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Tag: democracy corps
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville

New Report Depicts Trump Voters As ‘Angry, Despondent, Powerless’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who has been married to conservative consultant Mary Matalin since 1993, has long said that in order to defeat Republicans, Democrats need to understand where their voters are coming from. That includes Donald Trump supporters, who Carville and fellow Democratic strategist Stan Greenberg examined via some focus groups in March.

Carville and Greenberg are the leaders of Democracy Corps, a Democratic polling/research organization. Although its primary goal is to help Democrats win elections, Democracy Corps sometimes studies GOP voters in order to determine why they vote the way they do — its Republican Party Project has been studying trends among the GOP electorate. And in March, Democracy Corps used focus groups to compare diehard Trump voters with "non-Trump conservatives and moderates."

In a March 26 report, Democracy Corps explained, "We conducted focus groups in March with Trump loyalists in Georgia and Wisconsin and Trump-aligned, non-Trump conservatives and moderates in suburban and rural Georgia, Ohio and Wisconsin. It took a long time to recruit these groups because Trump voters seemed particularly distrustful of outsiders right now, wary of being victimized, and avoided revealing their true position until in a Zoom room with all Trump voters — then, they let it all out."

Democracy Corps found that "the Trump loyalists and Trump-aligned were angry, but also, despondent, feeling powerless and uncertain they will become more involved in politics…. The Trump loyalists and the Trump-aligned are animated about government taking away their freedom and a cancel culture that leaves no place for White Americans and the fear they're losing 'their' country to non-Whites."

Democracy Corps also found that "Trump loyalists and the Trump- aligned" were "angered most of all by Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antifa" and believe those movements "were responsible for a full year of violence in Democratic cities that put White people on the defensive — and was ignored by the media."

Meanwhile, Democracy Corps found "the non-Trump conservatives and moderates bloc" to be "marginally smaller but vocal in opposition to Trump's direction and animated by his alienation of non-Republicans, the extremism, the 2nd Amendment and guns, and role of government and more."

During the 2020 election, President Joe Biden enjoyed a broad range of support. Everyone from progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City to prominent conservatives like Cindy McCain, former Sen. Jeff Flake, and columnist Mona Charen endorsed him. But diehard Trump voters were bitterly disappointed that he lost the election, and Democracy Corps' focus groups found that they are in a state of total despair.

Democracy Corps explained, "They felt powerless to reverse these important national political decisions, and frustrated that their divided party failed to act with the same determination and unity as the Democrats. They believed Democrats were smarter, rigged the election, had a plan to grow their support, and stuck to their guns — unlike the fickle Republican leaders who gave up on Trump."

Democracy Corps found that the "Trump loyalist" voters didn't feel threatened by Biden himself the way they felt threatened by President Barack Obama — as Biden is a White male in his late seventies. But they viewed Biden as a puppet of the far left. Meanwhile, the "non-Trump conservatives and moderates" expressed a willingness to give Biden a chance.

"The moderates and non-Trump conservatives are just 30 percent of their party, but it makes clear how divided the Republican Party is," Democracy Corps explained. "They know they are a minority, but events since the 2020 election are forcing them to challenge Trump and his party."

Democracy Corps concluded its report on the focus groups by stressing that opponents of Trumpism need to understand the divisions among conservatives.

"Forestalling the worst scenarios and empowering those intent on marginalizing a Trump-dominated Republican Party begins with understanding its new factions and what motivates them," Democracy Corps concluded. "These first focus groups provide rich insights into an angry, despondent and divided party. And Democracy Corps hopes to use these groups and innovative survey methodologies to understand this Trump-dominated party and all its factions and provide its opponents with the tools they need to defeat it."

Poll: Distrust Over Trump And Tax Cuts Driving Democratic Midterm Wave

Poll: Distrust Over Trump And Tax Cuts Driving Democratic Midterm Wave




For Republicans, disaster seems to dominate every news cycle: Paul Ryan, the House Speaker and one of his party’s most prolific fundraisers, announces that he will not run for reelection (and the leading would-be GOP nominee in his district is an actual Nazi). Ryan’s retirement is only the latest of at least 40 Republican members who are doing likewise. Nonpartisan analysts continue to increase the odds in blue turnovers in usually safe red districts. The historically unpopular president has instigated a trade war that is alienating his own rural base.

