What Went Down In Alaska And Wyoming’s Elections

Well, it’s interesting you bring up political dynasties, Meena.

Earlier this year, The New York Times’s David Leonhardt had an article on what we know about the Republicans, who like Cheney, are willing to publicly challenge Trump’s grip on the party. What Leonhardt found — aside from the number of critics being small — is that they tended to grow up around politics and stem from families that have operated at the highest levels of the GOP! So, in other words, the political dynasties you mentioned, in addition to, say, Mitt Romney and Larry Hogan.

Is it fair to say these are the only critics of Trump in the GOP? Or is this just one type of criticism of the former president?

With 12 percent of the expected vote now counted in the secretary of state’s race, Gray has jumped into the lead, 50 percent to 37 percent.

Should we talk about all the political dynasties on ballots today? It feels wild that they are still a thing.

In Wyoming, we can expect the end of the Cheneys’ two-generation dynasty (Rep. Liz Cheney’s father is, of course, former Vice President Dick Cheney. He also represented Wyoming in the House from 1979 to 1989.)

Then there’s Alaska. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski first came to Congress in 2002, when her father, then-Gov. Frank Murkowski, appointed her to replace him in the Senate. Gov. Murkowski lost his primary for reelection in 2006 to the then-mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin. Yes, that Sarah Palin. Palin is vying to replace the late Rep. Don Young in Alaska’s top-four open primary. Running against her is someone with another political last name in Alaska: Nick Begich III, a Republican from one of the state’s most well-known Democratic families. Nick Begich’s grandfather was Rep. Nick Begich, a Democrat who represented Alaska in the House in 1971 until disappearing during a flight from Anchorage to Juneau in 1972. Nick Begich III is also the nephew of state Sen. Tom Begich and former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, both Democrats.

We now have 14 percent of the expected vote in from the GOP primary for Wyoming’s At-Large District, and it’s looking very good for Hageman. She leads Cheney 65 percent to 30 percent. Now, I do think that margin will improve at least a little for Cheney, although it’s nigh impossible to see a path to victory. I say this because Cheney may do better in the more densely populated parts of Wyoming (relatively speaking here since it’s very rural). Cheney’s down about 9 points in Natrona County, home to Casper, which is the second-biggest vote producer, but down 44 to 61 points in the other two less populous counties that have reported, Sweetwater and Platte.

Those are great examples, Nathaniel. Take Kay Granger. Shortly after the election, when Trump was trying to hold onto power, she said it was time to “move on.” But … she hasn’t had much to say since. She obviously hasn’t endorsed Trump’s claims, but she also isn’t dwelling on it, either. Cheney, as we’ve laid out, has not avoided speaking candidly and repeatedly about Trump’s stolen-election claims.

If you listen to Trump or some of the election-denying candidates speak, you might think that the country wasn’t experiencing its worst inflation in 40 years and that it wasn’t the No. 1 issue to voters, Republicans, independents and Democrats alike. Voters care about a lot of things that aren’t the 2020 election, and if you want to appeal to the GOP, you can also talk about them: inflation, immigration, schooling, COVID-19, relations with China.

Yes, it’s also worth remembering that Cheney has also criticized her fellow Republicans for not standing up against Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, saying, “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.” It’s really an adversarial position against the rest of her party, too.

Looking back at our pro-democracy index from last year, it helps to not be up for election — like most senators who voted to impeach Trump — and to be running in a competitive seat, where perhaps GOP primary voters are more willing to give their member a pass because they know the representative needs to play to the middle more. This is speculative, to be clear. But in the House, most of the high-scoring Republicans have retired or lost renomination, except for some like Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in suburban Philadelphia and Rep. Don Bacon in Omaha.

So long as “pro-democracy” is politicized, it’s probably going to be a losing issue for Republican candidates. Currently, it’s an issue that is owned by Democrats, so embracing it as a Republican puts a target on your back, as my colleagues have already mentioned.

Trump’s endorsement! That’s probably something that hasn’t gotten enough coverage. Granted, Trump endorses a lot of incumbents, but it doesn’t fit neatly within the petty primary narrative that, I realize, I’m the only one foisting on readers at this point.

Sarah, I think a lot of it is how loud they have been about their faith in the 2020 election. Chuck Grassley, John Hoeven, Kay Granger and Mike Turner are just some of the names of Republicans in Congress who voted to certify the election and/or have acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden’s win — but they haven’t been shouting it from the rooftops. As a result, they’ve been able to stay on Trump’s good side. In fact, all four earned Trump’s endorsement in their primaries this year.

