WASHINGTON POST
A Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Donald Trump’s numbers are unspeakably awful among all the voter groups that Republican strategists had hoped to improve the party’s performance among in 2016. On the other hand, Ted Cruz’s numbers aren’t that great among these groups either — they are certainly worse than John Kasich’s are.
Marvel at these findings: Trump is viewed unfavorably by 67 percent of Americans overall; 75 percent of women; 74 percent of young voters; 91 percent of African Americans; 81 percent of Latinos; 73 percent of college-educated whites; 66 percent of white women; and 72 percent of moderates.
Could Trump win somehow by running up a huge margin among white voters — particularly blue collar whites and white men? Well, Trump is viewed unfavorably by 59 percent of whites overall, and he is even viewed unfavorably by majorities of non-college whites (52 percent) and white men (51 percent). And Trump’s awful numbers among college educated whites and white women (detailed above) make the run-up-the-white-vote strategy look still more far fetched.
WASHINGTON POST, GREG SARGENT
Six key indicators from exit polls of Republican primary voters:
- 35 percent said they would feel “scared” if Trump became president and another 20 percent said they would be “concerned.”
- More than one in three said they would not support Trump in a hypothetical general election.
- More than half said Trump has run “the most unfair campaign.”
- Nearly half were looking for a president with experience in politics. That’s higher than in past primaries.
- Cruz tied Trump among those who only had a high school education and among those in the lowest income brackets.That’s been Trump’s base.
- More than half said they were "dissatisfied" with government, compared to one-third who were "angry." Trump consistently does better among those who are angriest.
Some Democrats have begun to cast a wary eye on Mr. Trump’s unconventional candidacy. And now a group of political demographers has calculated how Mr. Trump might pull off a narrow victory in November by slightly increasing the share of the white vote gained by Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee in 2012.
The group’s election model assumes continued growth among African-American, Latino, Asian-American and other nonwhite voters, as has occurred every four years since the Clinton era. It assumes that constituencies for both parties turn out at the same rates as in 2012.
Under those circumstances, the demographers found, an increase of four percentage points in the proportion of whites backing Mr. Trump could flip eight states that Mr. Obama carried in 2012. That would give Mr. Trump a slim edge of 49.7 percent to 48.6 percent in the popular vote and 315 electoral votes — 45 more than needed to win the White House.
“It’s a hard thing to pull off,” said Ruy Teixeira, a co-author of the analysis who works at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “But I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”
One reason such an outcome seems difficult is that Mr. Romney’s support among whites in 2012, measured at 59 percent in exit polls, was already high. Since the advent of exit polling, only Ronald Reagan in his 1984 re-election landslide has exceeded 60 percent among white voters nationally.
Mr. Romney came close, running up his white vote totals in Southern states such as Mississippi (89 percent), Western states such as Arizona (66 percent) and Plains states such as Kansas (64 percent). But Mr. Obama was more competitive in the battle for the white vote elsewhere, including Colorado (44 percent), Wisconsin (48 percent), Minnesota (48 percent), Iowa (51 percent) and New Hampshire (51 percent).
The election model, which also involved analysts from the centrist Brookings Institution and the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, shows that all five states Mr. Obama won would move from the Democratic column to the Republican, with an increase of four percentage points in Mr. Trump’s support among whites. So would Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, all by narrow margins.
What makes such a singular increase unlikely is the electoral equivalent of Newton’s Third Law, which declares that every action produces an equal and opposite reaction. If Mr. Trump’s emotion-charged appeals to white voters increase his performance among that demographic, political physics suggests the Democratic nominee might surpass the 80 percent support from nonwhite voters that Mr. Obama attracted in 2012.
And yet his unlikely rise has some political veterans wondering whether he could scramble conventional assumptions. By rejecting conservative calls to curb Social Security and Medicare, he could strengthen Republicans’ already robust performance among older white voters. By rejecting free-trade deals, he could bolster Republican support among white union workers.
Mr. Teixeira calls a modest but singular shift in white voter preferences the “Trump dream scenario.” So far, at least, 2016 has made Mr. Trump’s political dreams come true.
Conservatives today are in something of the same position that Republican moderates were in 1964, as Barry Goldwater steamed toward the nomination. It is difficult to understand today how dramatic a break this was for the Republicans.... The modern Republican Party has been devoted to free markets and free trade, social conservatism, an expansionist foreign policy and fiscal discipline, especially on entitlements. ....On every one of these issues, Trump either openly disagrees or — as with abortion — has a past track record of disagreement.
Over the past decade, Republican support for immigration and free trade has been collapsing. But Trump’s nomination would transform the party into a blue-collar, populist, nationalist movement with a racial element — much like many others in the Western world.
When I was in graduate school, we were told to study carefully a seminal 1955 essay on American politics by the scholar V.O. Key on critical elections. Key’s thesis was that every generation or so, there is an election that changes the preexisting groupings of voters in a way that endures for years, even decades. Scholars debate which elections were ones that realigned American politics. Most generally agree that 1932 was one, bringing together Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition of northern liberals, urban ethnics and Southern whites to form a Democratic majority.
2016 might well go down as another such election, one that scrambles the old order but perhaps without setting up a new one. In this respect, it looks like 1964, also an election that realigned politics, shifting Southern whites to the Republican Party ever since. Then , too, there was enormous energy, new voters and a candidate who thrilled his supporters. Then, too, the establishment could not muster the courage and unity to oppose the front-runner, scared to push back against the energy and devotion of the new populist forces.
So instead the party went to the polls in November divided —and lost 44 states.