And the tax cut that was expected to serve as the centerpiece of the Republican midterm campaign? A new poll from Democracy Corps and the American Federation of Teachers shows that in House battleground districts, relatively few people believe the benefits were distributed fairly or that the tax cut benefits them and their families — indeed, the more they learn, the more voters are motivated to vote for Democrats.

Conducted by Greenberg Quinlan & Rosner, the poll of 1000 voters showed a generic advantage for Democrats of 10 percentage points nationally and — albeit with a smaller sample — an advantage of 16 points in the battleground districts. That 16-point Democratic margin also shows up among voters with the highest level of interest in the midterm.

In a memo that accompanies the survey, pollster Stan Greenberg and AFT president Randi Weingarten say it shows that vigorous argument from Democrats on taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and infrastructure can wipe out any boost that Republicans hope to get from economic conditions. Driven by dislike of Donald Trump and his entire cabinet (Betsy DeVos is the most unpopular name polled), Democratic voter intensity is exceptionally strong — while Republican interest is waning.

Greenberg and Weingarten write:

The midterm election is starting to break against Donald Trump and the Republican Party in profound ways and running on the economy and the new tax cut helps further solidify advantages for Democrats. This is according to a new AFT-Democracy Corps national phone poll and deep focus group research on the economy, President Trump, the new tax cuts, and strategies for 2018.

The results of this AFT-Democracy Corps poll reflect the same conditions witnessed in the real world of special elections where Democrats have won: differential enthusiasm, but also some movement of Trump voters. Democrats hold a 10-point lead in the generic vote in this poll, produced by strong leads with people of color, millennial women, unmarried women, and college women. This poll also shows stunning new breakthroughs with seniors, where Democrats are ahead, and the white working class, which has now fractured along gender lines.

Big gaps in intensity and enthusiasm are an inescapable party of the story. Democrats’ strong disapproval of Trump exceeds Republicans’ strong approval of Trump by almost 30 points, and the generic margin grows to a stunning 16-points among the 50 percent of registered voters with the highest interest in the 2018 election…

Progressives should stop worrying that the passage of the tax cut shows the GOP is delivering on their signature promise. We now know from this poll that the tax cut is as much a voting issue for its opponents as it is for its supporters, for Democrats as for Republicans, for liberals as for conservatives…We have already seen evidence of this in races like the [Pennsylvania-18] special election where the Republicans pulled their tax cut ads.

Both their memo and the poll crosstabs are worth reading in full.

IMAGE: Donald Trump meets with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on Capitol Hill. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

 

New Poll: Democracy Corps Says Clinton Boasts ‘Commanding’ 12-Point Lead

New Poll: Democracy Corps Says Clinton Boasts ‘Commanding’ 12-Point Lead

In a final survey before Election Day, Democracy Corps finds Hillary Clinton with a “commanding 12-point lead” over Donald Trump. The national poll of 900 likely voters by the Greenberg, Quinlan & Rosner firm shows Clinton moving up to 50 percent of the vote, well ahead of Trump’s 38 percent, while Libertarian Gary Johnson gets only five percent and Green Party candidate Jill Stein remains stuck at two percent.

According to Democracy Corps, a nonprofit led by James Carville and Stan Greenberg, Clinton’s dominant position is the product of both historic voting patterns and a “breathtakingly unpopular Republican Party” led by Trump, as well as rising approval numbers for President Obama.

But Greenberg also told The National Memo that Clinton’s “impressive performance” in the debates and afterward had “brought down her negatives,” reassuring voters that her presidency would be “good for middle-class families and the economy.”

Although Trump still leads among white working class males, his advantage in that group is slightly lower than the lead held by Mitt Romney in 2012. Among independents, white college-educated males, and seniors, Trump is roughly even with Clinton — while she leads by wide margins among all women, white college-educated women, millennial voters, and suburban voters, In each of those groups her margin over Trump exceeds 20 points.

Greenberg emphasized that Clinton’s “emerging landslide” could turn 2016 into a wave election that does grave damage to Republicans in down-ballot Congressional and legislative races. The Democracy Corps poll included “a simulated contest where the Republican congressional candidates argue they are needed as an independent check on Clinton” and Democrats respond with a sharp counter-attack. The simulation showed Democrats moving into a nine-point lead on Congressional ballots, the cusp of a party turnover in the House of Representatives; and in that circumstance, Democratic control of the Senate would be assured.

