Global News Desk:
Donald Trump seems formidable in
the Republican primaries and caucuses, yet the extent of his influence among
general election voters remains uncertain, even with his significant victories.
AP VoteCast shows that Trump, the
former president, has galvanized the core of the GOP electorate in Iowa, New
Hampshire and South Carolina. His voters so far are overwhelmingly white,
mostly older than 50 and generally without a college degree. This, however, is
very different than the electorate he could face in November, when he’d have to
appeal to a far more diverse group and possibly win over supporters of former
U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Her pull has been limited in the GOP primaries –
but her candidacy may foreshadow problems for Trump.
AP VoteCast reveals that a large
portion of Trump’s opposition within the Republican primaries is comprised of
voters who abandoned him before this year.
It also highlights a Republican
party that has made an about-face on central policy issues, favoring some big
government programs and retreating from commitments abroad.
AP VoteCast is a series of
surveys conducted among 1,597 Republican caucus voters in Iowa, 1,989 New
Hampshire voters who took part in the Republican primary and 2,466 Republican
primary voters in South Carolina. The surveys were conducted by The Associated
Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Haley’s Coalition: Anti-Trump Republicans and 2020 Biden
Voters
Haley was Trump’s lone major
challenger by South Carolina, but the gauntlet of the early states highlighted
the limitations of her campaign pitch.
Some of Haley’s supporters in New
Hampshire and South Carolina were voters who told AP VoteCast they identified
as Democrats or independents. More importantly, these voters tended to have
backed Biden in 2020. In South Carolina and Iowa, about 4 in 10 Haley voters
supported Biden nearly four years ago. Roughly half of her New Hampshire voters
voted for Biden.
The challenge for Haley is that
this group is a minority within the GOP. They constituted anywhere between 11%
and 24% of GOP voters in each of the three contests, putting a low ceiling on
her support. Many of Haley’s remaining supporters in each state said they voted
third party or didn’t vote in the 2020 general election, also a distinct
minority of voters in GOP nominating contests.
The Republican electorate remains overwhelmingly white
So far, almost all of Trump’s
backing has come from white voters, who made up the vast majority of the electorate
in the first few head-to-head Republican contests — even in diverse South
Carolina. Those results give us few clues about whether Trump can cut into the
margins that Democrats have traditionally enjoyed with Black and Hispanic
voters.
Trump’s performance shows his
resilience among voting groups that were strongly behind him in previous
elections. Nearly 6 in 10 of the votes he received in 2020 came from white
people without a college degree, a margin he exceeded in the first head-to-head
primaries and caucuses. More than 6 in 10 of his voters in the early states
were also over 50. Trump also maintained high levels of support with
evangelical Christians and people living in small towns and rural areas, groups
that have significant weight within Republican primaries but comprise a smaller
share of the general electorate.
The new Republican Party
It’s official: The age of a
small-government, hawkish Republican Party appears to have ended. Instead,
Republican primary voters strongly support domestic policies that require
significant government investment, like maintaining the current age of 67 for
Social Security eligibility and building a border wall between the U.S. and
Mexico. And they’re showing less enthusiasm for intervention in conflicts with
traditional U.S. rivals like Russia.
In the lead-up to the primaries,
Republican candidates clashed over these issues, testing whether long-held GOP
positions like shrinking the size of entitlement programs and taking a strong
hand in foreign conflicts still resonate with the party’s base. The result of
the first head-to-head Republican contests shows how Trump has shaped today’s
Republican Party.
Trump’s stances resonate strongly
with his base: According to the three surveys, roughly 7 in 10 Trump voters
support an end to continued aid to Ukraine, approximately 8 in 10 want to
preserve Social Security as-is and about 9 in 10 want a wall along the U.S.
southern border.
Trump’s hardest tests are yet to come
Trump has enjoyed a favorable
audience in the Republican contests, one he won’t be able to count on in
November if he wins the nomination.
Roughly 7 in 10 of the voters in
the primaries and caucuses identified as conservative. But in 2020,
conservatives were less than 40% of the general electorate; the rest were
roughly split between liberals and moderates. Just 36% of moderates voted for
Trump in 2020 and only 8% of liberals did.
And some potential weak spots for
Trump are already showing. At least 2 in 10 of the voters in South Carolina’s
Republican primary and the Iowa caucuses said they won’t back Trump in
November, while approximately 3 in 10 in New Hampshire felt that way.
In each of the early states,
Trump either lost or split voters with a college degree to Haley. Nor were the
suburbs – where the plurality of general election voters live – particularly
welcoming to him in this year’s GOP contests. He split the suburban vote with
his opponents in Iowa and New Hampshire and won the suburbs in South Carolina
by a smaller margin than in the state as a whole.
But those are just some of the
challenges Trump will confront in the coming months – in the early states,
anywhere between one-quarter and nearly 4 in 10 Republican voters say that he
broke the law in one or more of the criminal cases against him. (News Source By
AP News)