transformative policy proposals.

Now, we’re going to take a look at their Republican counterparts.

We know that Trump, in his more strategically sound moments, is able to win persuadable voters by hammering his message on border policy and cost of living. And I’m not spoiling the rest of the piece by admitting that frontline Republicans are concentrating their messaging campaigns on those two issues, as well.

But are they breaking away from Trump’s combative style, and focusing their campaigns on a more constructive, forward-looking agenda for the country? Or are they just holding tight to the reins of the MAGA movement, white-knuckling all the way to Election Day?

Watching the ads and reading the campaign websites from all 20 of these members of Congress, I found a variety of messaging strategies. Some lean harder toward vilifying their opponents, while others move towards the middle and highlight their bipartisan bonafides. A few even sounded a bit like Democrats on issues like healthcare policy and reproductive rights.

The frontlines of the Republican Party can get a bit strange. But let’s head out there and see what these incumbents have to say.

Why so negative?

To analyze the Republican rhetoric, I followed the exact same process as last week; I watched all their ads and plugged the transcriptions into a word cloud generator. But it’s also important to note that Republican candidates are at a considerable cash disadvantage, so they’ve aired fewer advertisements thus far.

The overwhelming focus on border policy and the cost of living was not surprising. Like their Democratic counterparts, they’re concentrating on issues that resonate with voters and where they’ve built greater trust.

What I found most notable was how many of these GOP incumbents leaned heavily into negative advertising. Even on issues like immigration, where they do have a position that is widely liked by swing voters, the prevailing instinct was to attack their opponent on the issue and tie them to the unpopular Biden-Harris administration. Democrats, conversely, never mentioned Trump in any of their advertisements, despite his own similar levels of unpopularity.

Here are some examples of these Republican attacks:

• Congressman Anthony D’Esposito recently flipped a district that covers part of Long Island. He ran soundbites from Harris on issues like police reform and the Columbia protests and ended his ad by trying to link his Democratic opponent to them: “The facts are clear. Gillen and Harris are weak, failed, and dangerously liberal.”

• In a suburban congressional district in Michigan, Congressman John James has an ad that highlights the Biden-Harris administration’s policy on gas-powered cars, and then says, “Their policies would cause thousands of Michigan workers to be laid off, and those jobs would never return. They're environmental extremists. Marlinga and Harris must be stopped.”

Twisting your opponent’s position for attack ad fodder is certainly something Democrats do, too. However, the Republican’s disproportionate reliance on the tactic reflects some of the differences in how incumbent Democrats and incumbent Republicans are running this election cycle. Despite holding a majority in the House, Republican members of Congress are effectively in the opposition, because there’s a Democrat in the White House. So they’re able to rail against Biden and Harris’s policies and tie their opponent to a relatively unpopular administration.

But we shouldn’t discount the other reason why these attack ads are more prevalent — many of these incumbent Republicans don’t seem to have an affirmative governing agenda for the country. While a few candidates pay lip service to “cutting taxes” and “protecting American jobs,” the fact of the matter is that if they take the White House and Congress in November, their top economic priority will be extending Trump’s tax cuts. And it’s really hard to message that legislative accomplishment because it disproportionately benefited the wealthy and was largely unpopular with voters. Trump’s other central economic policy, a blanket 10 percent tariff, was also not featured in any of their messaging. Unsurprisingly, that’s because that law is also received poorly by persuadable voters.

This is not an argument for Republicans to lean harder into positive messaging. It’s still likely that they’ll be able to ride the electorate’s thermostatic shift away from Democrats to victory in November. But it does reflect the reality that Republicans are not running on an affirmative governing agenda that is actually focused on solving problems.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule, and some Republicans did run ads highlighting their bipartisanship and effectiveness as a legislator. For example, Nebraska Representative Don Bacon has a message that begins, “Here we go again. Some extremists say I’m too MAGA. Other extremists say I’m not MAGA enough. Here’s the truth. I’ve been rated the most effective and most bipartisan Republican in Congress.”¹

That is persuasion politics at its finest. In a district that has been won by Biden and Trump, Bacon is stiff arming the more radical part of his base, while simultaneously intercepting any potential attempt from Democrats to tie him to it.

Republicans lost healthcare, but they won immigration

Let’s have a moment of silence for a longtime fixture of American politics that has now fully departed from us: the Obamacare attack ad.

Across several election cycles, Republicans collectively spent $450 million on ads that attacked President Obama’s signature achievement. But the issue is now entirely absent from any GOP messaging. And when pressed on the topic by their opponents, some frontline Republicans turn their heels and run away from any pledge to repeal. One of them, New York Congressman Mike Lawler, recently pledged he was “NOT working to overturn the Affordable Care Act.”

That’s not to say that Republicans won’t chip away at the law if they take control of government in 2024. But it does demonstrate the transient nature of certain political messages. And it’s particularly interesting that when frontline Republicans do make the rare choice to discuss healthcare, it’s by highlighting their support of more Democratic coded policies, like capping prescription drug costs and protecting Medicare.

Here’s an ad from a Republican representative from California: “Mike Garcia is the combat fighter pilot who flew overseas to protect our way of life. Now he has a new mission, protecting our Social Security and Medicare, and lowering the cost of our prescriptions.”

That’s a Republican who ran that ad!

The majority of the time, though, frontline Republicans just refuse to bring up healthcare policy at all. During Tuesday’s debate, Trump famously said he “had concept of a plan,” to replace the Affordable Care Act. But this is actually something that tracks for his fellow down-ballot Republicans. Healthcare policy remains one of the top issues in the 2024 election, and there isn’t an affirmative or even definitively Republican stance on how to lower costs. All those years of Obamacare attack ads, and it ended up being the biggest waste of $450 million since Netflix bought the Knives Out sequels.

While Republicans have clearly lost health care policy, they’ve won the battle over immigration. Back in 2022, the GOP swamped their opponents with ads on the subject. When frontline Democrats responded, it was generally by talking about their support for border security and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Today, immigration has become a more salient issue. And while swing race Democrats are still supportive of a bipartisan pathway to citizenship, they’re now more proactively running ads highlighting their support for border security and preventing the spread of fentanyl. The tactics are clear: They don’t want persuadable voters to think Republicans are the only party concerned about border policy.

The first rule of Republican abortion policy…

While frontline Democrats have moderated and made tougher border policy one of their top issues this cycle, Republicans have not followed suit on abortion rights.

Many of these candidates have clear pro-life track records, which they don't want to highlight in an election climate where pro-choice politics are more salient than ever. And unlike immigration, where Democratic candidates have more leniency to support popular tough border policy rhetoric while also still supporting the traditional party position on a pathway to citizenship, Republican abortion politics are trickier. Candidates have to answer for the fact that the party appointed justices who overturned Roe V. Wade and is now imposing draconian abortion bans across the country. They’re focused on avoiding the issue outright.

There are exceptions to the rule. California Representative Michelle Steele only has one ad, and it’s focused entirely on her support for IVF. She ends the message by saying, “Protecting women is a campaign issue. For me, there's nothing more important.” Rather than highlighting her previous support for the “Life at Conception Act,” Representative Steele is attempting, without taking an actual stance, to communicate to undecided voters that she’s a moderate on abortion.

New York Congressman Anthony D'Esposito used even stronger language. In a recent ad, he says, “I protected women from violence. I will always support them and the decisions they make. And for the record, I'd never vote for a national abortion ban. Ever.” This is less equivocal than D’Esposito been in the past. In an interview during his previous campaign, he said he would not support a national abortion ban, then added that he he would likely support a ban at 15 weeks.

Even with an entirely controlled Republican government, it’s unlikely an abortion ban will ever be signed into law because of a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. But it’s still possible they carve out an exception to the filibuster, and if it makes it through the House, it’ll pass because of the support of frontline Republicans who refused to discuss it during the election season.

1. I omitted those two mentions of the word “extremist” from the word cloud, since they were used in a different context.