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What GOP Voters Are Thinking: A Snapshot from Maryland
Before our local Maryland primary on April 26 — part of the so-called I-95 set of primaries that was Donald Trump’s penultimate victory before his clinching Indiana win — I spent a couple of days canvassing for John Kasich and local candidates door to door, at public places, and at the polls in Frederick and Montgomery Counties. I’ve done this a couple of times before elections and have never regretted it; I always learn a lot about what’s on other people’s minds.
A few takeaways from this season:
1) Trump had plenty of support in the places I went, across a considerable diversity of voters at many income and education levels. Unlike Trump supporters I had encountered on Twitter, most of his real-life voters were not angry or combative, though some were.
2) I was a little shocked at how unpopular Ted Cruz was. The two main reasons were, first, that he “wore his religion on his sleeve,” as one voter put it, which seemed to have alienated even many voters for whom religion was very important in their own lives, and, second, that he was too negative or couldn’t get along with people. I myself would have rated Trump as worse than Cruz on this latter dimension but Trump supporters assured me that his trash talk was just talk and that on some level he wanted to get along with everyone unlike Cruz who really did make enemies.
3) Related to 2), while I had tended to see Trump and Kasich as opposites, many voters liked both or were undecided between them. One theme was that both understood business and would be good for the economy. Another was that both got things done in contrast to Cruz who you could expect to stand in the way of a workable deal just to make some point or other.
4) People really want to go with the winning side. That Trump was going to win (at least win the Republican nomination) was seen as a powerful reason for supporting him and some voters felt they would be throwing their vote away by voting for Kasich (who came in second in my state) even if they thought the Ohioan would make the better president.
These opinions are all different from my own, to one extent or another, but that’s the point of going out to talk to other people instead of staying home talking with one’s own circle.
Published in General
Cruz ran as an evangelical, a subset of religious thought and practice. In another day, say the Moral Majority day, that might have been enough. Not now.
There is also another stream of thought. Cruz was known, for both good and ill, regarding his trashing of the majority leader and his virtual estrangement from the Senate majority. Some of us who could vote for him in the general (and I am one of those people) rather understood that he’d have a hard time dealing with Congress given his charged personality and the common history involved.
So voting for or against Cruz probably concerned more than one consideration.
Kind of ironic considering that Maryland was originally founded as Catholic refuge, and that the only Catholic signer to the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll. My how far we have fallen.
Another Marylander here. I too voted Cruz in the primary, and was disheartened by the final numbers for Trump.
I am continually surprised at the width and depth of Trump’s support among friends, neighbors and coworkers. People I thought could easily see that Trump was not a traditional conservative not only support him, but actively defend him. This includes religious, non-religious, casual voters and really engaged folks as well.
I don’t get it, but here we are nevertheless.
Never Trump
Neverer Hillary
Honestly, I’m not trying to insult you here, but read your words there, and ask “Maybe it’s me?”
Trump’s success seems to be a big Pauline Kael moment for many true believers.
Well sure, it’s me – I don’t get Bernie supporters either, like my poor lost, misguided nieces.
Or LaRouche supporters.
Or people that like beets…….
I was speaking of the general election, not the primary, which by definition is a different sample of the state population.
I heard a Montana judge on NPR this morning make the astute observation that many of his neighbors seem to view Trump as a white board, someone to fill up with their own hopes and dreams. That’s probably what any politician strives for, Trump just having a special talent for achieving it. The process by which a Romney is seen as “doesn’t care about people like me,” and a Trump isn’t, is a deep mystery to me.
Until recently, the majority of GOP voters still hadn’t voted for Trump (don’t know if that has changed the last two weeks), so no I don’t think its him.
I’ve noted several times that it seems half (ish) of his supporters like him because he is who he is, and will do what he says, and the other half (ish) say they like him, and he doesn’t believe what he says, and he will be completely different after elected. Clearly these two halves have not had any conversation that went beyond “who are you voting for?”
Mitt Romney averaged about 34% in his 2012 victories until the very end of April… pretty close to where we are now. John McCain’s early averages were even worse, and he didn’t get 50%+ in any US state until Rhode Island/Vermont. His percentages hovered around 31 or 32 until then. So it’s not like Trump was somehow uniquely unpopular among primary voters.
Clearly, he is popular. That is exactly the part I don’t get.
I think I read somewhere here on Ricochet that he already has more raw votes than McCain or Romney.