Trump’s supporters in the 2024 election ranged from hardcore Republicans to people who had never backed a GOP presidential ticket before. His voters included the residents of right-to-work states and blue-collar workers, some of whom belong to labor unions; hawks who want to confront Iran as well as China and doves who want no more wars; tariff-hiking economic nationalists and anti-tax government-slashing libertarians.

Holding together such an unwieldy group was challenging enough on the campaign trail. Now Trump is trying to give these various factions representation in his administration, as evidenced by his Cabinet nominations and White House staff hires.

Trump’s choice for secretary of education, former Small Business Administration chief Linda McMahon, is as likely to quarrel with teacher’s unions as Betsy DeVos, the conservative who held the job for almost all of Trump’s first term. Trump’s nominee for secretary of labor, Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-OR), has been celebrated by unions, though many of them, including the National Education Association, were cautious about her working for Trump.

TRUMP CABINET PICKS: WHO’S BEEN TAPPED TO SERVE IN THE PRESIDENT-ELECT’S ADMINISTRATION

How former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a Democratic lawmaker from Hawaii not long before she was tapped to serve as director of national intelligence, works with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who Trump has selected for secretary of state, will be an interesting development. But first Trump must get these disparate picks confirmed.

The Senate is under Republican control and the filibuster has been eliminated for Cabinet nominations. But 53 GOP-held Senate seats still don’t allow for many defections, even counting Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s eventual tiebreaking vote, with Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) seen as wildcards in building out the Trump administration.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, could conceivably bring together a left-right coalition against him. Liberals dislike his anti-vaccine views, and conservatives his record on abortion. There are lawmakers in both camps who could support or oppose him based on his stance on the pharmaceutical industry.

Trump likely benefited from being endorsed by Kennedy and Gabbard during the race against Vice President Kamala Harris. Joe Rogan‘s audience is full of the low-propensity voters Trump sought. Most GOP senators have no need for those types of crossover votes, representing safe red states where they can win with Republican voters alone. Many of them will still be in the Senate when Trump’s term is up. 

Trump won these safe red states too. He carried South Dakota, the home state of both Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), who has balked at possible concessions to Russia in a Ukraine peace deal, and incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), with 63.4% of the vote. Wyoming was Trump’s best state for the second straight election, with 72.3%, which is why Liz Cheney is no longer in Congress.

But Republicans cannot prevail in the Electoral College, and therefore win the White House, with just safe red states, even as they maintain their hold on electoral vote-rich Texas and Florida. GOP Senate candidates won in only one of the battleground states despite Trump carrying all seven. It remains to be seen how transferable Trump’s coalition is to other Republicans, especially those running on the pre-Trump platform. 

Political coalitions aren’t always ideologically coherent. The Republican Party of Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide stretched from Barry Goldwater on the right to Nelson Rockefeller on the left. Harris would have had similar problems if elected based on the breadth of the coalition she tried to assemble against Trump. The parties being organized primarily around ideology is a relatively recent phenomenon.

Yet the fact that the nomination to be attorney general of former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, a rabble-rousing populist but nevertheless a more conventional conservative than some others on Trump’s list and a scion of a Republican family, did not make it to the next Congress suggests there will be limits to GOP senators’ deference.

How big the tent can be before devolving into a three-ring political circus will be hotly debated.