Yes, Mastriano lost. But he got 2 million votes, and those voters aren’t going anywhere.

After the May primary, as he was accepting the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor, Doug Mastriano began his speech by claiming that “God is good” and quoting biblical scripture.

This type of rhetoric is common in south-central Pennsylvania but is not typical of successful candidates running in statewide elections.

Mastriano’s brand of social and religious conservatism did not appeal to general election voters. He lost the election this week to Josh Shapiro. However, he still managed to receive more than 2.2 million votes. Where did those votes come from, and what is the future of Mastriano’s base in the Republican Party?

Mastriano underpolled GOP senatorial candidate Mehmet Oz in the state, and exit polling shows that some Republicans supported Oz but not Mastriano. However, most Republicans supported both. This is a hallmark of the tribal partisan politics of 21st-century‌ America. Republicans may have had some misgivings about Mastriano, but their opposition to the Democratic Party was stronger than their views of their gubernatorial candidate. Even if many Pennsylvania Republicans did not walk in lock-step with Mastriano’s platform, partisan affiliation often trumped the issues.

Mastriano had a core group of energized supporters within the Republican Party. In this year’s midterm election, President Joe Biden and other Democrats campaigned on the need to preserve democracy in the face of what they believed was the GOP’s increasingly autocratic tendencies. But Mastriano’s supporters — who are the core constituency of the Republican Party — believe that Democrats present the same existential threat to the country.

“Mastriano had a core group of energized supporters.”

These social and cultural conservatives believe that their values and vision of America have been subverted by a morally bankrupt liberal elite that controls major governmental and social institutions and threatens the fabric of the country. They believe that multiculturalism, immigration, and liberalized interpretations of gender and family subvert their vision of a traditional America. At the same time, this voting block feels that the liberal elite is out of touch with the “real” America, and can only keep power by undermining election outcomes.

Mastriano’s infusion of religious rhetoric into his message encouraged his base to conflate politics with faith and instilled his campaign with apocalyptic overtones. None of these beliefs is going away as a consequence of him losing the election.

Mastriano campaigned through media platforms that can cater content to specific bases like religious and cultural conservatives, such as Facebook Live. His supporters will continue getting information from these sources, and the messages won’t change.

» READ MORE: How Mastriano wielded the power of Facebook Live to build his base

The question now is: Will the more traditional wing of the Republican Party use the midterms as a way to edge politicians like Mastriano into the periphery of the party? Maybe.

Months ago, it appeared as if the Pennsylvania governor’s race was the GOP’s to lose. Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, is unpopular, which often precedes a partisan flip. The fact that Republicans lost what appeared to be a winnable election (prior to Mastriano’s success in the primary) will certainly result in an analysis of how the Republican Party can maintain competitiveness in statewide elections. Perhaps establishment Republicans will even conceive of a plan to coalesce behind a single candidate, thus preventing a Mastriano-type candidate from emerging from a crowded primary field.

However, if we’ve learned one thing from the tea party and Trump eras, it’s that there is a big difference between what party elites want and what partisan voters provide them. The fact remains that people who were energized by Mastriano remain a core group of the Trump-era Republican Party in our state.

The new Republican coalition is built around appealing to these rural and exurban, noncollege-educated white voters at the expense of affluent, moderate suburbanites. As long as the Mastriano block continues to vote for Republicans, the party is going to have to incorporate their views into its narrative.

J. Wesley Leckrone is a professor of political science at Widener University and coeditor of Pennsylvania Politics and Policy, Volumes 1 and 2.