Posted on 01/08/2016 6:21:20 AM PST by GonzoII
Republicans explain away their unwelcome poll-leader by dismissing his supporters as a loud but narrow network of angry white men and celebrity chasers.It's not true. A POLITICO review of private and public polling data and interviews with GOP pollsters shows a coalition that certainly begins with conservative, blue-collar men now extends to pro-choice Republicans, independents and even registered Democrats unnerved, primarily, by illegal immigration.
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. Indeed, the uncomfortable truth, for the pundits and fellow Republicans who turned their noses up at Trump, is that his appeal has spread over seven months so far beyond a rabble-rousing, anti-establishment rump to encompass the very elements of the American electorate the GOP has been eager to reach. And while it's no majority, it's a bigger group than anything the rest of the fragmented Republican field has galvanized.
"His coalition is not all angry working white males," said Adrian Gray, a Republican pollster. "It's all stripes. It's a pretty big coalition. And among other demographics where he's doing worse, he's still leading or in the top two."
Certainly, non-college-educated men have formed his base. Every one of 10 recent Iowa, New Hampshire, and national polls of Republicans shows Trump with more male support than female support and significantly more support from non-college graduates than those with degrees.
Trump's robust performance with this group, however, has deflected attention from the breadth of his coalition. Though Trump has less support with women and educated men, he's still at or near the top of the GOP field in those categories. And, exposing the depth of the GOP establishment's misunderstanding of Trump's support network, his coalition includes far-right conservatives as well as people who hardly register on Republican radar.
Trump's supporters skewed significantly against the GOP grain on abortion, for instance, in an internal poll of Iowa caucus-goers conducted for a rival presidential contender last summer. Respondents who identified themselves as "pro-choice" were three times more likely than "pro-life" voters to support Trump, according to a Republican strategist with knowledge of the survey.
One large dataset shows Trump excelling above all with voters who call themselves Republicans even though they aren't officially registered as Republicans.
Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm founded by veterans of President Barack Obama's campaigns, built a model based on over 11,000 phone interviews with self-identified Republicans in 2015, part of a wider polling project. The data, first reported by The New York Times, shows Trump getting the support of 29 percent of registered Republicans but 36 percent of registered independents and 43 percent of registered Democrats, who in some states can still participate in GOP primaries.
The Civis data projects Trump's support by congressional district, showing that Trump is especially strong in the rare pockets of the country where Obama performed worse while winning the 2008 presidential election than John Kerry did while losing in 2004, according to a POLITICO analysis.
In the Civis' model, Trump runs ahead of his 33-percent national average in 30 of the 40 districts where Kerry matched or exceeded Obama's performance, even though Obama ran about 5 points ahead of Kerry nationally.
Those districts are largely contained in a band running through Appalachia, from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, and then across the Deep South to Arkansas and Oklahoma. Once Democratic strongholds, voters there have sloughed off the party in recent decades -- a trend that accelerated rapidly under Obama. Now, Trump is giving a voice to some of their protectionist concerns about immigration and trade.
"Essentially, the old base of the Democratic Party, non-college whites in the Midwest and Appalachia, have been cut loose and are floating like an iceberg in the middle of the electorate," said one Republican strategist supporting another presidential candidate. "And they've glommed onto the Republicans because it's a two-party system. But they have no affection for the Republican Party as an institution."
Now, they form a key piece of the Trump puzzle.
The pro-Trump crowd's varied background is matched by equally diverse reasons for supporting him. But even though it has faded in intensity as an issue since Trump burst on the political scene this summer with an incendiary announcement speech, immigration is still driving a core base of voters into Trump's camp.
In WBUR's most recent poll of the New Hampshire primary, Trump's favorability numbers jumped from 46 percent overall to 62 percent among those who said that illegal immigration posed a "major threat" to "you and people you know." While 27 percent of all respondents said they plan to vote for Trump in New Hampshire's February primary, his support rose to 35 percent among the GOP voters most concerned about immigration.
In Iowa, where Cruz has caught or even surpassed Trump in many recent Republican caucus polls, Trump still maintained a double-digit lead over Cruz among "immigration voters" in the most recent Quinnipiac University survey there. Among everyone in the poll, though, the two were essentially tied (28 percent for Cruz to 27 percent for Trump).
"There's a segment of the population, white working middle-aged men, that has felt three big changes in America -- globalization, technology, and demographics -- that are changing everything we do on a daily basis," said Gray. "In a lot of ways, this group has felt left behind by each of those."
But "even people above the median income feel insecure, sometimes financially insecure because of these changes," Gray continued. "That's what builds the coalition beyond low-income and downscale."
Trump also runs particularly well with people looking for a "strong leader." While Cruz dominated among Quinnipiac poll respondents in Iowa who wanted a candidate who "shares your values," Trump got 40 percent of those looking for a strong leader. Fox News' most recent Iowa poll showed Trump getting 39 percent of those voters, too.
Focus groups of GOP voters help explain how and why. One such exercise, conducted by Data Targeting, a GOP consulting firm in Florida, recently interviewed a uniformly downcast group of Republicans about the direction of the country and its government. Two gave replies of "stagnant" when asked to describe it. Other replies included "mess," "weak," and "bought."
The focus group illustrated how some typical political responses to government dysfunction have lost currency, opening a door into the presidential campaign that Trump barged through. When one participant said, "Democrats and Republicans need to work together," another immediately replied, "That's my worst nightmare!" "They're all puppets," another participant chimed in.
"Nearly every candidate running on the Republican side has made an effort to present themselves as not of Washington," said Jim Hobart, a Republican pollster. "No one has a more credible message on that than Donald Trump. When he says it, it's really true. It's tough to out-anti-Washington Donald Trump."
