One point I’ve been trying to make for the last three years is that a fair number of Democratic voters are, to use a word, deplorable. That is, there are bigots who vote for Democrats in spite of and in opposition to their bigotry. Consider this figure:
Lots of Democratic deplorables–though we have far fewer. That said, these data also indicate there’s a flipside to that coin (boldface mine):
One is an Obama/Trump voter….
I’ve been unrelenting over the last four years in talking about how Democrats are not doing enough to address market consolidation and monopoly power. This is why they didn’t win Mr. Johansen’s vote in 2016. Now Johansen can choose someone like Elizabeth Warren who is laser-focused on the issue, but he’s not leaving Trump because he’s excited about the alternatives. He’s just turned off by Trump’s racism, thinks his economic policies are chaotic, and is ready to punish him for failing to keep his health care promises…
Then there’s the Romney/Trump voter…
Here, the only expressed regret is that Trump is too dishonest. It’d be interesting to learn which lies are most concerning to Mr. Brogna, but the cumulative effect has been sufficient for him to not vote for Trump again.
There’s a narrative on the left that Trump voters are unreachable, deplorable racists who showed through their 2016 support for the man that they have no moral standards. Polls showing the president retaining the support of 90 precent or more of Republicans tend to confirm this opinion. But the truth is that Trump got votes for many different reasons, including from many traditional Democrats who were frustrated about the economy and from Republicans who opted for him only because they had spent a lifetime marinating in anti-Clinton storylines. Trump has taken these voters for granted, and it’s likely to cost him.
Democrats must not compromise on their core issues, especially the existential fight against white Christian nationalism, to win over former Trump voters, especially at the cost of demoralizing and demobilizing Democratic voters (either likely or ‘low-attachment’). But if they can pick off a few former Trump voters simply by reminding those on the fence how he has failed to make their lives better–and telling those same voters how Democrats will make their lives better–it can’t hurt. And the same rhetoric can be used to win over Democratic-leaning, low-attachment voters (e.g., healthcare). It would be political malpractice to not do this.
mikethemadbiologist
Not terribly surprising. But please remember, the various non-white demographics also tend to hold, statistically, similarly unfavorable views of each other, and sometimes of whites. Furthermore, consider the age ranges typically represented by these political loyalties: why would you not expect Sanders voters to skew far less prejudiced than Trump or Clinton voters?
I’m interested in how people feel, internally, about various demographic groups other than their own, but I’m far more interested in what public policies they do (or do not) support, that could have an effect on marginalized groups. And that’s a far different story. Democratic voters, on the whole, do not vote based on internalized lower opinions of groups that are not white. And maybe that’s true of Kasich voters too?