Republicans Are Starting to Ask a New Question: Do They Need to Be More Like Trump to Win?

The president-elect outperformed Republicans across the country this year. “Donald Trump is a super candidate and is finally maybe getting recognition for that,” one GOP strategist said.

Donald Trump

Evan Vucci/AP

There’s at least one thing almost every Republican candidate who ran this year had in common: They got fewer votes than Donald Trump.

In states across the country, the president-elect performed better than Republican candidates running for Congress and other statewide positions, often exceeding their support by enough votes to make the difference between victory and defeat. Trump did so much better, in fact, that he scored a decisive victory in the presidential race even as Republicans made significant but still relatively modest gains in the Senate and little new headway in the House.

The over-performance was a reversal from his two previous presidential runs, when Trump frequently received fewer votes than GOP candidates running down the ballot. And it raises a provocative question for a party that has spent much of the last decade trying to carve out ways to differentiate itself from its polarizing leader: Should Republican candidates in future elections try to be more like Donald Trump?