Live from YUGE Tuesday: : The GOP Civil War and Its Opportunities: "hen you see the results of this survey, you will believe that either Donald Trump has an amazing antenna for the mood of the party or a great pollster...
...And you will also believe this explosive civil war inside the GOP can move significant numbers of voters out of the Republican camp – and this poll starts to show how.... The animated animus for Democratic governance and fear of the country’s growing immigrant and racial diversity truly unify the Republican Party and have allowed Donald Trump to surge ahead of the field. But there are deep fissures inside the base as well and the GOP is poised to crack wide open. Moderates form 31 percent of the Republican Party base, and they are solidly pro-choice on abortion and hostile to pro-life groups. About one in five are poised to defect from the party. The party is divided down the middle on gay marriage, climate change, and the N.R.A. With the GOP’s battles alienating large swaths of the country and an internal civil war in full swing, this campaign is full of opportunity for progressives....
This likely voter survey of 800 Republican base voters was conducted online using a voter file sample. The results were weighted to match Democracy Corps’ national likely voter data set for self-identifying Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who will vote in the Republican primaries or caucuses.... This survey of Republicans looks eerily like Trump’s inside intelligence on Republican thinking.... The strongest Democratic messages that shift Tea Party, Observant Catholic, and Moderate voters away from the Republican nominee are ones focused on investment and modernizing America; on reforming corporate governance so growth works for middle class, not just the CEOs; and on getting beyond social issues to address America’s problems....
This is a party divided. But this party is not divided on its fundamental doubts and fears about Democratic governance and immigration. It is not divided on supporting leaders who will battle to get illegal immigration under control. That is what Donald Trump understands.... The conventional conservative views on national defense, regulation, markets and taxes just are not that important.... The most powerful dimension of Republican thinking is defined by Republican voter hostility to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, the Affordable Care Act, President Obama and his "attacks on the Constitution". That one dimension explains more than twice as much of the variation in GOP thinking as the next strongest dimension. It is not surprising, then, that nearly 80 percent of Republicans today say, “there is no real difference between the Democratic Party and socialism” and nearly 90 percent say the Democratic Party’s policies are “so misguided that they threaten the nation's well-being.”... They apparently think Trump will finally fight, unlike the feckless leaders of the party....
It is also hard to understate the importance of race and immigration in the Republican equation. It does not matter what faction you look at, Republican voters are uncomfortable with immigrant diversity; they think illegal immigration is out of control and want their leaders to fight it. Furthermore, two-thirds of the Republican base say, “it bothers me when I come in contact with immigrants who speak little or no English,” and that includes almost 60 percent of the Moderates. A stunning 87 percent of Republicans, including 70 percent of Moderates, say they want their party’s nominee to fight the acceptance of the 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the country and the growing proportion of foreign born in our major cities....
We asked whether certain facts reported in the news were true or the creation of the liberal media. The ‘fact’ most viewed as the product of the liberal media was the “net migration from Mexico has been zero or less since 2005, the number of unauthorized Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has declined to 1.3 million since 2007.” More people viewed that fact as the result of elite manipulation than drew the same conclusion about climate change.... That is why the candidate most opposed to Democratic governance and most opposed to immigration has proved so strong and across all segments of the party....
The Tea Party base has the most intense views and forms 17 percent of the GOP base.... Evangelicals are 30 percent of the GOP base and together with the Tea Party, that strong conservative bloc forms half of the base. The Moderates are a very significant 31 percent of the base. Observant Catholics form 14 percent of the base and align with social conservatives on many issues. But on other important issues, Observant Catholics and Moderates break with the conservative bloc and form an opposing bloc that counts for 45 percent the base....
Cruz has not surged because he has not consolidated Evangelicals. Trump has matched his vote among Evangelicals.... At the same time, Cruz has failed to win Observant Catholics.... The most important factor contributing to Trump’s surprising dominance is the support among Moderates. Trump is more than matching his opponents’ vote among Moderates. He understands that they too want to fight the Democrats and immigration, but they are also hostile to pro-life groups and sympathetic to Planned Parenthood.... All of the base groups of the Republican Party are dominated by working class voters, except for the Moderates: two-thirds of Moderates have a four-year college degree.... Two-thirds say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.... 86 percent of them say, half strongly, that the Republican nominee should accept that “women and men feel free to have sex without any interest in getting married, forming a family or a long-term relationship” and move on to other issues. Half of the Tea Party base agrees, but not the Evangelicals and Observant Catholics....
The Moderates are also in a different place than the rest of their party on the environment and climate change, though with less intensity. Over 60 percent say that global warming is real, produced by human activity, and now requires serious measures to address it.
Emerging issues like gun control, climate change and the role of government are already dividing the party down the middle between the Tea Party and Evangelical bloc on one hand and the Observant Catholics and Moderates on the other.... The Observant Catholics are actually more open in principle to the idea that government must be a check on the free market in order to “best serve the public interest.” They may be listening to Pope Francis. They are also most ready to support those earning over $250,000 paying “a lot more in taxes.”... A majority of the Observant Catholics and two-thirds of moderates say reporting that 2015 was the hottest year on record and the consensus of scientists on climate change is true, not the fiction of the liberal media....
In a general election against Hillary Clinton, 20 percent of the Republican base is dislodged from Donald Trump, saying they will vote for another candidate, don’t know or will not vote; 5 percent of Republicans say they will vote for Clinton.... Those dislodged voters respond to the attacks on Trump and positive Democratic messages, and the vote shifts further from the Republican nominee at the end of the survey. The strongest attacks on Trump charge that he is an egomaniac who cares more about himself than the country, that he is very disrespectful towards women, and that he is a threat to national security and should not have control of our nuclear weapons.... The Democratic vision statements... further dislodged these voters. The three strongest messages focused on long-term investment in infrastructure, changing CEO and corporate rules to encourage investment, and getting beyond social issues to address the country's problems. In the regression modeling, those three move the needle....
This broken Republican Party withers in the election measured at the end of the survey. The Evangelical bloc stays firmly put.... But Clinton gains support among the Tea Party voters – a 10 point shift in margin. There is a comparable shift in margin among the Moderates. Finally, Trump’s support collapses among the Observant Catholics, falling from 70 percent to just 56 percent. Everyone has been surprised by Trump’s extraordinary rise in the GOP primary, but it is clear from this survey that the general election may be equally disruptive for the Republican Party.