The biggest difference to me is how much other pro-democracy candidates really avoided dwelling on the issue. They didn’t make it a central part of their campaign (the way, perhaps, a capital-D Democratic candidate might). When looking for candidates positions, we often would find they only stated that they believed the election was legitimate when directly asked, and tended not to criticize Trump or fellow Republicans for questioning the election.

There does seem to be a lane — albeit a small one — for that latter group of Republicans in today’s political climate (think Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, for instance). I think what makes Cheney stand out is that she, in Trump’s eyes, has at least three strikes against her that these other Republicans don’t: She voted in favor of certifying the results of President Biden’s win in 2020, she voted to impeach Trump and has continually spoken negatively about Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. It’s like a smorgasbord of offenses against the leader of the GOP! And it’s hard to come back from that.

Earlier on the live blog, Kaleigh wrote about pro-democracy Republicans and how 11 percent of the GOP’s total nominees support the results from the 2020 election with an additional 11 percent accepting Biden’s win, but with some reservations, such as raising questions about election fraud. (To be clear, there are many nominees for whom we don’t have a clear stance one way or the other.)

But what do we know about the type of pro-democracy candidates who are successful in their renomination bids? How does Cheney not fit into this mold? Are there others aside from Cheney where this is the case?

Also, as Kaleigh and others have said before, Cheney’s role as vice chair in the Jan. 6 committee is probably more than criticism; it’s really much more high-profile and consequential.

In recent weeks, Democrats’ odds of keeping control of the Senate after the 2022 midterms have ticked up to around 60 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 midterm election forecast. In this installment of “Model Talk,” editor-in-chief Nate Silver and Galen Druke discuss the news events and polling that have contributed to that change. They also ask whether we should be skeptical of polls showing Democrats’ performing well in parts of the Midwest where polls have repeatedly underestimated Republicans.

Also we’re not dealing with Republicans tonight, we’re dealing with Wyoming Republicans. This is a state that went 70 percent for Trump in 2020. They might not be as open to accepting this kind of criticism from this member of their party.

I agree with Alex that I was struck by the pretty big difference between Democrats who thought the party could criticize its leaders and Republicans who thought that was OK. It’s a fairly big difference!

There is more recent data for this question, Sarah. In October, Pew asked Republicans and Democrats (and leaners) the same question on whether their respective party’s should accept elected officials who criticize their party’s leaders (i.e. Trump and Biden).

On the GOP side, a whopping 63 percent of Republicans said that the GOP shouldn’t be too (32 percent) or not at all (30 percent) accepting of elected officials who criticize Trump. Compare that, though, with 67 percent of Democrats who said their party should be open to officials who criticize Biden.

At least to me, these results say that there’s basically no political incentive for a Republican to cross Trump publicly — especially in the way Cheney did. Stepping out of the party line to criticize the former president, based on these results, means voters might not take too kindly to you.

In March 2021, 71 percent of Republicans told the Pew Research Center that the GOP should accept elected Republicans who disagree with the party on some issues. And 43 percent even said this of Republicans who openly criticize Trump. How has Cheney tested the boundaries of this limit? And does this apply to other Republicans beyond Cheney?

Cheney needs to do well enough with Republicans to be in a close race where crossover votes from Democrats who have re-registered as Republicans will matter. But from what polling we’ve seen in the lead-up to tonight, that just doesn’t seem to be happening.

To entertain this thought exercise, though, it is true that a fair number of registered Democrats seem to have switched, probably to the GOP to vote in this primary. Since March, the number of registered Democrats has fallen by 20 percent (dropping a bit more than 9,000 registrants), while the share of Republicans has gone up 10 percent (up about 19,000 registrants). That amount of change can’t possibly be down to just people moving or falling off of voter rolls, so clearly a fair number of Democrats have going to vote in this race as registered Republicans.

But here’s the thing — even back in March, 70 percent of registered voters in Wyoming were Republican and just 16 percent were Democratic. So again, Democrats won’t save Cheney unless she makes a bunch of progress with Republicans.

It’s early yet so I have to ask … what about Democrats in Wyoming? Will they be enough to help Cheney win the primary? Earlier this year, Geoffrey looked into why Cheney can’t count on Democrats helping her win the primary. Has the basic calculus changed here?

