"Disaffected Republicans"

[vi5]

This is a pretty good analysis that shows that the whole "disaffected Republicans", "Republican exodus" and the "death of the Republican party" lines are pretty much not happening. Obviously it's an analysis and interpretation like any other, but it seems pretty data based.

The occasional anecdotal evidence of someone leaving the Republican party is nice and all, but the fact is we should not be banking on some mass exodus of "reachable" or "reasonable" Republicans to win us elections.

Link to tweet

[Squinch]

1. In 2016, both lines were closer than they are now. Whiny donnie

only won the electoral college with a few thousand votes.

"Long term average" is NOT the salient number here. Comparison to 16 is. The graphs show good news.

[Snotcicles]

2. We need a massive re-registration campaign along with

bringing in the new youth first time voters.

[Squinch]

3. Every rally I have gone to, there seems to be high school

kids circulating with registration forms. It always makes my heart sing a little.

We're beginning to do wider efforts here. Hopefully it will be enough.

[vi5]

4. Exactly.....

Continuing to bank on this zombie myth of the "independent voter" (as defined by the media and overpaid consultants) or "moderate Republican" is going to get us even less than it's gotten us so far (which is next to nothing).

[Snotcicles]

5. The voter purging that is going on will leave many voters unregistered without their knowledge. nt

[Pallas_Athena]

6. There is some evidence for disaffection

Isn't the more relevant statistic this one - which compares partisan versus leaners over time?

Link to tweet

I know this is a little late, but I just came across this thread.

In his original article in Feb., Franklin had Republican partisans at 24.1 & Democrats at 29.3. In both cases below the historical average. Leaners were at 15.1 (GOP) and 17.7 (Dem), above average.

https://medium.com/@PollsAndVotes/trends-in-party-id-2004-2018-143a7fddde58

In his tweet, the numbers were
Partisan:
GOP 25.3 (up from 24.1)
Dem 29.1 (down 0.2)

Leaners:
GOP 15.9 (up from 15.1) mean 13.1
Dem 17.3 (down from 17.7) mean 15.5

GOP Partisans were down compared to the 2016 election and Leaners were up and continued to go up between February & July. SO maybe there is/was something to the notion of disaffected Republicans. Of course, there's also disaffection among Dems since 2016, but the GOP is much further from its average (15.9 minus 13.1 = 2.8) than Dem (17.3 minus 15.5 = 1,8).

This is all academic of course as the real question is where are the parties now. However, even with regard to the statistics, what we don't know about the Leaners is whether they will cross over in their votes or stay home. They're more likely to than Partisans, but we don't know how much.

[vi5]

7. It's not that I don't think leaners don't exist...

...I just think their numbers are so small, especially when only a portion of them are actually likely to cross over that designing campaigns based off of them is a more fruitless endeavor.

It's not that they don't exist, it's just that campaigns and the media and consultants should stop emphasizing them as the be all, end all.

Yeah, find things that will appeal to them and emphasize that stuff, but don't alter what we believe or what we want our actual voters to know about to appeal to this small number of people.