Trump can’t escape blame for Bucks Republican rout

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke for many of his fellow Republicans when he shrugged off last month’s rout that kept them out of the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s mansions. 

Blue states held to form and stayed Democratic. Big deal. 

“There’s no surprises,” the Louisianan said. “What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue. We all saw that coming. And no one should read too much into last night’s election results. Off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come. That’s what history teaches us.”

The Federalist’s M.D. Kittle dealt his MAGA readers an equally strong dose of what-can-ya-do copium. 

“Which voters are reacting [to President Donald Trump’s young second term]?” he asked. “Very motivated, angry Trump-hating Democrats — in very blue states. A good many of them that would like to see the president dead.”

What, then, about Bucks County? Or Clearfield County? Or lots of places across Pennsylvania and the nation that are not “very blue?”

Despite Donald Trump’s narrow win in Bucks last year, local Republicans got decisively hammered on November 4. Democrats took five row offices from GOP incumbents, winning both the sheriff and district attorney positions in the same year for the first time ever. With those spoils came four county judgeships, all on top of the county commissioners majority Democrats have enjoyed since 2019. 

And Republicans faltered not only in purple regions but also in red ones. Trump received 75% of the vote in Clearfield County in 2024; yet, a month ago, that central-Pennsylvania locale chose Democrat Josh Maines for common pleas judge over Republican Ryan P. Sayers.

While Johnson hesitates to take his party’s nationwide bloodbath as an augury of what’s to come, it sure feels like a reprise of what’s come already. Over 51,000 Bucks County Democrats showed up to vote for Joe Khan for district attorney in the May 20 primary, compared with under 37,000 who voted then for Republican incumbent Jen Schorn. The other four row-office primaries had similarly wide spreads. Five months later, Schorn and her compatriots got the thrashing the May numbers suggested they would. 

This jibes with a clear trend of Republican failure well beyond Bucks County. In March, Lancaster County GOP Commissioner Josh Parsons lost a special State Senate election to Democrat James Malone in a district Trump took by fifteen points thirteen months ago. 

Why? Local Republicans’ conservative policy decisions don’t appear to have been fatal. For all the contention Republican Sheriff Fred Harran stirred with his short-lived partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he did nearly as well against his Democratic opponent Danny Ceisler as Schorn did against Khan. None of the other three Bucks Republicans seeking reelection to their row offices cultivated especially right-wing reputations, but all fared slightly worse against their Democratic rivals than Harran and the comparably tough-on-crime Schorn fared against theirs. 

Bucks County Republicans suffered not from poor candidate quality but from bad brand health — and they have Trump to blame for it.

While Trump was marginally popular soon after winning a second term last year, he can’t make that boast anymore. The RealClearPolitics polling aggregator determined his net job approval was over six points in late January; by Election Day 2025, that figure had sunk to -11%. At this writing, it’s -12.4%. 

His disciples have taken every electoral disappointment as a cue to cheer his job performance and insist he hasn’t hurt his party brethren. “Tuesday’s election, contrary to the left and their corporate media partners, wasn’t an early verdict on Republican President Donald Trump or a bellwether of next year’s midterms,” Kittle argued. Upon Parsons’s loss seven months earlier, his Federalist colleague Beth Brelje declared even more outlandishly that the “rush to cite Trump-hatred as the cause isn’t based in reality.”

Even when Trump fanatics like Cygnal Polling & Analytics President Brent Buchanan admit the president has alienated both critics and crucial members of his own base, they reaffirm an article of faith: Don’t cross Trump, even when he’s broadly detested.

“Anger remains the most potent driver of turnout and anger was definitely on the side of Democrats…,” Buchanan said on the conservative Morning Wire podcast. “Most of the vote that occurred in this November election was against Donald Trump, not for the Democrats…. The coalition that elected Donald Trump, a lot of them have fallen off because they don’t feel that that’s been delivered on for them.” 

His solution? Republicans need to embrace policy changes that make American life more affordable. That’s step one. Step two? 

“They’re also gonna have to embrace Donald Trump, ‘cause listen: Democrats hate Donald Trump and they think he’s on the ballot in terms of whatever Republican candidate is there to bubble in,” he said. “And so Republicans need to embrace Donald Trump — Republican candidates need to embrace Donald Trump — because, if not, they’re gonna be seen as being disloyal to him.” 

In case you missed it the first three times, he’s saying Republicans need to embrace Donald Trump. Yet his logic relies on a well-regarded Trump with coattails that his allies can ride to victory. A commander-in-chief with double-digit negativity has no coattails. 

Many Republicans protest that they don’t trust polls taken by the likes of Yahoo News, NPR, or The Economist, all of which find Trump deeply unpopular. These voters can foster all the legacy-media distrust they like: Rasmussen Reports, InsiderAdvantage, The Daily Mail, and RMG Research, who largely exist to vaunt Trump’s popularity, all now report that Trump’s reputation is well underwater. Even MAGA devotees’ beloved FOX News polls Trump’s popularity at -17%.

Those committed to sustaining Trump’s intraparty clout will recall that the party in the White House tends to suffer electorally in non-presidential years. True, but not so severely as Republicans suffered in 2025 — losing in numerous solid red election districts and leaving Bucks County Republicans with no row office seats for the first time in recent memory. 

Next year, Bucks Republicans will attempt to reelect Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, a candidate known for keeping the president at a distance. If he doesn’t change that, he’ll disappoint his partisan base before next November. 

But not in November.

Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence.