Working-Class Vote

In Defying the Odds, we talk about the social and economic divides that enabled Trump to enter the White House. In Divided We Stand, we discuss how these divides played out in 2020.  The Democratic Party is a coalition of minorities and college-educated whites.  They have problems with rural and white working-class voters.

Ruy Teixeria:

As Timothy Noah has remarked:

For the past 100 years, no Democrat—with one exception—has ever entered the White House without winning a majority of the working-class vote, defined conventionally as those voters who possess a high school degree but no college degree. The exception was Joe Biden in 2020, under highly unusual circumstances (a badly-mismanaged Covid pandemic, an economy going haywire). It’s unlikely in the extreme that Biden can manage that trick a second time. He must win the working-class vote in 2024.

As the Times data (and much other data) show, that objective seems quite far away for Biden at this point. And that’s a problem: you can’t hit the target unless you’re aiming at it. That’s why I think that the Biden campaign’s notorious “polling denialism” might well be viewed as “working class denialism.” The Biden campaign would rather think about this election as “the democracy election” and/or “the abortion rights election”; advocates tell the campaign it should be “the climate election” or “the student loans election” or “the Palestinian rights election” or the “racial justice election.” But in the end, the outcome will be determined by how the working class assesses the choice between Trump and Biden and casts their vote. That fact should not be denied—and the fact should be faced that none of the above issues provides the key for turning the election in Democrats’ favor.

What would? The answer may be quite mundane if challenging to implement, not least because it goes against the grain of the Democrats’ shadow party and their amen corner in the media and academia. A recent memo from the Blueprint strategy notes:

We tested messages that Biden could use to expose Trump’s vulnerabilities, and the ones that voters found most compelling focused on economic fairness and how that should be reflected in public policy—not on Biden and Trump’s respective characters, biographies, and backgrounds….

Blueprint’s latest survey, conducted in partnership with The Liberal Patriot, showed that many of the policies that are most popular with voters can be used to make the case that Biden is the candidate for average Americans while Trump is the candidate who advocates for the interests of the very rich. Among the 40 policies we tested, the most popular ones are those that crack down on corporations, lower the prices of health care and other things, and protect Medicare and Social Security.

J

Biden Proposes Debates

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The the 2024 race has begun. So has the debate over debates.

Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman at NYT:

President Biden is willing to debate former President Donald J. Trump at least twice before the election, and as early as June — but his campaign is rejecting the nonpartisan organization that has managed presidential debates since 1988, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.

The letter by the Biden campaign lays out for the first time the president’s terms for giving Mr. Trump what he has openly clamored for: a televised confrontation with a successor Mr. Trump has portrayed, and hopes to reveal, as too feeble to hold the job. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump quickly agreed to the two dates proposed by the Biden campaign, although it was unclear whether he would agree to Mr. Biden’s other terms.

Mr. Biden and his top aides want the debates to start much sooner than the dates proposed by the Commission on Presidential Debates, so voters can see the two candidates side by side well before early voting begins in September. They want the debate to occur inside a TV studio, with microphones that automatically cut off when a speaker’s time limit elapses. And they want it to be just the two candidates and the moderator — without the raucous in-person audiences that Mr. Trump feeds on and without the participation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or other independent or third-party candidates.

Biden campaign: “The purpose of this letter is to provide notice that the President will not be participating in the Commission on Presidential Debates’ announced debates in 2024.” They float a different schedule: one debate in late June, one in September; VP debate in late July. pic.twitter.com/A6fIazJSjG

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 15, 2024

Note the jump cuts:

Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate.

Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again.

Well, make my day, pal. pic.twitter.com/AkPmvs2q4u

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 15, 2024

Biden and Polls: Confidence? Denialism? Delusion?

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden. 

Hans Nichols and Alex Thompson at Axios:

President Biden doesn't believe his bad poll numbers, and neither do many of his closest advisers, according to people familiar with the matter.