This makes for an uncomfortable truth for the GOP. But there's enough discomfort to go around. For Trump's camp, it's unclear just how many of his supporters will actually cast a ballot for him -- or anyone else -- when caucuses and primaries finally begin next month.
Almost uniformly, GOP political professionals have discounted Trump's chances of turning the full measure of his support into actual primary and caucus votes, and later delegates to the Republican National Convention. Public polls, they argue, are vastly oversampling nonvoters caught up in the mania surrounding Trump, distorting the picture of a more traditional Republican electorate that does not back him as heavily.
"It's one thing to have support from people in all these different groups," said Mark Stephenson, a Republican data and analytics expert who was the chief data officer on Scott Walker's presidential campaign. "It really is another thing to turn them into a Trump voter, or especially a Trump caucus-goer, on election night."
Trump's most natural supporters are some of the people most disillusioned with politics. In the run-up to the 2014 elections, the Pew Research Center asked a broad group of Americans to rate their financial security on a sliding scale. As whites fall from the highest levels of financial security to the lowest levels, their support for Republican candidates plummeted from 51 percent to 21 percent. (Democrats' support stayed constant around one-third.)
The remainder shifted almost fully into the "other/not sure" category, rather than moving into the Democratic column. Nearly all said they did not plan to vote that year. Trump's candidacy may have activated a group of them, but converting them into voters remains difficult.
Meanwhile, the Civis Analytics data showing Trump at his strongest with registered voters who are not registered Republicans won't be a barrier in every state primary, but it is a real obstacle nevertheless, starting in the first caucus state of Iowa. Only a small number of first-time participants usually join every four years, though Trump's campaign is aiming to drive a generation of first-time caucus-goers and GOP primary voters into the process starting this February.
In a recent survey conducted for a different presidential campaign, Trump still ran ahead of Ted Cruz in Iowa -- but only among voters who both could caucus in 2016 and have never actually shown up to one before. Past Republican caucus-goers, on the other hand, gave Cruz a solid first-place finish. One reason Trump's polling lead in New Hampshire has proven more durable is that the state has an open primary system, instead of Iowa's closed (and complicated) caucus.
Trump has been overcoming supposedly insurmountable obstacles since his presidential campaign began. But now that he has amassed these supporters, converting them from Trump fans into Trump voters may be the biggest one yet.
The great irony?
Donald Trump appeals to black voters better than any other Republican in living memory. The GOP has been going on and on about “reaching out to black voters” for over two decades, completely unsuccessfully. Now they have a guy who actually does just this - and they want to undercut him any way they can.
The only thing I take issue with in this article is the speculation that people won’t actually go out and vote for Trump. That’s illogical. Of course mass numbers of people will vote for Trump. Iowa who knows? The rest of the table is probably Trump’s.
Yearrrgh!
Stupid people, go out, freeze, to listen to Trump at mass rallies.
Go to voting booth to dump commie paradisers? Naaaah!
Brilllliant anal-isis!
Iowa is improbably a good test of Trump’s appeal. If an unusual number of Trump supporters show up for the Iowa caucuses, that’s a good sign that he’s unbeatable.
Trump has a lot of natural handicaps in Iowa that he probably doesn’t have elsewhere.
Yes if he wins Iowa its over.
This tries to make it sound like Trump doesn’t have huge conservative support. But in the most recent three or four Overtime Politics polls I examined, Trump LED Cruz when you combined the two groups “highly conservative” and “conservative,” and only barely trailed among the “highly conservative.”
Because there’s a celebrity and party atmosphere at the end of one of the trips.
They will stand out in the cold for hours to be in the room where he is ( They could stay home and watch on smart phone) but the won’t vote for him. DELUSIONAL !
Good point. We went to a rally near our home but you had to park and walk and then stand up for an hour before Trump even came out and it was so hot in there I almost passed out but I would not have left except on a stretcher. After that driving down the street to vote is child’s play.
McConnell felt comfortable sticking a shiv in our backs after the last election because "where are they going to go"?
Well, now him and the rest of the GOPe have their answer.
And guess what, it ain't a shiv in the back awaiting that b!tch; its a howitzer to the gut!
Just like Kim Jong WTF did to his uncle.
It’s the crossover vote that has the GOPe shiteing itself
That was in the old days...you know, when conservatives were governed by their brains instead of their emotions, and when they weren't willing to sell their principles down the river for a "win."
Right now there's a new Trumpster explaining why Cruz is just too extreme on abortion...it's even in his tagline. And the Trumpsters just don't care.
More of the media, GOPe hacks and the other candidates mantra....
I don’t listen to it, I read it and think the same thing all Trump supporters think, I’m going to a Trump rally to help him put Hillary in office....
I was born at night, but not last night....we aren’t that stupid....
Yeah how crazy and extreme is that. Cruz thinks the unborn are human.
Yes, but the difference is the GOPe was actively seeking ( pandering actually) ‘others’ for the tent, and compromising Republican tenets.....or at least as we orginally knew them.
This time folks from ‘across the board’ is attracted to a leader who will lead..... a leader who is unafraid......a leader who will be decisive against our enemies.....a leader who will build the wall.....take care of our vets....support and encourage and build up our military.....and respect our police officers......and listen to We the People!
The GOPe.....the original Big Tent panderers, are actively working against this leader, Donald Trump!
Yeah, that Cruz is just too fanatically pro-life. Much better to go with Trump, who can appeal to the Dems and the abortion lovers.
Rump will only fund the “good parts” of planned parenthood.
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