This is the least likely outcome. Voters are more like fans of a sports team. They stick with the team whether or not they're doing well or making good or bad decisions. My brother would stay an Eagles fan even if they lost every game they played and hired software engineers instead of football players to play.
There are people who consider themselves 4th generation Republicans. It's passed down through their family like their religion.
When (not if) the economy craters, each team's news bubble will spin it how they like, and ultimately both teams will keep doing the same things and voting the same way for the foreseeable future.
> My brother would stay an Eagles fan even if they lost every game they played
Are you sure? People often claim this, but don't follow through. There's even an expression, "fair weather fan".
It's true some people seem to support some political parties beyond all reason. But to keep the support through personal hardship is different, and hasn't been tested as often. Worldwide, nothing particular to US.
Check out the Cleveland Browns. They have packed crowds, endless merchandise sales, and full-throated support of their team even in light of gross mismanagement, sexual abusers, and more losses than wins.
That story applies to both sides of the aisle in US Government. The battle is for the 1/3 that doesn't vote and the sliver of folks who switch back and forth.
I don't have to look up their attendance to tell you that there are a lot of die hard fans. Look at any major sports team that is losing and you will still see a lot of fans at the game. I'd expect a 50k seat stadium to have 20k fans even when there is no possibility of making the playoffs and every seat full when they are likely to win. That is for any sport, football because they play so few games is likely to be closer to selling out even when the team is losing just because you if you can get in you go.
Just fair weather fans exist. They are probably a majority. The minority that is die hard fans are still significant though.
If it was just politics, I'd agree with you. And I hate to be the "but this time it's different" guy, but I really think it is different this time. Trump is more of a religious figure than a politician. His fans literally (in the literal meaning of the word literally) worship him, and he can do no wrong in their eyes. People have made him their entire personality. My wife's church sometimes spends more time talking about Trump than Jesus. In a religious context, personal hardship just strengthens their resolve and convinces them they're being persecuted for Knowing The Truth, just like debunking a conspiracy theory only serves to further convince the conspiracy theorist.
America is getting less and less involved with traditional organized religion, and I honestly think this personality cult is taking a lot of its place.
And there are people who love to use the term RINO who belong to what is essentially a re-badged Dixiecrat Party. Trent Lott, at the time head of the Republican Senate caucus badly embarrassed himself by letting people hear him say that Strom Thurmond was right in 1948.
There's a reason why Communist revolutions had a vanguard and political prisons.
It wasn't because they're ontologically evil. It's because order is a very delicate thing. As we've seen, it's incredibly easy to espouse reactionary sentiments and get a lot of people supporting things out of misplaced fear.
If for example you're trying to build a social/political project based on dialectical materialism, a particularly enigmatic liar is like a fire in a barn. You can't "Marketplace of ideas" your way out of a liar who serves to benefit off their lies.
So what do you do? You throw them in the gulag, shoot em, put them to work, put them into reeducation. One liar isn't worth sacrificing the project as a whole.
Cuba reached near 100% literacy, eradicated parasites in children, and took the mob bosses who ran the country out of power. Of course they had to show no mercy to the bay-of-pigs types. The people who benefited when children had feet full of worms and the laborers couldn't read. They were a fire hazard.
Good point. Less enthusiastic Trump voters may not vote for a Democrat, but they might also sit out a midterm election. Even diehard Eagles fans probably attend fewer games during a losing year.
Even with sports teams it's only the most hardcore fans who keep coming to games after years of losing. Try buying NBA tickets for a successful team vs a losing one.
> My brother would stay an Eagles fan even if they lost every game they played
Sure, but if the Eagles lose every single game, it doesn't materially impact your brother.
Imagine if the size of your tax return was determined by the win rate of your selected football team and I suspect you'd have a lot less loyalty to losers.
This is not every voter. For sure, there is the "4th generation Republican" or the "vote blue no matter who" crowd. But ~40 percent of the electorate considers themselves independent. I can speak from experience having folks who were registered GOP up until 2016, and then who started voting Democrat or third-party out of utter disgust with Trump.
That will only intensify if his policies go and tube the economy; the reason he got re-elected was because enough people wanted the 2019 economy back and thought his policies would do it better than Harris's.
There are people who consider themselves 4th generation Republicans. It's passed down through their family like their religion.
When (not if) the economy craters, each team's news bubble will spin it how they like, and ultimately both teams will keep doing the same things and voting the same way for the foreseeable future.