Saturday, March 19, 2016

Trump voters in 2012?

So many polls, but have any of them asked Trump voters how they voted in the 2012 general election?  Romney? Obama? No Vote? Other?

These Trump voters don't seem the type that would have cast a vote for Obama.

Trump says he's bringing new voters in -- but Romney's share of the White vote in 2012 was greater than Reagan received in 1984, I believe. There's no doubt that Trump's voters are overwhelmingly White and that would not change in a general.

So, I don't think he's bringing in any new voters, but he is inspiring more passion in them.  But a vote is a vote.  No extra points for passion.

UPDATE:  I tried to find my source for the 1984 vs. 2012 White vote statistics.  I think it was the Reagan 1980 election where Romney's percentage of the White vote was higher than Reagan's. I found this Karl Rove article with some relevant facts regarding turnout -- back when we thought we'd be reaching out to Latinos.

 http://www.rove.com/articles/480


Some observers, including Phyllis Schlafly, Pat Buchanan and the Center for Immigration Studies, argue that if Republicans want to win back the White House, they should focus on white voters (who comprised 72% of the electorate in 2012) rather than worrying about Latinos. After all, new Census Bureau estimates are that 100,042,000 whites voted in 2008 but only 98,041,000 did in 2012. Wouldn't it be better to get those two million whites back into the polling booth? 
This argument is incomplete. If as many white voters turned out in 2012 as in 2008—and if Mitt Romney received the 59% of them that he got last fall—then his vote total would have increased by 1,180,590. But President Obama's vote total would have increased by 780,390, and Mr. Romney still would have lost the election by 4.6 million votes.

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