While it is just one poll, the Democracy Corps projection deserves particular consideration for one simple reason: Greenberg and his team at GQR got the popular vote result in 2012 exactly right, missing by only a tenth of a percentage point. Their final survey predicted that President Obama would win by 3.8 percent; the final count had him up by 3.9 percent. As former GQR staffer Erica Seifert observed in a post for National Memo in December 2012:

Our final Democracy Corps poll (completed two days before Election Day) showed the race 49 to 45 percent –an unrounded margin of 3.8 points.  With other public polls still showing the race tied or Romney ahead, our poll was an outlier.

We were so confident in our results, we put our reputations on the line in the waning days of the campaign.  We were confident we had it right because we believed that the national poll tracking averages were likely underrepresenting Obama’s vote.  The main issue was cell phones and the changing demographics that most other pollsters miscalculated.   Those pollsters did not reach the new America.

In this cycle, however, the Democracy Corps poll is not such a lonely outlier. Most national polls now show Clinton with a substantial lead of five points or more — and the ABC News tracking poll, which was the second most accurate in 2012, also places Clinton at 50 percent and Trump at 38 percent. In fact, the ABC News results, based on a survey of 874 likely voters, are strikingly similar to those reported by Democracy Corps.

Discussing the reasons behind the results, Greenberg said that “Trump has driven away college-educated voters so he is only even with white college-educated men” — a group that is usually very reliable for the GOP candidate. And because the Republican nominee is also “only [running] even among seniors, he has none of the conservative base that a normal Republican would have.”

Despite her “stunning numbers” among college-educated and unmarried women, Greenberg added, there is still room for Clinton to “consolidate her support among Democrats,” where is still below the level of partisan support reached by Obama in 2012. “She is around 90 percent with Democrats and getting about two-thirds of minority voters,”he said. “Each could be higher.”He believes the key to consolidating her share of Democratic voters and improving Democratic chances down-ballot is for Clinton to emphasize “an economic change message, [which was] tested in this poll.”

What had been regarded throughout this cycle as an uninspiring succession of one Democratic president by another might then be recast as a change election that at last removes the obstructionist Republican majorities on Capitol Hill.

Democratic Strategists Prepare For An ‘Electoral Earthquake’

Democratic Strategists Prepare For An ‘Electoral Earthquake’

2016 could be an apocalyptic year for the Republican Party. That’s the conclusion, at least, of pollster Stan Greenberg, who, together with Democratic strategist James Carville, operates Democracy Corps, a political consulting firm.

In “The Wave: A Guide For Progressives,” a recent report from Democracy Corps, Greenberg explains: Donald Trump’s increasingly long, threadbare coattails have endangered Republican control of the Senate, and maybe even the House of Representatives. Trump could have an impact on Republican statehouses as well.

It all depends, Greenberg says, on how Democrats characterize not just Donald Trump, but other Republicans down-ballot.

If they follow the Clinton campaign’s instruction, they will distinguish the two: your local Republican congressman is bad. But Donald Trump is dangerous.

On the other hand, Greenberg advises that in order to achieve an “electoral earthquake,” Democrats need to paint Trump as indicative of the larger problem of extremist Republican politics, which he says runs down to the local level.

“Fueling the Republican civil war and getting moderates to vote Democratic … is the biggest opportunity for progressives to play offense and produce a sustainable fracturing of the Republican Party that impacts the Congress, the states and the issues that get taken up after this electoral earthquake,” Greenberg writes.

It’s a two-front battle, in that sense, according to “The Wave.” First, tie Trump to down-ballot Republicans. Second, sell progressives on a centrist Democrat.

And yet, there are universal political answers in the year of Trump: Common sense government like infrastructure spending works, Greenberg says, and avoiding culture wars poisonous to conservatives won’t hurt, either — that would place Democrats opposite their 2012 effort, which center-staged the danger of a conservative Supreme Court challenging abortion rights.

Most of all, Greenberg writes, don’t dance around so-called “angry white working class men.” Contrary to the overwhelming beliefs of the chattering classes (and down-ballot Democratic strategists), they aren’t a monolithic group, and more important, even if they were, they’re nowhere near a large enough group to win elections on their own.

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at a gathering of law enforcement leaders including New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton (L) at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, U.S., August 18, 2016.  REUTERS/Lucas Jackson