My friend Marty wrote me this morning saying he was trying to puzzle out the implications of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death for the presidential election. Will Democrats be more motivated to vote? Will it boost or diminish Republican turnout?
There’s no question that many Democrats were energized by the controversy about filling the Ginsberg seat after the way Mitch McConnell denied Merrick Garland a hearing in 2016. The evidence for that is the huge increase in contributions to Biden’s campaign after RBG died. And it’s not unreasonable to assume that energy could translate into higher Democratic turnout, boosting not only the Biden/Harris ticket, but also Democratic challengers to incumbent Republican senators in states like North Carolina, where Cal Cunningham is in a close race with Senator Thom Tillis.
The effect on the Republican side is not as clear to me. It doesn’t seem likely that people who support Trump will now be significantly more inclined to go to the polls than they were before Ginsberg’s death. As Marty notes, some conservatives may feel less urgency about electing Trump now that they know they’ll have a 6-to-3 majority on the court.
But the kerfuffle about Ginsberg’s seat may remind some Republicans why they voted for Trump in the first place, and it could help Trump divert attention from his mishandling of the pandemic.
On the other hand, there may be some moderate Republicans who don’t like Trump but would have held their noses and voted for him only because they wanted to ensure that he, rather than Joe Biden, got to pick Ginsberg’s replacement. (Even if she hadn’t died when she did, it was clear she wasn’t going to remain on the court for another four years.) Those voters may now feel more comfortable staying home on November 3, or even voting for Biden.
Marty suggested that if enough Republican senators had indicated they wouldn’t vote to confirm a Trump nominee this close to the election, thereby deferring a decision until next year and putting an open Supreme Court seat at stake on November 3, many more Republicans might have been motivated to vote. Perhaps that added support could even have been enough to help Trump win. It would be ironic if he loses due to the Republicans’ decision to confirm his nomination to the court, though of course we’ll never know.