It’s a political truism that midterm elections are referenda on the party controlling the White House, and thus Donald Trump’s dreadful job approval ratings are the simplest explanation of the huge Democratic gains posted on November 3. But in terms of what that means for future elections, it’s important to understand that voters who reject the president’s party in the midterms won’t necessarily support the opposition party in future elections. In an era where there has been for some time a serious substratum of unhappiness with politics and government generally and a mistrust of any and all institutions, party affiliation can be a slippery thing. And thus many political observers have focused on voters who dislike both major political parties as important to the competition between them.

More often than not, these so-called “double haters” have been relatively friendly to Trump, perhaps because he’s always posed as an anti-establishment “disrupter,” or perhaps........

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