Why Did Republicans Rack Up Wins Despite Trump's Loss?

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 12 November 2020

⏱️ 15 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives and could very well hold onto the Senate. That's despite Joe Biden's broad presidential win. We talk about a comparatively diverse GOP freshman class and other factors that could be behind their wins.

The episode: correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and reporter Danielle Kurtzleben.

Connect:
Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.
Email the show at [email protected].
Join the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.
Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.
Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.
Find and support your local public radio station.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey there, this is Savannah at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where I just handed in my race
0:05.0	ethnicity and politics exam, and I'm about to take my 25th self-administered COVID-19 test of the
0:11.7	semester. This podcast was recorded at... It is 205 Eastern on Thursday, November 12th.
0:18.8	Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I'll still be on campus for
0:23.3	the strangest senior year ever. All right, here's the show. That is an impressive amount of COVID test.
0:32.1	You know, I took a lot traveling with Joe Biden, and even I didn't take that many, so hats off,
0:37.4	noses off, hopefully they're all negative, and congrats on turning in that paper. She sounds like
0:43.2	an A student. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Scott Detra, I'm covering Joe Biden.
0:48.4	Susan Davis, I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Lias and National Political Correspondent.
0:52.8	So I'm glad you two are here because I want to sort out something that I've been confused by,
1:00.0	and I've been wanting to know more about. And that's the fact that even though President Trump lost
1:05.0	the election, Republicans gained seats in the House of Representatives, and they may very well
1:10.6	hold on to control of the U.S. Senate. So Sue, let's just start there. Why do we think that is,
1:15.7	specifically the House? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a wild election when you look at it. I mean,
1:20.2	Joe Biden essentially had a zero-cote tail effect down the ballot. And I've spent the past few days
1:25.9	talking to a lot of Republican candidates who won and party strategists, and they all seem to
1:31.0	agree on a couple of big themes. I think the first is they believe that they just had a better
1:35.3	recruitment class of candidates. And I think we'll talk about more of that later in the pod.
1:39.6	The other is messaging. You know, Republicans say the Democrats used an old playbook. They
1:44.1	revived the 2018 playbook, and they ran on this message of protecting preexisting conditions,
1:49.1	and that Donald Trump was a bad president. And they said it just didn't land. That that message
1:53.9	already saturated with all the voters it could, and it didn't persuade the ones that still needed
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.