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.
It is a distinction with profound consequences for the fall campaign.
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#ixzz48ukrBYxv
In Iowa, the Republican caucus turnout smashed its past record by 50 percent this year, jumping from 121,000 to nearly 187,000. But, according to figures provided by the state party, 95 percent of the 2016 caucusgoers had previously voted in at least one of the past four presidential elections—and almost 80 percent had voted in at least three of the past four.
The new caucusgoers, in other words, are likely to vote in November anyway.
In South Carolina, which also saw record turnout, data from the state GOP show that first-time voters amounted to 8.4 percent of the GOP electorate. But triple that amount—roughly 25 percent—were only first-time voters in a Republican primary. Even with historically high turnout, the data from the state party show that the Trump-led ballot brought almost exactly the same number of former Democratic primary voters into this year’s GOP primary as a Trump-free ballot did four years ago.
And in Florida, one of the nation’s most critical battleground states, Republican primary turnout jumped by 40 percent from 2012 to 2016. But only 6 percent of those who voted in the 2016 Republican primary did not vote in either of the 2012 or 2014 general elections and were registered to vote then. That amounts to a lot of people—about 142,000—but it’s a fractional share of a populous and fast-growing state that has added almost 1 million voters to the rolls since the beginning of 2012.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897#ixzz48ulrr1G0
Certainly, in a tight race—Florida was decided by 537 votes in 2000—Trump’s new voters could prove significant, even decisive. But they are not suggestive of a candidate wholly remaking the composition of the electorate or reshaping the entire political landscape.
“There is no question he brought some people out but relatively speaking it’s not a huge number when it comes to a general election,” said Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida who has studied voter turnout patterns and who calculated the Florida figures for Politico.
It’s difficult to quantify exactly what share of the inflated 2016 primary turnout is inspired by Trump. Many states have yet to release detailed data and even among those that have a patchwork of different voting rules, the fact that some new young voters register every cycle and the notion that many Republicans could have turned out to oppose Trump—remember, he began winning a clear majority in states only recently—make such calculations nearly impossible.
But the data so far point away from a massive movement of new voters or Democrats flocking to Trump.
“I think the glass is half full,” Smith added, looking at the numbers from Trump’s perspective. “But it’s a small glass — maybe a shot glass.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897#ixzz48um63xWh
Any way it’s sliced, the historic primary turnout of 2016 is good news for the GOP. It is a sign, as it was for Democrats in 2008 when the Clinton-Obama contest shattered old turnout records, of energy and enthusiasm that can often be translated into volunteer hours and campaign cash. And Democrats this year, despite the surprisingly close contest between Clinton and Bernie Sanders, are far below their previous turnout highs—raising the specter of a problematic enthusiasm gap this fall.
“The Republicans have tremendous energy. The Democrats don’t,” Trump bragged at Mar-a-Lago as the primary results rolled in on March 1, Super Tuesday. “They don’t have any energy. Their numbers are down. Our numbers are through the roof.”
Trump is right about the numbers. But his conclusion—that he’ll thus win in November—is historically unfounded. Experts who study voting presidential patterns warn that inflated primary turnout and general election outcomes are unrelated.
trump_new_voters.png
“It’s very hard to say that anything that happens in the primary season has that much of an impact on the general,” said Drew DeSilver of the Pew Research Center, who has studied presidential voter turnout. Of the past six presidential elections with competitive primaries in both parties, the party with the higher primary turnout has won more votes in the fall only three times, he noted. “There is definitely not a correlation between turnout in the primaries and success in the general election.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897#ixzz48umNa4pQ
>>74253729
>>74253934
>>74253978
That is largely because primary season vote totals account for only a fraction of what a winning candidate needs in November. So while Trump has amassed a record number of primary votes—even in a 17-candidate field and with big states like California and New Jersey still to vote—his final figure is likely to represent about 1 in 4 of the votes he’ll require in the fall.
Four years ago, President Obama won reelection with 65.9 million votes; Trump has accumulated about 11 million votes so far in the primary.
Still, for many Republicans, Trump’s allure against Clinton is his supposed ability to attract lapsed Democrats, independents and nontraditional Republicans to his side. Trump has argued his anti-trade, immigration hard-liner populist appeal can transform what has been a stable Electoral College map by putting blue-collar states, particularly Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, back in the GOP column. He has even touted his chances in solidly Democratic New York.
“I’m gonna win other states that no other Republican candidate can win,” Trump said at a news conference in Washington in March. “That from the Electoral College standpoint ... it makes it a much different deal.”
And the reason is because Trump said he is “creating a larger, stronger party.”
“All you have to do is take a look at the primary states where I’ve won and just look—we’ve gone from X number to a much larger number. That hasn’t happened to the Republican Party in many, many decades. So I think we’re going to be more inclusive. I think we’re going to be more unified and I think we’re going to be a much bigger party, and I think we’re going to win in November,” Trump said on Super Tuesday.
Democrats are dubious.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897#ixzz48umb1XWj
>politico
Stopped reading right there
“I understand the fascination with what’s happening on the Republican side related to expanding the map,” said Guy Cecil, chief strategist for Priorities USA, the pro-Clinton super PAC that has reserved $125 million in ads to help her. “What’s unclear is whether or not these new voters who are participating in the primary are new voters, or are they just new primary voters who usually vote in a general election.”
Priorities USA has tasked Civis Analytics, the Democratic consulting shop founded by Obama’s data team, to ferret out the answer. “A lot of this we’ll see as files are appended and we start seeing who turned out in each state,” Cecil said.
Plus, Cecil added, there is the countervailing Trump effect on Democratic turnout. “The Trump Republican Party has even further alienated a growing electorate among young people, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and African-Americans,” Cecil said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-polling-turnout-early-voting-data-213897#ixzz48ummgQxC
>>74254107
You can't just ignore things you don't like like that. That's not how intelligent people act. If you want to read it and determine why their analysis is not legitimate, then fine. But you don't stomp your feet and cover your ears and yell "lalalalalala i can't hear you"
>>74254232
Just STFU Trump already BTFO of all you muthafuckers... Accept it already... He will be the next President... Your Bernie and Shillary are going Down, your stuck in "Current Year", you libtards fucked up, you went all out, instead of easing people in into your political views, you tried to shove it in thier throats. Now all the "moderates" and " conservatives" are pissed, all the young fucks you tried to convert are too young to vote, all the old skool liberals are slowly converting into conservatives. It's over you have to wait another 2 generations and try that shit again...
Anyways i didnt read you shot cause politicuck is stupid...
But you fuckers tried everything and are resorting to old phone calls he made, how pathetic is that...
Its over you lost...
Write a book about it, make money and let the next few generations worry about it....
If you studied your American political history you would see that this shot happens all the time..
Every liberal push gets met with an often stronger conservative push...
And vice versa...
>>74253729
>politico
never heard of that leftist blog
The only thing Trump definitely achieved was destroying the Republican party. Granted, they did wonders at destroying themselves too.
>>74254232
>waste your time reading this op-ed about a figure on the right from a website with an established hard-left slant/bias
>>74256029
triggered
>>74253729
Demograpics are destiny. We have too many niggers and our financial system is rigged.
We are going to become Brazil 2.0
Trump cannot stop it.
>>74253729
>All he seems to have done is bring new people into the primary process, not bring new people into the general-election process
You wouldn't fucking know that yet you mong
>>74253729
He expanded it in the sense that I hate Republicans but yet am voting for him.
>>74253729
>But a Politico analysis
discarded
>>74254232
found the jew
