Republicans suddenly think the economy's great and the election wasn't rigged

The vibes have officially shifted.

The economy Donald Trump said was broken? All it took was him winning, and consumer sentiment among Republicans soared.

Elections? Suddenly Republicans are on board with the reality that they’re secure. House Speaker Mike Johnson said he saw no evidence of fraud in the 2024 campaign.

And the media landscape? Viewership of Fox News has surged since Trump’s win despite his harsh criticism of the network in the run up to Nov. 5.

At the same time, Democrats’ sentiment of the economy — essentially how they view its overall health — dropped by 13 percent after Trump’s win. And viewership for liberal MSNBC has seen a downturn.

It’s a role reversal that, while heady for Republicans now, will quickly come with all the liabilities associated with incumbency. Republicans are betting they’re about to see further economic improvement, lower prices and the immigration crackdown Trump promised on the campaign trail. Democrats, meanwhile, have no more status quo to defend — and, like Republicans for the past several years, will be seeking to paint a dark portrait of the opposition party.

“For four years, Republicans felt as if they were living in an ‘I told you so,’ and everything that they said around Biden was a reality, whether it was his mental decline or the Biden-Harris policies for the past four years. They felt as if they were right across the board, and that the country was realizing that,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and appointee under Trump’s first administration. “Now Democrats are taking a very similar posture, certainly with a lot of the [Cabinet] picks coming out — saying, ‘We told you what he was going to be like.’”

It’s typical for the winning party to see a surge of optimism among its ranks. But pollsters saw the mood shift coming this year for another reason, too: Exit polls showed that voters wanted major change this election — and it was Trump who was ultimately seen as the change agent, as Vice President Kamala Harris struggled to distinguish herself from the Biden administration and the policies voters blamed for their current pocketbook challenges.

The economy is where these divides will be seen the most, and the gap between party sentiments is expected to widen further in the months ahead. It’s a trend that began in the final months before election day, when Republican voters were already expressing rosier outlooks as they anticipated a Trump victory, said Micah Roberts, a partner at Public Opinion Strategies who oversaw the economic questions in the bipartisan NBC and CNBC surveys.

“We’re going to see Republicans skyrocket to probably the most positive they’ve ever been about the future in the current state of the economy, and Democrats will kind of fall back down to some, much less rosy place,” Roberts said. “Especially when you have this trifecta win, attitudes about the economy are really viewed strongly through a partisan prism.”

The risk for Republicans is that the honeymoon period won’t last forever. With Trump in the White House and GOP control of the House and the Senate, Americans will be looking for a place to cast the blame if they don’t see the improvements they’re craving.

“The best thing Democrats have going for them is that they’re running against Republicans. And the best thing Republicans have going for them is that they’re running against Democrats,” Roberts said. “Once you’re in charge, you can’t control everything, and even the things that you can control, parties in power tend to overstep.”

That divide exists even within the Republican Party. Anti-Trump Republicans, who either voted for Harris or sat out the election altogether, are grappling with whether the more traditionalist, Ronald Reagan strain of the party is even worth fighting for anymore, and many of them have lost an appetite for the resistance-style efforts they launched during Trump’s first presidency.

“I think that people who have been opposing Trumpism have viewed this very existentially — not from a policy perspective, but from a character perspective, from the hope that we are a better people than this,” said Mike Madrid, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and a longtime GOP strategist. “At a certain point, you can compel people to speak to their better angels, but if they don't want to, you're never going to win that fight. We are not a better people. This is who we are.”

On the Democratic side, members have been so despondent about a second Trump victory — and, in particular, Trump’s resounding win of the popular vote — that the public reaction has been just a sliver of what it was to after his first win in 2016: no massive protests in major liberal cities or on college campuses and no major corporate denunciations of Trump. And they’re feeling even less hopeful than they were eight years ago about the future of the country.

“Because now it's very clear who he is. Like, ‘We don't care that he's a felon and we don't care that he's a rapist. We don't care that he's corrupt.’ Whereas before, the jury was a bit out, and now we know. And people are saying — like, literally by voting — they're saying, ‘Yeah, those things don't matter to me,’” said Vanessa Wruble, co-founder of the 2017 Women’s March. “This time around, there’s a kind of bewilderment. But if we're feeling bewildered, what it says is there's something essential we're missing.”

Some Democrats remain hopeful that their party will rebuild — and argue that the lack of a public backlash in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s election isn’t a bad thing as people process the results of the election. Indivisible, which sprung up in the wake of the 2016 election, released a 30-page guide focused on channeling despondency into action during a call this week that was attended by 40,000 people, and it has already signed up 8,000 people to facilitate community organizing meetings across the country.

“They’re pulling back from stuff that reminds them of 2017 to a certain extent, but they’re very much looking forward to pathways forward,” said Leah Greenberg, one of the group’s co-founders. “People are very sad. They’re very very sad at what has happened, but they also understood that this was a possibility in a way that nothing prepared people for in 2016. And they understand that we did not have a perfect democracy on Monday, and we did not have a perfect democracy on Wednesday. They understand this is a longer term fight.”

Indivisible, MoveOn, the Working Families Party and other progressive groups also hosted a post-election organizing call that was attended by more than 100,000 people. Swing Left, another organization that was birthed after Trump’s 2016 election, is hosting a grassroots organizing call next week to map out its road ahead. And Women’s March, under new leadership, is planning marches in Washington and across the country for Jan. 18, two days before the inauguration, with about 75,000 people already signed up to attend.

“After a global pandemic, multiple election cycles, and the disastrous Dobbs decision, we are in a completely new era of American politics. Trying to equate the response to Trump's win in 2016 versus now is an apples-to-oranges comparison,” said Rachel O'Leary Carmona, the executive director of Women's March. “Women’s March is one of many large organizations convening a People's March in January to demonstrate our power and continue to build a broad popular front of resistance.”

But Wruble, who left the organization amid infighting, won’t be there.

Reached Thursday evening, she was sitting with multiple parrots, hairless guinea pigs and a zebra at the animal and art sanctuary she founded. She’s sitting things out after years of divisions among progressive organizations that she said distracted from “prioritizing the real threat.”

“Maybe my story is an example of something that went wrong,” Wruble said.