Why it matters: The dismissiveness of the poor polling is sincere, not public spin, according to Democrats who have spoken privately with the president and his team.That bedrock belief has informed Biden's largely steady-as-she-goes campaign — even as many Democrats outside the White House are agitating for the campaign to change direction, given that Biden is polling well behind where he was four years ago.

The public polling simply doesn't reflect the president's support, they say.

Driving the news: In public and private, Biden has been telling anyone who will listen that he's gaining ground — and is probably up — on Donald Trump in their rematch from 2020."While the press doesn't write about it, the momentum is clearly in our favor, with the polls moving towards us and away from Trump," Biden told donors during a West Coast swing last week.

A few days earlier, confronted with some of his bad poll numbers in a rare interview with CNN, Biden offered a more sweeping indictment of polling methodology."The polling data has been wrong all along. How many — you guys do a poll at CNN. How many folks you have to call to get one response?"

Zoom in: The latest polling in the six battleground states likely to decide the presidential race — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — doesn't paint a rosy picture for Biden.A new New York Times/Siena survey, which sampled more than 4,000 people across the swing states, had Trump winning five of them among registered voters.

A Bloomberg News poll last month similarly found Biden trailing Trump in six of seven swing states (they also polled North Carolina).

Reality check: Some national polls have shown Biden ahead or tied with Trump — and in several other polls the president is within the surveys' margins for error. That's given Democrats and Republicans alike ammunition to claim they have momentum.Biden likes to cite his numbers in a recent PBS/Marist poll, which show him ahead.

A  Substack called "Hopium Chronicles" focuses on survey data that reinforce optimism. 

Anti-Semitism and Tropes

Our recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.

 Karen Yourish, Danielle Ivory, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Alex Lemonides at NYT:

Debate rages over the extent to which the protests on the political left constitute coded or even direct attacks on Jews. But far less attention has been paid to a trend on the right: For all of their rhetoric of the moment, increasingly through the Trump era many Republicans have helped inject into the mainstream thinly veiled anti-Jewish messages with deep historical roots.

The conspiracy theory taking on fresh currency is one that dates back hundreds of years and has perennially bubbled into view: that a shady cabal of wealthy Jews secretly controls events and institutions contrary to the national interest of whatever country it is operating in.

The current formulation of the trope taps into the populist loathing of an elite “ruling class.” “Globalists” or “globalist elites” are blamed for everything from Black Lives Matter to the influx of migrants across the southern border, often described as a plot to replace native-born Americans with foreigners who will vote for Democrats. The favored personification of the globalist enemy is George Soros, the 93-year-old Hungarian American Jewish financier and Holocaust survivor who has spent billions in support of liberal causes and democratic institutions.

...

In a July 2023 email to supporters, the Trump campaign employed an image that bears striking resemblance to a Nazi-era cartoon of a hook-nosed puppet master manipulating world figures: Mr. Soros as puppet master, pulling the strings controlling President Biden.

We continue to see fundraising emails from the Trump campaign that feature language & imagery of George Soros controlling puppet strings and secret globalist cabals. This isn’t just disturbing, it’s indisputably dangerous and reprehensible. Let’s be clear, these are antisemitic… pic.twitter.com/jxIInDBeOj

— ADL (@ADL) July 11, 2023

Native Americans in Montana

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.

Natalie Fertig at Politico:

Native Americans are always an important voting bloc in Montana, where they make up 6.5 percent of the population, per U.S. Census data. But this November, their involvement could potentially impact the entire nation.

Control of the Senate may hang on the outcome of the Montana Senate race, where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is up for reelection in this reliably red state, likely facing off against Republican Tim Sheehy, whom former President Donald Trump has endorsed. Trump won Montana by nearly 17 percentage points in 2020, and Tester won by 3.5 percentage points — or nearly 18,000 votes — in 2018. Montana’s tribes comprise about five percent of the voting bloc, nearly twice the margin by which Tester won his last race.

Native voters are “hugely important to the Democratic base,” says Jim Messina, an Obama White House alum and former adviser to Tester with deep political roots in Montana. Tester ousted Republican Sen. Conrad Burns in 2006 in part by siphoning off some of Burns’ support among Native Americans. “Tester was able to cut into that bloc and really move them towards him,” Messina says.

