Trump commands historic attention for a former president. It could hurt the GOP.

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But even as we stand more than six months under Joe Biden’s administration, the President is fighting for attention with his predecessor, Donald Trump, to a degree not seen in recent history. The impact of this dynamic could raise expectations about the midterm elections.

Mentioning the news about the cable was one of the reasons Biden and Trump won their respective nominations before becoming president. In the month of July, Biden and Trump were running equally when it came to mentioning the news on cable. It’s really weird. Four years ago in July, Trump mentioned on cable more than Barack Obama by a 9: 1 ratio. Eight years before that, Obama was mentioned more on cable than his predecessor, George W. Bush, by a similar margin.

Part of what’s happening is that Trump is getting more news on cable than ever before for a former president. And Biden, for his part, pronounced his name on cable news less than Trump did in July 2017.

The attention Trump has ordered is not just a phenomenon in cable news. We see an enlarged version of this in Google trends as well.

Trump has actually been searched more often than Biden on Google by about a 3: 2 ratio in the last 30 days. Again, this is an outlier in recent history. Searches for Trump were more than 10 times higher than searches for Obama at this point in 2017. And back in 2009, searches for Obama beat searches for Bush by more than 10. : 1 margin.

As mentioned in the cable news, Trump is looking for more relatives than Biden is partly because many are looking for Trump for a former president and partly because Biden is not looking anywhere near Trump’s levels in this point in his presidency.

We see how much Trump still dominates political thought in the real world. The media monitors his endorsements to political careers with a close eye. Trump’s thoughts on pieces of legislation continue to make news.

Put another way: Trump matters.

Of course, important and helping the Republican Party are two different things.

Opposition parties generally want the political focus on the current president. Some election traditions are as regular as the president’s party losing a seat in a midterm election. One of the drivers of disengagement for the party of the disqualified president is turnout variability. Members of the president’s party are less motivated to vote when they control the White House.

Traditional midterm sanctions can handle whatever Trump is in the news actually. He may stop the news cycle as we approach November 2022. There is still a long way to go.

But we honestly don’t know what could happen when the current White House resident is fighting for media attention on the former president – especially, when Trump continues to falsely say he won the last election. This can change the turnout dynamically.

The limited voting we have at this point is that Democrats say Republicans are likely to vote in 2022. A Reuters / Ipsos poll taken in June showed that about the same percentage of Democrats (63%) as Republicans (64%) said they would definitely vote in 2022. An average of other polls generally confirms that Democrats are about motivating Republicans to vote. It’s not the same as polling with concerns about turnout at this point in either 2009 or 2013 for the upcoming midterm, when there’s a Democratic president. Republicans typically have a clear turnout advantage in midterms with a Democratic president. The pattern in special elections during the Biden administration has not pointed to a major shift toward Republicans yet. That is very unlike what is happening in 2017 at this time. And remember, Democrats won two Senate seats in Georgia in January. Republicans have no turnout advantage you might expect in an incoming Democratic president.

We must guard these metrics as we approach midterms. But it seems possible that Trump could continue to make history.

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