Delaware’s populous north has long been rough territory for Republicans to run in competitively, in relative contrast to downstate. Of the 12 New Castle County Council seats, for instance, the party holds only one. Candidate recruitment can therefore be difficult, and thus many Democrat-held seats from the General Assembly down to local boards go unchallenged.
Consequently, GOP candidates run a bit more boldly in the state’s southerly regions while New Castle County Republicans often hew closer to the center. Republican statewide candidates, all of whom lost in 2024, have to strike a balance.
Demographics tell the tale as to why.
Home to a big city, a hopping college town, and other pockets of urbanism amid vast stretches of upscale suburbs, the state’s northernmost county (New Castle) has poised Democrats to dominate First State elections for decades. According to 2022 figures from the state’s election office, the most recent published, the Democrats can claim 54 percent of the county’s voters, outnumbering Republicans by well over two to one.
Kent County has a slightly more even partisan balance than its northern neighbor, but its own central Delaware Democrats still enjoy a comfortable plurality, 43.3 percent to 30 percent. Sussex County, the state’s south end, is where Republicans do best, though their competitors come much closer to parity than the GOP does farther north. Of the county’s registered voters, Republicans compose 40.2 percent of them while 35.6 percent affiliate with the Democrats.
Robert ‘Bobby’ Byrd
“There’s no question that downstate — and when I say downstate, I mean Smyrna and south — that those folks have a more conservative viewpoint and [GOP campaigners are] taking advantage of that,” said Robert Byrd, a New Castle-based lobbyist who once served as a Democratic state representative. “The members of the General Assembly who are down there and the districts that they’ve won would certainly be an indication of that.”
While Democrats control the Kent County Levy Court, Republicans have stayed competitive in the central county by other measures, holding several state House and Senate seats. Sussex Republicans, meanwhile, prevailed in the most recent county elections and their region delivered more votes for President-elect Donald Trump than Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Yet, despite all the stylistic differences between the more conservative south and the more centrist upstate area, Byrd suggested the GOP has more important hurdles ahead than syncing up its messaging approach across the state.
One reason, he said, is that downstate Republicans can largely afford to lean to the right of their upstate compatriots.
“Those folks down there are very conservative, they will tolerate social programs but they’re not in favor of social programs, and they’re much more concerned about how much money the state’s spending than they are [about] social programs,” he explained.
Others observed the same tendency of Sussex Republicans to stress philosophical solidarity to drive partisan turnout.
In communities where either party is significantly more powerful, “the communication may be a little bit more geared toward trying to get out your base,” Northern New Castle County Region Republican Committee Chair P.J. O’Dwyer said.
Different styles for different parts of the state
Rep. Bryan Shupe
State Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford), this outlet’s former chief executive officer who is no longer affiliated with the organization, believes that the more confrontational style that many see in downstate Republicans has largely served them well.
“I think in Sussex County we are more vocal about challenging the status quo of the last 20 to 30 years of majority Democratic rule in not only the legislature but the executive branch and the judiciary,” he said. “I think that would also be a message that resonates up north but unfortunately I have seen individuals up north kind of tiptoe around that,” though he said there were conservative exceptions, particularly Rep. Mike Smith (R-Newark).
Shupe touted Sussex County GOP legislators’ vocal opposition to the electric-vehicle mandate that went into effect a year ago. He further noted his own strong stand against the state’s impending attempted takeover of hospital finances. While Republicans lost that legislative fight, he said, their opposition spurred new litigation against the policy.
Sussex Republicans did experience especially disappointing losses in state House races: Mike Simpler’s loss to Claire Snyder-Hall and Nikki Miller’s to Democrat Stell Parker Selby. But rather than attribute either result to messaging, Byrd said Snyder-Hall and Selby simply “outworked” their opponents. Shupe ascribed the defeats to registration disadvantages, especially in Simpler’s case.
O’Dwyer said Republican candidates in his own area need to show their commitment to constituent service and cited firefighter Steve Pickering’s campaign against state Rep. Katie Griffith (D-Wilmington). While Pickering lost to Griffith, O’Dwyer believes he demonstrated a more localized approach to campaigning from which other Republicans can learn.
New Castle County Republicans, Byrd agreed, are likewise responding to their constituencies by occupying the political center, something they’ve tended to do for many years.
GOP needs to find candidates for bluish northern districts
If the GOP wants to improve, he suggested, it needs to find candidates for more bluish northern districts that are nonetheless winnable. That would effectively replicate the Democrats’ initiative to run hopefuls in Republican districts three decades ago.
Across the state this year, 12 Democratic state House candidates out of 41 districts faced no Republican challengers while only eight Republicans went unopposed. (Unchallenged Senate seats held by both parties were relatively more common, with few being competitive and none changing hands between parties this year.)
“In order for the Republican Party to come back, they’ve got to find candidates,” Byrd said. “You’ve got to do that in order for them to get back in the game.”
He averred that if Republicans want to succeed, they should prioritize recruitment and fundraising over any desire to homogenize messaging across Delaware’s politically disparate communities. One caveat he nonetheless offered was that Republicans in blue regions shouldn’t try to shoehorn hard-right themes into their campaigns.
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