Lauren Witzke Is (Probably) Going To Lose

On Tuesday, the America First crowd had their second victory of the summer. After losing with (among others) Steve King, Kris Kobach, and Jeff Sessions, they have managed to win primaries with Laura Loomer in Florida and now Lauren Witzke is Delaware.

I have been following Witzke’s campaign for a few months now, and I want to say that, despite my disagreements with her on almost everything, I do believe she is really trying to do good in the world. Besides, who can’t relate to someone who put this on the biography page of her website:

She is a young, passionate conservative who spent several years working in the pharmaceutical industry. Lauren unwittingly participated in the pharmaceutical industries agenda which led to the nationwide opioid addiction crisis. Ironically, she found herself hopelessly addicted as well, and even worked for drug cartel families and illicit organized crime gangs from Detroit.

However, while political commentators have backed away from predictions, (understandably so after what they predicted the 2016 election to look like) I still like making a good one every now and again, and I simply do not believe Witzke is going to unseat Senator Chris Coons in November.

As it stands, Delaware is a Moderate Democrat stronghold. Senator Coons’s seat even used to belong to a rather famous Blue Dog, Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden. Delaware has also not elected a Republican to the Senate since 1994, in the form of Moderate Republican William Roth, who served five terms in the Senate. Coons actually beat him in 2000 by a margin of twelve points, further turning Delaware as a Blue State.

Now do not get me wrong, states can change their allegiance overtime. Anyone who follows my Twitter knows that Texas was considered a Democratic stronghold really up until the Clinton Administration, and they weren’t the hardcore Republican state we know today until a former Texas Governor ran for President in 2000. (A lot seems to have changed in 2000, it seems.) So, can Witzke break the long standing tradition of Delaware going blue? While it is still too early to say for sure, I personally doubt it.

For the sake of argument, we’ll ignore all the highly unpopular aspects of her platform (I doubt the average citizen of Delaware wants to end no fault divorce) and instead just look at how the people are responding to her specifically.

On Tuesday, Witzke won her primary against James DeMartino with 57% of the vote. A fourteen point lead is quite impressive, and certainly makes her an important challenger supported by the Republican Party. However, in 2014 Chris Coons ran against Kevin Wade, who won his primary by fifty points! Then, Coons defeated him in the general with a thirteen point lead over Wade.

Even ignoring what the average Delaware voter could learn about her that would turn them off (her connections to Q-Anon for example, a movement which is highly unpopular), Witzke is simply not showing the support she would need to get Coons come November. As of writing this, of the eight different polls taken between 8/17/2020–9/8/2020, only Politico has Delaware at anything less than a safe state for Coons. And even then, they still have Coons up, just slightly less than all the other polling agencies.

No matter how someone looks at it, it seems to be Witzke’s race to lose.