That’s probably not a great result for Nethercott, Jacob. I’d expect absentee votes to be relatively good for her. If she isn’t leading among them, she’s in trouble.

We’ve also got results in the premiere contest of the night: the GOP primary for secretary of state in Wyoming. Trump-endorsed state Rep. Chuck Gray, who says the 2020 election was fraudulent, is running dead even with state Sen. Tara Nethercott, who says the election was fair and secure. With about 5 percent of the vote in, Gray has 46.8 percent to Nethercott’s 44.8 percent.

In this clip from ABC News Live, Nathaniel explains why the highly anticipated races involving Cheney and Murkowski may be overhyped.

It’s also true that Republicans/Wyomingites had turned on Cheney before she became something of a star of the Jan. 6 hearings. According to the CES survey, which asks Americans if they approve of the job their congressperson is doing, late last year Cheney was the least popular representative in the country. Her disapproval rose from 26 percent at the end of 2020 to 72 percent at the end of 2021.

It seems like Cheney sees her future in politics as a Trump opponent. Not only did she recruit her dad to blast Trump for that ad that Sarah just posted, but also in her closing appeal to voters, she positions herself as fighting for democracy for all Americans, regardless of their ideology.

I agree with Jacob. Trump’s not above flip-flopping on people in either direction. He’s been happy to embrace Hageman despite her efforts to stop him becoming GOP nominee ahead of the 2016 election. But, yeah, Cheney is nothing if not defiant. If she was going to switch tactics, she’d have done so to save her seat, I imagine.

Though everyone is (understandably) focused on Wyoming’s House race, there’s another (more competitive!) race we’re watching tonight in the Equality State: the open Republican primary for secretary of state.

Secretary of state is a powerful office in Wyoming; in addition to overseeing elections, it’s first in line to the governorship (Wyoming has no lieutenant governor). And incumbent Ed Buchanan, who has defended the integrity of the 2020 election in Wyoming, is retiring. That means there’s now a good chance his replacement will be a pro-Trump election denier. State Rep. Chuck Gray, who believes the 2020 election was “illegitimate,” is the race’s top fundraiser and sports Trump’s endorsement as well.

That said, state Sen. Tara Nethercott isn’t too far behind Gray in the fundraising race, and she believes that the 2020 election in the state was fair and secure. She is also supported by much of the Wyoming GOP establishment. There’s also a third candidate in the race, Mark Armstrong, who has also called the 2020 election result into question, but he has not raised very much money.

I actually think it’s possible Cheney could win herself back into Trump’s good graces. He understands optics. Remember the infamous Romney dinner at Jean Georges after the 2016 election? To have Cheney, his most strident critic perhaps in either party, publicly bend the knee, would be quite a powerful image and underscore his total dominance over the party. But it’s obviously never going to happen.

Decision Desk HQ has the first results of the evening, and Hageman leads Cheney on the basis of absentee votes in two counties, 57 percent to 41 percent. In primary after primary this year, we’ve seen in-person votes be more pro-Trump than mail votes, so this is an ominous sign for Cheney. So ominous, in fact, that DDHQ has already called the race. (No other outlet has, though.)

It’s also worth pointing out that the person who replaced Cheney as the GOP conference chair is Rep. Elise Stefanik, someone who has updated her politics to keep up with this changing notion of what it means to be a Republican, which Nathaniel just mentioned.

We’ve seen this in primaries around the country this spring and summer: Even in cases where Republican members of Congress voted with Trump more than 90 percent of the time, they struggle to win reelection or they lose their primaries outright if they don’t support the falsehood that Trump had the 2020 presidential election stolen from him. More than that, the representatives who’ve gone further than that and voted for impeachment — or for the Jan. 6 committee — are really punished at the polls by Republican primary voters.

That’s a good point, Kaleigh. Cheney made her primary a referendum on Trump and his actions on Jan. 6. If she loses, we know her voters chose that over her.

I don’t think we can undersell the impact Cheney’s role on the Jan. 6 committee has had. It’s kept Trump’s attempts to hold onto power after the election in the public eye and put Cheney in the position of laying out the case against him. It’s notable that the only other Republican on the committee — Adam Kinzinger — isn’t seeking reelection.

