How Trump Led GOP From 2021 Despair to 2024 Triumph
Byron York
The Republican Party was in desperate straits in the weeks following the 2012 presidential election. There were several reasons. One, its losing nominee, Mitt Romney, was a poor candidate whom a significant part of the GOP base, and an even more significant part of the overall electorate, did not want. Two, its opponent, President Barack Obama, appeared to have found the secret to assembling a permanent winning coalition. And three, Republican leaders worried, sometimes publicly and sometimes privately, that the party was on the wrong side of some key issues, especially immigration.
Just four years later, with Donald Trump's out-of-the-blue 2016 victory, everything changed. Republicans had a strong candidate. The Obama coalition was crumbling. And the GOP, under Trump, began to change positions on some important issues.
Four years after that, even though Trump lost to Joe Biden, some of the trends that favored Republicans continued. And then came 2024, when the weakening of the Democratic Party accelerated under Biden and then Kamala Harris, and Trump won a historic comeback victory.
A new report shows this extraordinary change -- from Republican despair in 2012 to triumph in 2024. It is not told from a GOP perspective; the report is by the progressive Democratic data-crunching firm Catalist, which sought to understand Democratic losses. But whatever the perspective, the analysts examined voter file information, precinct-level data, voting history, polls and other numbers to come up with the most comprehensive picture yet of who voted how in 2024.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2025/06/04/columnistsbyronyork20250603how-trump-led-gop-from-2012-despair-to-2024-triumph-n2658136
