Donald Trump and the Parties: Impeachment, Pandemic, Protest, and Electoral Politics in 2020

During every administration from Harry Truman’s to Barak Obama’s the public’s judgment of the president’s character, commitments, and performance have shaped affect toward the president’s party and its other leaders, beliefs about where it stands on issues, assessments of its competence in managing domestic and foreign affairs, its drawing power on election day, and its appeal as an object of personal identification in both the short and long runs. Despite his bizarre and unorthodox presidency, Donald Trump is having a stronger impact on attitudes toward the parties—and that partisan priors are having a stronger impact on opinions of him—than of any of his post-war predecessors. This paper reviews a selection of the evidence for this conclusion and considers Trump’s past and prospective influence on the electoral fates of down-ballot Republican candidates and the future strength and composition of the Republican and Democratic coalitions.