Sarah, along with shifts within the GOP and changes in it what it means to be conservative, it may also be useful to place the modern GOP on two axes, where one measures something akin to DW-NOMINATE — traditional conservatism or liberalism on economic and social issues — and then another axis that measures attitudes toward democratic norms. Last year, our former data editor Laura Bronner put together a measure of how supportive — or not — Republican members of Congress were of important votes regarding democracy, such as the vote to certify the 2020 election results, which 147 GOP members in Congress voted against. Notably, Cheney had one of the highest pro-democracy scores among House Republicans, but her positions are at odds with the illiberal trends within her party.

Yes, Jacob. It wasn’t just that Cheney voted to impeach Trump. It’s that she continued to vocally oppose him. We’ve seen other Republicans, like Rep. Nancy Mace, who were once critical of Trump but who changed their tune, keep their political careers. Cheney probably won’t be so lucky.

Cheney went beyond simply refusing to accept Trump’s claims of a stolen election. She has been one of his most vocal critics within the Republican Party and hasn’t shied away from calling out exactly how dangerous she thinks his behavior is. Keep in mind that a majority of Republicans genuinely believe the 2020 election wasn’t legitimate: Polling over the last year consistently shows around 70 percent of Republican voters believe Biden was not legitimately elected. Add to that her work on the Jan. 6 committee, which has repeatedly come up from Wyoming voters when asked about why they’re unhappy with Cheney. They see her as a traitor, and that has nothing to do with voting track records and everything to do with party lines.

To me, the key period is between February 4, 2021 — when Cheney survived an ouster attempt by a 145-61 caucus vote — and May 12 — when the caucus didn’t even bother to count the votes and removed her by a voice vote. That three-month stretch was the GOP’s best opportunity to move on from Trump. When it became clear that wasn’t going to happen, Cheney’s position became untenable. And then, of course, her decision to an accept an appointment from Pelosi on the Jan. 6 committee was likely her crossing of the Rubicon.

This reminds me of a research paper by FiveThirtyEight contributors Dan Hopkins and Hans Noel, finding that, among Republican activists, the definition of “conservative” has changed from being conservative on policy to being pro-Trump. It’s his party now, and Cheney is not on board with that. Ergo, she no longer fits the modern definition of “conservative.”

The answer is in some ways simple: What it means to be a “conservative” has changed. Or perhaps, being “conservative” is no longer the key to being a Republican. Liz Cheney’s conservatism is rooted in the period from 1980 to 2012. From free trade and limited government to broad “moral authority,” it’s just a different party/ball game/conservatism now.

One of the biggest issues facing Cheney, it seems, is that the national party and voters were more than ready to move on from 2020 and the Jan. 6 insurrection. The GOP wanted to present a united front, and Cheney was still talking about both things — from a pretty big platform, I might add — and, as a result, the GOP wanted her out. One could argue that her determination to shame Trump and her refusal to follow Kevin McCarthy’s pleas to move on and display unity — became fundamental to her. But there came a time when certain people in her party simply got fed up.

Cheney is an old-school conservative. For instance, her DW-NOMINATE score, which uses voting records to quantify the ideology of every member of Congress, finds that she is 67 percent more conservative than the rest of the House. And according to FiveThirtyEight’s Trump Score, she voted in line with Trump’s position 93 percent of the time. Yet, in 2021, her Republican colleagues ousted her from leadership. How did Cheney become persona non grata among Republicans — both in Congress and in her home state?

As Nathaniel outlined earlier, it’s likely that Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican incumbent who accepts the legitimacy of the 2020 election, will lose her primary tonight to Harriet Hageman, a relative newcomer who does not. But that hasn’t exactly been the story of primary elections so far.

While it’s true that a striking number of election-denying Republican candidates have won their primaries, a good chunk of pro-democracy GOP candidates who have publicly stated that the election was legitimate have won their races, too. And often, other factors — like incumbency — played more of a role than a candidate’s views on 2020. We’ve tracked every Republican candidate’s position on the 2020 election and found that repeating Trump’s claims that the election was stolen is not a guaranteed formula for success in the primaries.

So far, of the 457 Republicans who have won their primaries for Senate, House, governor, state attorney general and secretary of state, 50 have accepted the legitimacy of the 2020 election without reservations — or 11 percent of total nominees. This includes nominees who made public comments acknowledging the legitimacy of Biden’s win, as well as members of Congress who voted to certify the 2020 results while not having much to say about the subject otherwise. An additional 51 Republicans (or 11 percent) who won their primaries so far accepted Biden’s win, with some reservations, such as raising questions about fraud. These nominees are from a pool of 1,735 total candidates, of whom 140 (8 percent) unreservedly acknowledged the legitimacy of Biden’s win, and an additional 103 have done so with reservations.

