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Sure, but Republican voters are also probably not going to be equally motivated to turn out for any other candidate the way they are for Trump.
The thing is that bonus Trump voters in guaranteed red states aren’t worth anything, while less Biden voters in purple states are.
Boosting voter turnout in Wyoming or Arkansas is worthless for the GOP.
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Perhaps.
My impression is that Republicans are motivated by a sense of crisis around a pervasive culture war that seeps into every nook and cranny of life and lies behind every public and private institution. The election was stolen by a hundred different election officials and a thousand collaborators covering for them, teachers are transing your kids and teaching them to be Marxists, immigrants are pouring over the boarder and taking your government services, etc. A diffuse, broad crisis that requires decisive and far-reaching leadership to combat.
Whereas I think Democrats have very much focused their own sense of crisis around Trump specifically, claiming that he personally is a threat to democracy and decency and needs to be defeated at all costs.
My impression is that removing Trump from the equation dissipates the sense of crisis and urgency felt by the Democrats, but not that felt by the Republicans.
Republicans may not love the new nominee, but they'll be driven to vote for him out of the fear of the ongoing existential crisis anyway, in the same way that Democrats are historically unenthusiastic about Biden but are turning out anyway to vote against Trump.
I could of course be wrong, but that's my sense of the field.
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