But turnout could be a problem.

To rectify this, Montana Democrats are rolling out their largest-ever Native voting initiative, planning to invest more than $1 million over the next six months. That’s nearly double the $600,000 they had to target Native voters during the 2018 campaign. (The Montana GOP did not respond to multiple requests for an interview about their efforts to woo tribal voters.)

As a longtime advocate of Native Americans in politics, Blackfeet tribal member Michael DesRosier is a true believer in the power of the indigenous vote.“We have the numbers,” the former Glacier County commissioner says as he sits in the county office, one brown cowboy boot-clad foot propped up on the other knee. “That’s the quandary here: getting them out to vote.”

Ground Game, Rural Vote

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Hans Nichols and Alex Thompson at Axios:

President Biden's campaign is investing in dozens of field offices in some of the nation's reddest counties, pressing its early money advantage to establish political beachheads in hostile territory.

Why it matters: Biden's team isn't under the illusion it can win these rural counties Donald Trump won in 2020. It's fighting to cut into Republicans' margins — particularly in swing states such as Wisconsin. The goal is to establish a ground presence early in the election cycle and keep rural Biden supporters motivated — while letting voters dismayed by Trump or curious about Biden know they're not be alone.

Zoom in: Biden's campaign has opened more than 150 offices and hired more than 400 staffers in the seven battleground states and will have 200 offices and 500 staffers there by the end of May, the campaign says.In Wisconsin, Biden now has 46 offices across 42 counties, including 23 where Trump won by double digits in 2020.

Biden's strategy still calls for a heavy presence in Wisconsin's Democrat-heavy population centers, with three field offices in Milwaukee County, the most populous in the state.

But the president's team also has offices in places like Rusk County, home to about 14,000 people. Trump trounced Biden by 35% there four years ago, receiving 2,740 more votes.

That's the kind of rural-county margin Biden is hoping to reduce at a time when polls have suggested that voter enthusiasm within Biden's base isn't as energized as it was in 2020, when he won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes.

What they're saying: "The name of the game is to lose by less" in red counties, Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler told Axios."You lose a place by 25 instead of by 35, that can be really vital" in a close battle to win the overall vote in a state, said Dan Kanninen, the Biden campaign's battleground states director.

 Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Maeve Reston and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez at WP:

Trump’s 2024 campaign has traded Star Wars metaphors for talk of a “leaner” and “more efficient” operation, with less real estate, fewer employees and greater dependence on outside groups.

“We’re focused on quality over quantity. I mean, how novel a concept,” top strategist Chris LaCivita told the crowd of top donors May 4 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., according to attendees.
 
The shift comes as President Biden’s campaign and its allies, buoyed by incumbency, have been moving in the opposite direction, building a more expansive operation sooner than in 2020. Strategists for both major parties expect Democrats to raise and spend more than Republicans over the coming months, a dynamic that has been magnified by the significant legal costs Trump’s fundraising apparatus has absorbed to defend him in state and federal courts.

 

"It means they don't have the campaign cash to spend."@DelPercioS and @DonnaFEdwards join @KatiePhang to talk about the reported GOP concerns about a "leaner" Trump campaign operation. pic.twitter.com/WVfr04IlcH

— 11th Hour (@11thHour) May 11, 2024

The Decline of the Non-Trumpist Right

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good.  Neither is the condition of the conservative and libertarian movements.

 Luke Mullins at Politico:

FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump.

“We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon. “It’s effective immediately.”

FreedomWorks’ board of directors voted unanimously on Tuesday to dissolve the organization, Brandon said. Wednesday will be the last workday for the group’s roughly 25 employees, though staffers will continue to receive paychecks and health care benefits for the next few months.

The development brings to a close a period of turmoil for the organization. FreedomWorks laid off 40 percent of its staff in March of 2023, and as a result of a drop in fundraising, its total revenue has declined by roughly half, to about $8 million, since 2022, Brandon said.

