New Data Indicates GOP Midterm Success Depends on Keeping Newer Voters

In the last presidential vote, Donald Trump was successful in attracting substantial support from those who had sat out previous elections, especially in several of the closest battleground states, new data reveals, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

The decisions of these new pool of voters about whether to take part in the midterms will be a key factor in who emerges victorious in next year’s elections.

A breakdown of the data illustrates that Trump attracted new supporters to the Republican Party, mainly working class and rural voters, which helps explain how he won 11 million more votes than four years earlier.

But the bad news from the data for the GOP is that Trump lost backing from professional class and suburban voters who more regularly come out to the polling station, which means that Republican will most likely be more reliant on those who need an extra push to turn out again, according to the Journal.

This trend is particularly problematic for the GOP, because in the last election Democrats drew increased backing from those who vote regularly, have college degrees, and higher incomes.

Tom Bonier, chief executive of TargetSmart, a Democrat voter-data firm, that conducted an analysis on the data, explained that “Trump’s strategy did alienate higher-educated, white suburban voters,” a group he called the “highest-turnout demographic,” meaning that to the extent that the Republican Party’s coalition is shifting, “that’s built on a necessity of turnout among newer and less-likely voters.”

Scott Tranter of 0ptimus, a data and analytics firm that works with Republican candidates, agreed.

“The traditional Republican base has a history of turning out,” he said. “These new voters who are remaking the Republican base — we still have to see them come out cycle after cycle.”

A group of five Democrat polling firms admitted that “Among low propensity voters — people who we expect to vote rarely — the Republican share of the electorate exceeded expectations at four times the rate of the Democratic share.”

In addition, in at least three of the most competitive states last year, Republicans had a registration advantage over Democrats among those who were old enough to vote in prior elections but didn’t cast ballots until last year, according to TargetSmart.

But a big challenge for Republicans is those who turned old enough to cast ballots for the first time last year, because significantly more of these young voters chose to register as Democrats than as Republicans.

“I would rather be a Democrat trying to convince a young voter who voted for the first time than a Republican candidate trying to see if someone who hadn’t voted for 20 years, and I got them to vote once, whether I can get them to vote again,” Tranter told The Wall Street Journal. “The younger voters don’t have 20 years of not voting.”

But Stanley Greenberg, a veteran Democrat pollster, pointed out problems for his party in the midterms, saying a poll he conducted of competitive states and House districts showed that 68% of Republicans held a high level of interest in the 2022 elections, compared with only 57% of Democrats.

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