Former President Donald Trump gets a lot of press for wading into both federal and state elections and proclaiming his favored candidates. Of particular importance are the primary elections in which he endorsed a candidate he views as sufficiently “America first.” He does this in order to influence which candidates win Republican primaries and – therefore – ultimately take various offices, stacking America’s Republican electeds with an army of Trump loyalists. Over the course of his presidency, he endorsed hundreds of candidates, and in 2022, he’s continued to do the same.

When viewed as a strict binary of whether or not the candidate Trump endorsed won the primary, his record is impressive.. But he’s been accused of deliberately padding his numbers. In 2020, FiveThirtyEight analyzed Trump’s endorsements for that cycle and found that Trump’s supposed 98% win rate was a bit of an overstatement considering how many of the endorsements he made were noncompetitive. For example, of the 111 endorsements Trump made up to the end of August for the 2020 election, 21 candidates were unopposed in their primaries and another 67 were incumbents (who almost always win renomination).

Essentially, Trump was endorsing candidates he (and anyone else paying attention to the races and polling) already knew would probably win. This made his success rate look unusually good, even though almost all of these races were landslides in favor of the candidates he picked. “In some races, Trump endorsed extremely late in the race — sometimes even the day before the primary — which could be more about trying to run up his win rate than making a major impact on the race,” noted FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich and Meredith Conroy. 

In 2022, by contrast, he’s shot a little looser – trying to boost some candidates who were polling even with their competitors or backing candidates with questionable electability long before the primary dates. This has hurt his record and CNN has even reported that Trump may begin to shirk making as many endorsements given some of 2022’s muddled results. Let’s look a little deeper at his 2022 record.

Governors, Senators, and Representatives, Oh My!

Though Trump has made around 200 endorsements for various offices across the nation for 2022 races, what we really care about are races that have already occurred (primaries and special elections whose results are known), and for high-level offices such as governors, senators, and representatives. Here are the key endorsements made by Trump that fit these qualifications:

Governors

In Texas, Trump endorsed incumbent Greg Abbott nearly a year before the primary; Abbott won the primary with a lead of over 50% over the runner-up. But, up north in Nebraska, the former president endorsed Charles Herbster, who lost the primary to Jim Pillen by 4%. Better news for Trump in Pennsylvania, where his endorsee, State Doug Mastriano, got more than 23% of the vote over the runner-up (though Trump’s endorsement came relatively late, after it was clear Mastriano was the frontrunner). However, in Idaho, Trump awkwardly endorsed Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin over sitting governor Brad Little. Little ended up getting 20% more than his deputy (who will, fortunately for Little, not be in the running for lieutenant governor in 2022… that’d be uncomfortable).

That makes for a 50% win rate, no better than if Trump were aimlessly flipping a coin. And while he gambled on his endorsements in Nebraska and Idaho to his record’s disservice, in Pennsylvania he made his announcement late enough to have a strong hunch for who would win. His endorsement in Texas may have been relatively uncompetitive but he made it a year out – give the guy some credit for his foresight in endorsing a popular incumbent!

Senators

In North Carolina, Trump endorsed Congressman Ted Budd back in 2021, who triumphed in the May 2022 primary by well over 30% over the runner-up. This was nonetheless a sizable recovery for Budd who had straggled behind former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory for much of the prior year. In not-quite-neighboring Kentucky, the former president endorsed incumbent Rand Paul, who received 86% of the vote in his state’s primary. Out west in Idaho, he endorsed incumbent Mike Crapo, who also won the primary by nearly 60% over the runner-up. 

In Ohio, Trump really did take a risk in the primary for the open Senate seat, and threw his last-month-of-the-race endorsement to author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance who had been trailing former Ohio state treasurer (and two-time prior Senate candidate) Josh Mandel. This proved successful, as Vance’s numbers jumped dramatically post-Trump endorsement and he carried the race (though he only got 32%) by over 9% over Mandel.

But Trump’s record in Pennsylvania is a bit more dubious. At first, he endorsed Sean Parnell, who withdrew from the primary after he lost a custody battle following his wife’s accusations of abuse. So, that’s a loss… except Trump then endorsed television host Mehmet Oz, who – though he slightly leads the vote count a week after the election – is practically tied with David McCormick and is not headed for a clear cut victory once the recount is done. It’s hard to say if Trump’s endorsement did much for Oz, considering the strong challenge from former George W. Bush administration official David McCormick and far-right author Kathy Barnette; though it seems fair to call this a wash when it comes to Trump’s endorsement record, considering Trump’s support did not seem to comfortably throw any candidate past the post.

