Trump might not really be bringing an influx of new GOP voters to the polls [View all]

[applegrove]

Trump might not really be bringing an influx of new GOP voters to the polls

by Rob Garver, The Fiscal Times, Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-might-not-be-bringing-in-new-gop-voters-2016-5

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However, new findings from GOP-leaning research and polling company Optimus strike at the underpinnings of Trump’s claim. Researchers at Optimus examined voter records in two key battleground states and determined that there is little evidence to support the idea that high levels of participation in the primary election means many new voters will be casting ballots in November when Trump is expected to tee off against likely democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

In Virginia, for example, generally viewed as a key battleground state, turnout for the 2016 Republican primary was nearly four times higher than it was in 2012. But when Optimus looked at voters at the individual level, they found that more than 90 percent of those who turned out were likely to have voted in general elections in the past. And much of the remainder were people who had either not been old enough to vote in previous elections, or who had recently moved to the state.

Only about 5.7 percent of the voters were eligible to vote in previous general elections but did not. That doesn’t even come close to explaining the increased voter participation.

“When we step back and look at this, it looks like the record primary turnout we saw in this election wasn’t new voters coming out to join the Republican party, it looks like they are simply general election voters who don’t typically show up in primaries,” Optimus found. “So it looks like there is not a large swath of new voters who flooded the elections in the primaries that are going to flood the polls in the general election: they already show up to general elections.”



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