We’ve found in our research that these pro-democracy GOP nominees have been willing to take some form of a public position acknowledging the 2020 election was legitimate (as opposed to the many candidates who simply didn’t state a position one way or the other). But unlike Cheney, they often avoided dwelling on the topic and didn’t criticize fellow Republicans who have been sowing conspiracy theories of election fraud. Often, their stance was communicated through a single, brief public statement, like Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Colorado state senator who is the Republican nominee for the state’s 8th Congressional District, who said at a forum: “Joe Biden won the election.”

Others would frame their acceptance of the 2020 results as a constitutional matter, such as Rep. Ann Wagner, who won the GOP nomination to maintain her seat in Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District. “While I may not like the outcome of the election, that does not mean I can, nor should I, try to usurp the powers of the individual States of our republic,” Wagner said in a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “To allow Congress to alter the decided outcome of the election would irreparably damage our system of government and defy the Constitution.”

By looking at these positions, it’s obvious how Cheney is a bit of an outlier. Unlike her fellow pro-democracy Republicans, Cheney didn’t simply vote to certify the results or make a terse admission that, yes, Biden did in fact win. Cheney is one of the few true Trump critics in the Republican Party, vocally condemning his attempts to retain power after losing in 2020 and calling him a “dangerous and irrational man” who is a “domestic threat” to the country.

Moreover, as the vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — an attack provoked by Trump’s lies about a stolen election — Cheney has played a prominent role in revealing how widespread Trump’s efforts to hold onto power were, and the ramifications of those efforts. As the numbers show, had Cheney simply acknowledged Biden’s win, she may have had better chances heading into the primary, but her decision to relentlessly stand up to Trump has placed a target on her back that she’s unlikely to shake off.

Two establishment Republicans who stood up to Trump’s false claims of election fraud are facing the voters on Tuesday. Can they beat their Trump-backed challengers?

A year ago, the Republican primary for Wyoming’s at-large congressional district looked like it was going to be one of the must-watch races of 2022. Now, though, it looks pretty anticlimactic: According to the most recent independent poll, from the University of Wyoming, attorney Harriet Hageman leads incumbent Rep. Liz Cheney 57 percent to 28 percent.

Primary polls can be unreliable, but the reality is that Cheney made herself persona non grata within the GOP after voting to impeach Trump and serving on the Jan. 6 committee. At first, it looked like she might be able to squeak by because there were so many other candidates in the primary against her, splitting the pro-Trump vote. But late last year Trump waded in and endorsed Hageman, and three of Cheney’s other opponents soon dropped out.

Hageman will surely be a more rabble-rousing representative than Cheney. A fiercely anti-regulation natural-resources attorney, she has already developed a reputation for being the bane of Wyoming environmentalists’ existence. And, of course, she will be a loyal Trump vote in the House; for example, she said at a recent event, “Absolutely the election was rigged. It was rigged to make sure that President Trump could not get reelected.”

Tonight, there is one race that everyone will be talking about: Wyoming’s at-large House race. And Rep. Liz Cheney is in trouble. Polls show her 20-plus percentage points behind her challenger, Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman.

How did the embodiment of Republican politics — Cheney is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — end up in this position?

The answer is relatively simple: She built a reputation as Trump’s top critic within the GOP in a state that voted for him by 43 points in 2020. And the voters at home are not happy.

It’s a fate that’s befallen other Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. (Geoffrey will have more on this later tonight.) But as Kaleigh will cover in greater detail in just a moment, not all pro-democracy Republicans have met a similar outcome. In fact, of all the Republican nominees who have won their primaries so far, 22 percent have accepted the results of the 2020 election in some fashion.

But notably, these Republicans largely flew under the radar. They didn’t mount a public campaign against Trump or their fellow colleagues, as Cheney did. In other words, despite Republican voters saying they’re OK with elected officials disagreeing with the party, there are clearly limitations when it comes to disagreement.

Polls in Alaska don’t fully close until 1 a.m. Eastern, so we’ll be back online tomorrow morning to talk over the results there. As always, thanks for following along, and if you have any questions, ping us @538politics and I’ll try to get your question answered on the live blog!