Ignoring the unknown results of the Pennsylvania primary (and the fact Trump endorsed someone else in that race first), Trump’s senatorial primary record is 100% in 2022, but the only really impressive and demonstrably impactful endorsements were in North Carolina and Ohio. Kentucky and Idaho were not serious primaries and both involved incumbent senators, so this is yet another example of Trump gladhanding his allies and padding his numbers.

Representatives

Trump has made dozens of endorsements in the lower chamber. As of May 21, Trump endorsed 56 congressional candidates whose primary elections have since been held – and all but one won their primary, a win rate of just over 98%. But this overwhelming record mistakes the forest for the trees: many of these races were not particularly competitive, though Trump’s endorsement mattered in some high profile ones.

Let’s start with the only one he “lost”, that being his endorsement of the embattled, controversial, and outright bizarre center of attention candidate that is North Carolina Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn. Cawthorn was always a liability for Republicans, as he’s been the subject of far more national attention than your average freshman congressman generally is. This put presumptive Republican House Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy in an awkward spot, as he’s struggled to keep his caucus together while members like Cawthorn or Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene make public spectacles of some of the least popular elements of the party. Cawthorn’s loss was still somewhat of an upset – there had been no poll showing Cawthorn in anything but the lead up to election day, and the fact that Trump put his seal of approval on Cawthorn and continued to stand by him despite his scandals certainly gave him a leg up. But ultimately, state senator Chuck Edwards, who had the backing of Senator Thom Tillis and a number of high profile North Carolina state legislators, carried the vote with 33% to Cawthorn’s 32%. A narrow loss, but a dent in Trump’s record nonetheless, and a testament to the degree that individual candidates matter over blind loyalty.

Another high profile race was in an incumbent vs. incumbent primary in West Virginia. As the Mountain State lost a seat in reapportionment after the 2020 census, Republicans Alex Mooney and David McKinley were forced into a new district, and ran against each other to represent West Virginia in the House. Trump endorsed Mooney for no other apparent reason other than McKinley’s votes to support President Biden’s infrastructure bill and creating a committee to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol. But it worked – though McKinley was ahead in many polls in late 2021 (and had represented most of the district for over a decade), Trump’s endorsement in mid-November appeared to be the turning point as Mooney soared ahead and won almost 20% more of the primary vote earlier in May.

Across many other congressional primaries, Trump’s endorsement pretty handily cleared the field. Take former Trump White House aide Max Miller, who Trump endorsed early on for the seventh district of Ohio, leading incumbent Bob Gibbs to ultimately decide not to run for reelection (though this was also due to a chaotic redistrict that left Gibbs with a small share of his current district). And in Ohio’s 13th district, Trump’s support behind former “Miss Ohio USA” Madison Gesiotto proved handy in a narrow victory over more moderate attorney Greg Wheeler.

Looking Ahead

A more thorough look at Trump’s endorsements in 2022 points to two conclusions. The first is that Trump’s sway takes the second bench to powerful statewide forces. Trump’s letdowns in two of the four governors races where he’s made a pick so far are testament to this. He’s not particularly effective at curtailing more moderate, statewide politicians. State and local races are often one step removed from national polarization (though less and less so), and so more moderate and pragmatic candidates have succeeded despite how red or blue the state may seem (especially if they faced controversial or unpopular opponents). This is good news for incumbent Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who have surged as respectable favorites despite Trump’s endorsees seeking to oust them. 

The second conclusion is that the Trump endorsements that do matter most are those on the margins and in races where many voters are tuned out. Claims of his prolific win rate may be overblown considering how many people he endorses face little to no competition, but in competitive races, it seems likely that he influenced the race dramatically. If two Republican candidates are running against each other in a primary and are in striking distance of each other, whoever Trump throws his name behind has pretty routinely come out on top barring the odd exception.

The irony if he truly reevaluates making as many and as risky endorsements going forward is that this withdraws him from where he matters most for Republicans seeking the nomination. Incumbent senators facing little primary challenge like Paul and Crapo didn’t really need Trump’s help at all and his endorsement counted for very little. But candidates in close races like Oz, Mooney, and Cawthorn really did stand to gain from the former president’s endorsement. When you throw your name behind a candidate, Trump should understand the risk: many candidates could ultimately lose. But that’s where endorsements also carry the most value, as the slim numbers of undecided voters need a signal from those they trust (and for many of them, that’s the former president). 

After all, the only endorsements that matter are the ones that change the outcome. If Trump really wants to impact elections and signal who his chosen Republicans are, he should stop wasting his time on endorsements for bigwig loyalists who face little competition, and start focusing on smaller races with no clear frontrunner. If Trump showcases the degree to which his endorsement matters in competitive races, he will have the most value for his party, even if his win rate goes down.