Republicans shouldn’t count on “triggering libs” to be their only electoral strategy.

Democratic House leaders and current Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MA). Citation: Common Dreams

The 2016 and 2018 elections have been analyzed from nearly every angle imaginable. Pundits have moved beyond the easy estimations of a “blue wave” or the benefits of incumbency to look more closely at the relationship between the president’s voters and potential reasons for them to turn out in the 2018 midterms. Understanding this relationship often takes two forms.

The first, most popular among centrists and conservatives, is to look cultural and economic motivations. Trump voters feel disillusioned for one reason or another. Some pundits argue that economic anxiety, and the prospects of living in economically depressed areas outside of the country’s major urban centers, pushed individuals into Trump’s camp. Other researchers point to racial resentment as the overarching factor behind supporting Trump. “Economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment; rather, racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. We found … that racial resentment is the biggest predictor of white vulnerability among white millennials” argued political science researchers last year in the Washington Post. Since both of these factors are still present and exploited by Trump on a regular basis, they are seen as possible motivators for Republican voters in 2018 as well.

But another understanding, more popular on the left, argues that none of those traditional reasons for voting matter. Instead, Trump voters will turn out simply because of negative partisanship. They want to provoke “liberal tears” by voting for Trump and supporting his outrage-producing policies. In a recent profile of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, McKay Coppins suggested that “Miller represents a rising generation of conservatives for whom ‘melting the snowflakes’ and ‘triggering the libs’ are first principles. According to this theory, hatred for liberals will power Trump voters past any scandal or economic downturn that the country might face, and that motivation will lead to higher-than-normal Republican turnout in 2018. Jim Newell in Slate made the point in an article criticizing liberals for predicting the impending end of the Trump presidency. He wrote, “Expansive proof of decades of criminality could be the thing that flips Trump supporters. Or Trump supporters would continue to support him, because they like him, which is why they’re Trump supporters, and they know how much a second Trump term would trigger the libs.”

Is this an accurate representation of Republican voters? Will hatred of the other side really win the midterm elections?

Negative partisanship has certainly been a powerful force in American history since its founding. The beginning of factions in the early Republic joined the political motivation to achieve one’s policy goals with the added benefit of vanquishing one’s foes. Vitriol in political discourse contributed to this rise of negative partisanship. It was much easier for Jeffersonian Republicans to show up and vote against President Adams when he was a “hideous hermaphroditical character” rather than a patriotic hero of the Revolution with whose policies they disagreed. Negative partisanship became more powerful in the latter part of the 19th century. The major parties were converging on economic issues, but they differentiated themselves by representing loyalty to the two sides of the Civil War. This tactic was successful at turning out voters. Two of the five highest election turnouts in American history occurred in the 1880s, when the only economic difference between the parties was a half-hearted disagreement about tariffs.

Even though negative partisanship has undoubted power, it alone cannot save a floundering president or stop a successful one. Americans turn out to vote for candidates for a large number of reasons that have remained constant over the decades. Some voters turn out based on their affection for one particular candidate, who may be more attractive than the other or seem more affable on television. Other voters turn out in response to the circumstances of their lives, even if those circumstances lie completely outside of politicians’ control. Another group of voters turns out based on ideology, voting for the candidate that best fits their liberal, conservative, socialist, or libertarian worldviews. Reasons for voting may be flexible and may fluctuate with every election cycle, but they did not disappear simply because Donald Trump became president.

Both conservatives and liberals need to be aware of the limited power of partisan hatred. Conservatives must realize that hatred of liberals may turn a few Fox News-loving viewers out to the polls, but hatred alone cannot muster the thousands of voters in the dozens of close House races that they need to win in a poor midterm year. On the other hand, liberals need to tailor their electoral strategies to reasons for voting besides antipathy towards President Trump. They should focus on the damage caused by Trump’s trade wars, crawling wage growth, and the administration’s inability to reinvigorate the declining towns of the South and the Rust Belt. Portraying Trump as a fascist will drive some Democrats out to vote. But portraying Trump as a threat to American paychecks will drive out enough voters for Democrats to win.