Politico: Donald Trump Is Not Expanding the GOP

[book_worm]

Donald Trump likes to say he has created a political movement that has drawn “millions and millions” of new voters into the Republican Party. “It’s the biggest thing happening in politics,” Trump has said. “All over the world, they’re talking about it,” he's bragged.

But a Politico analysis of the early 2016 voting data show that, so far, it’s just not true.

While Trump’s insurgent candidacy has spurred record-setting Republican primary turnout in state after state, the early statistics show that the vast majority of those voters aren’t actually new to voting or to the Republican Party, but rather they are reliable past voters in general elections. They are only casting ballots in a Republican primary for the first time.

If Trump isn’t bringing the promised wave of new voters into the GOP, it’s far less likely the Manhattan businessman can transform a 2016 Electoral College map that begins tilted against the Republican Party. And whether Trump’s voters are truly new is a question of urgent interest both to GOP operatives and Hillary Clinton and her allies, who have dispatched their top analytics experts to find the answer.

“All he seems to have done is bring new people into the primary process, not bring new people into the general-election process … It’s exciting that these new people that are engaged in the primary but those people are people that are already going to vote Republican in the [fall],” said Alex Lundry, who served as director of data science for Mitt Romney in 2012, when presented Politico’s findings. “It confirms what my suspicion has been all along.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897#ixzz48veekFHr
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[yellowcanine]

1. One reason for the larger GOP primary turnout might be the number of candidates early on.

It would be interesting to see an analysis of that - after all, the majority of primary voters still voted for somebody else other than Trump.

[yellowcanine]

2. It appears that the Republican Party lost a lot more GE voters than they gained due to Trump.

That is the bottom line, after all. Trump could and probably will win some voters back. But how many Hispanic voters has he lost for the Republican Party not only this year but for many years to come?

[Hortensis]

11. Last I saw was a Pew Republican membership

measurement of 26% of the electorate. It would also be worthwhile for the media to mention that now and then.

Like when they say, "Sixty-three percent of Republicans who identify as very conservative said they trust Trump more than Ryan to lead the Republican Party," it would be helpful if they pointed out that that would be roughly 63% of x% (very conservative block) of the 26% of the electorate who are Republicans, or whatever number they prefer.

[Stinky The Clown]

3. I've been saying this all along: We have already seen most of Drumpf's voters voting.

[davidn3600]

4. But has the Democrats shrunk?

Seems that way. Democratic turnout for the primaries is way down.

[0rganism]

6. lower primary turnout for the incumbent's party is normal

i was worried about this earlier, gotta say, but it doesn't appear abnormally anemic

[Wounded Bear]

7. Well, the two Obama elections were historic high turnout nos...

I don't think I'm worried about that just yet. I'm more worried about how we overcome the rift apparent in the party after the primaries. We did it in '08 and '12, but this one seems even more heated and divisive.

I know I'm voting against Trump and for the Democrat in the presidential. My rep and senator are all D's anyway, and while we could probably use some more progressive ones, I'll take what I can get.

[0rganism]

5. DJT's right about this much: "All over the world, they’re talking about it"

what they're saying, of course, isn't exactly flattering but his supporters eat up foreign criticism like candy.

[Wounded Bear]

8. Repubs seem to like when foreigners criticize...

and don't even care if the criticism is valid or not. If the Europeans are criticizing Trump for being an asshole, his supporters like it and consider it a 'badge of honor.'

[0rganism]

9. validity is never the point to them, it's all about having an antagonist

they'll never ask themselves if a criticism is valid. if it's a foreign source, it's because foreigners hate America and our clearly superior ways. if it's the American press, it's because the media is dominated by anti-American liberals. if it's the scientific press, it's a mixture of the previous 2 plus some variant of "scientists are godless communists paid off by liberals".

any criticism, valid or not, is points in the win column for the Republican candidates. they define themselves by having enemies and various others-who-look-down-on-them-and-their-noble-traditions. the greatest crime their candidates can commit, besides voting for an Obama judicial nominee, is causing boredom.

Trump is the ideal presidential candidate for the Republican party as it stands now.

[Wounded Bear]

10. Pretty much this....^^^

Disney Studios had it in spades when making movies, at least in the old days. The key is the villian, a good villian can carry a movie. Conservatives are like kids in this respect. They are always looking for a good bad guy to point at and jin up fear in their base. For many years, it was Saddam, and when he turned out to be a paper tiger, they needed ISIS. They keep propping up foreign leaders as the next Stalin/Hitler/Mao/etc.