Republicans are terrified about turnout in the November elections, as they watch the backlash erupting after Donald Trump was caught on tape bragging about groping women and making other unwanted sexual advances a decade ago.

While GOP party leaders and elected officials began abandoning Trump in droves Friday and Saturday, Republican strategists also worried that a similar reaction among the party rank and file may condemn battleground GOP senators and House members to a down-ballot wipeout in a month, if large numbers of their base voters simply stay home out of disgust with Trump instead of voting down the ticket.


“The party should be terrified of turnout problems among 'establishment' Republicans and voters who are not tuned into down-ballot races,” said one national Republican strategist. “This a serious, serious problem.”

"My greatest concern is turnout, and my biggest challenge is Donald Trump,” said another GOP consultant working on a swing-state Senate race.

Another national Republican strategist — who, even before Trump’s comments, described GOP hopes of holding the Senate as “in the ICU” after his lackluster performance during and since the first presidential debate — said turnout was now the primary worry for the rest of the Republican Party.

Searching for a silver lining, the strategist also suggested at least Republicans had an opportunity to jump off a sinking ship.

“People who needed separation can get separation right now,” the strategist said. “I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing for [New Hampshire Sen.] Kelly Ayotte,” who announced Saturday that she will not vote for Trump and has been running ahead of Trump in public polls.

But Democratic campaigns will continue to link Trump and other Republicans, including Ayotte, who has long said she would “support” but not “endorse” Trump and was the first Republican senator to break with Trump since Friday. Ayotte’s opponent, Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, has already been running TV ads attacking Ayotte for saying she believed Trump could “absolutely” be a role model for children — a comment that Ayotte walked back hours after she uttered it in a recent debate.

And there remains the deep concern among Republicans that for every Hillary Clinton or third-party presidential voter battleground-race GOP incumbents are trying to attract, a usually reliable Republican voter may drop out of the electorate altogether. It puts a heavy burden on GOP Senate campaigns and other groups to run get-out-the-vote and other activities that are usually the province of a well-funded presidential nominee.

Republican-aligned outside groups have already been wary about base turnout and its effect on congressional campaigns. The Koch network, which has stayed out of the 2016 presidential race, decided this summer to focus its late-game field efforts on turning out Republican base voters in key Senate states.

That is a significant shift from 2012, when the group targeted swing voters with its door-to-door campaign, Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said in an interview Thursday, before Trump’s latest controversy.

“There is a segment of the standard conservative Republican presidential-year base, there’s danger of disaffection and of turnout being down,” Phillips said, noting that many incumbent senators are still be a mystery to some voters and may not be capable of driving voter turnout by themselves. “So we’re going to have a much dramatically greater share of our effort be toward these folks.”

AFP and other groups in the Koch network have focused in on 4.8 million voters who they believe are certain to back GOP Senate candidates in key swing states — if they turn up to vote, that is. Phillips described the voters as “more suburban or exurban than rural, more white-collar, more female, more college-educated.”

Those are exactly the cohorts that Trump has most turned off so far this election, and the latest blow-up can only exacerbate them, Republican strategists said. In internal poll after poll of suburban House districts this summer and fall, both parties have shown Trump to be especially weak in well-educated suburban House seats, often ones where Mitt Romney performed well in 2012.

At least 11 Republicans in competitive House races said by Saturday afternoon that they won’t vote for Trump, and several of them — including Reps. Scott Garrett of New Jersey and Barbara Comstock of Virginia — are also calling on him to resign as the GOP nominee.

Democrats vowed to continue tying down-ballot Republicans to Trump.

“To be sure, more House Republicans will desperately attempt to peel away from Donald Trump in the coming days, but voters will see this for what it is: a craven act of self-preservation with Election Day fast-approaching,” said DCCC spokeswoman Meredith Kelly in a statement, which echoed calls from other Democratic campaigns and groups Saturday. "And it will not work.”

Individual Republican Senate campaigns have already stepped up their own field operations this year in response to what they’ve described as weak efforts from Trump and the national party. A fourth GOP strategist, who is intimately involved in key Senate races, said anger at the Republican National Committee for mishandling the ground game and the presidential nomination was boiling over.

“Thanks RNC, for nominating Trump and not having a ground game in any of these key states,” the strategist said, summing up Senate campaigns’ view of their national committee.

Republicans in Nevada have attempted to shore up ground game operations for Rep. Joe Heck, who was facing a steep disadvantage against retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s famed turnout machine.

“The data and GOTV field program from Heck’s team rivals what a presidential campaign would execute in Nevada, but it has to as there is no effort from the Trump campaign,” said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster working on the Heck race. “This is a Senate campaign run at a presidential level.”

“There’s no sign here that the Trump campaign has any bit of a ground game” in New Hampshire, said Fergus Cullen, a former state GOP chairman, putting more pressure on Ayotte’s campaign to both persuade swing voters and make sure the Republican base votes there.

In Ohio, GOP Sen. Rob Portman started building his own voter turnout machine at the start of 2015 in anticipation of a tough reelection campaign and been as successful as any Senate candidate in distancing himself from Trump. But Trump’s latest comment could exacerbate existing voter turnout issues, Ohio Republican consultant Mark Weaver said.

Many voters were already turned off by Clinton, Weaver said, and “that, combined with the latest Trump stupidity will encourage many Ohio voters to stay home or skip the presidential race altogether and just vote down-ballot.”