Four days after the election, Lauren Boebert is still fighting for her seat in the US House of Representatives, and that says a lot about Tuesday’s midterms. The gun nut from Colorado is considered one of the craziest MPs in the Trump camp. The fact that she comfortably made her election in 2020 was read as a sign of the strength of Trump’s Maga movement.
This time Boebert shows the nation how much appeal Maga has lost in the meantime, why the expected red wave didn’t materialize. Since Tuesday, she has been in a head-to-head race with Adam Frisch, the Democratic candidate, in a district where the majority of voters are actually leaning towards the Republicans.
Because the results from the cities came first, Frisch quickly took the lead, which Boebert slowly equalized over the next few days with votes from the country. On Friday, Boebert was in the lead against Frisch with 162,040 votes, but their lead was just over 1,000 or 0.3 percent of the vote. It is unclear who will get the ballot papers that have not yet been counted, which should be less than 1 percent, across the finish line.
Boebert is not alone in her difficulties. While prominent Trump mouthpieces such as Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia and Matt Gaetz in Florida again achieved good results, the overall balance of the Maga candidates is very mixed. In Republican-dominated districts of the country, most of them easily prevailed on Tuesday. This is hardly surprising, given that the ranks within the party are closing again after the clashes in the primary elections, and the Republican base loyally votes for their party.
Great effort to no chance
In more balanced races, however, the Trump candidates had big problems. In Ohio, for example, JR Majewski generated a lot of noise about his campaign, but has now lost to Marcy Kaptur, who at 76 years of age and 39 years in office is now the longest-serving woman in US House history. Few Maga people have done as well as Jen Kiggans, who ousted a Democrat in Virginia. But Kiggans is not an extreme representative of Maga, even if she has refused to explicitly recognize Biden’s choice. Rather, she has focused her campaign in the more moderate style on the issues of schools, borders and security.
In democratic areas, the Maga representatives even had no chance at all, although a number of them were credited with surprising victories. The only exception is Neil Parrott, who may still get a seat in Maryland, but this can only be explained by the redivision of his district. Across the country, the Maga candidates won 170 offices by Friday, according to an evaluation of the Washington Post shows that focused on those Republicans who spread Trump’s election lies. This means that almost every second Maga candidate has lost.
In the House of Representatives, the so-called election deniers nevertheless represent a decisive power: more than two-thirds of the Republican deputies can be attributed to them. This does not bode well for the 2024 presidential elections. However, there is little fear that all these Republicans will hinder the orderly transfer of power. While some of them flatly disputed the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s election, others, like Jen Kiggans, have consistently dodged the question.
The Maga Power in the House
In any case, the Maga representatives should not be regarded as a monolithic bloc, least of all in other policy areas. While some Republicans want to cut aid to Ukraine, for example, it is questionable whether this position will find a majority within their group.
With the Republicans, not only is a power struggle at the top to be expected between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, but also a fight over the orientation of the parliamentary group in the House of Representatives. The narrower the majority that the Republicans will ultimately achieve in the House of Representatives, the less they can afford to have defectors in the vote – and the more often conflicts of direction are likely to break out. If the Maga representatives then use their power skillfully, they could even gain further influence in Congress. Kevin McCarthy, for example, who is eyeing the office of speaker and thus leader of the Republicans in the House, has already sharpened his position on Ukraine as a concession to the Maga group in the run-up to the election.
On Friday, the 211-seat Republican was on track to narrowly capture a 218-seat majority in the House of Representatives. The Democrats have secured 192 seats so far. It is still not known when all the results will be available, but it should take at least until next week. Tension in the Senate could even last until December 6, when a runoff election will take place there that could be decisive for control of the Senate.