In an exclusive interview with POLITICO Magazine, Brandon said the decision to shut down was driven by the ideological upheaval of the Trump era.

After Trump took control of the conservative movement, Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt.

“A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist,” Brandon said. “So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted.”

Meryl Kornfield at WP:

Some Libertarian Party leaders are fuming over the party’s decision to have former president Donald Trump headline their national convention this month, with national committee members calling on the party to rescind the invitation.

The choice to have the presumptive nominee from another party speak at the Libertarian Party’s nominating convention has inflamed growing schisms within the minor party. State and local factions, presidential candidates and critics of the right-wing caucus that controls the party are registering their anger with Trump’s planned appearance. Over the weekend, the party’s leadership debated disinviting Trump from the Washington convention after the treasurer motioned to reverse course, with dissenters arguing there should be a vote over allowing Trump to attend “when over half of the membership is up in arms,” according to emails The Washington Post reviewed.

 

So the Heritage Foundation has gone full quack. No surprise.

Ivermectin doesn’t work against #COVID19. Neither does hydroxychloroquine. https://t.co/vdXqsiuR4y

— David Gorski, MD, PhD (@gorskon) May 8, 2024

For Sale at Mar-a-Lago: Environmental Deregulation

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

Josh Dawsey and Maxine Joselow at WP:

As Donald Trump sat with some of the country’s top oil executives at his Mar-a-Lago Club last month, one executive complained about how they continued to face burdensome environmental regulations despite spending $400 million to lobby the Biden administration in the last year.

Trump’s response stunned several of the executives in the room overlooking the ocean: You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

Trump’s remarkably blunt and transactional pitch reveals how the former president is targeting the oil industry to finance his reelection bid. At the same time, he has turned to the industry to help shape his environmental agenda for a second term, including the rollbacks of some of Biden’s signature achievements on clean energy and electric vehicles.

Polarized Attitudes Toward NATO and Ukraine

  Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses foreign influence and Trump's attack on democracy.  Russia helped Trump through 2020.  As Russia began its latest invasion of Ukraine, Trump lavished praise on Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. 

From Pew:

As NATO approaches its 75th anniversary, Americans are increasingly divided in their views about the alliance. Most continue to believe the United States benefits from its membership, but partisan differences on ratings of NATO have widened in recent years.

Three-quarters of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents rate the organization favorably, while only 43% of Republicans and Republican leaners agree – down from 55% in a 2022 survey conducted soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Attitudes toward the war in Ukraine have evolved to reflect the partisan polarization found across so many issues in U.S. politics. Democrats and Republicans differ sharply on views about aid to Ukraine, ratings of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and whether supporting Ukraine helps or hurts U.S. interests.

The share of Americans who believe the U.S. is not providing enough support to Ukraine has risen slightly in recent months, following setbacks for Ukraine on the battlefield and prolonged congressional debate over sending aid. (The survey was conducted before President Joe Biden signed into law an aid package sending nearly $61 billion to the Ukrainian war effort.)

Roughly one-quarter of Americans (24%) now say the U.S. is not providing enough aid, up from 18% in November 2023, when we last asked this question. Still, more Americans (31%) think the U.S. is providing too much aid, and 25% believe it’s giving the right amount.

However, views on this issue vary considerably by party. While the share of Democrats who believe the U.S. is not doing enough to help Ukraine declined after the initial onset of the war, it has increased more recently. Currently, 36% of Democrats say the U.S. is not providing enough aid.

In contrast, just 13% of Republicans say the U.S. is not giving enough support to Ukraine, while 49% believe it is giving too much. At the beginning of the war, Republican attitudes were essentially the reverse: 49% said the U.S. was not providing enough aid and 9% said it was providing too much. Among Republicans, conservatives are more likely than moderates and liberals to say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine.

Gaza, Students, and the Election

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.  The Gaza war is politically dangerous for Biden -- though perhaps not as much as it seemed earlier this year.

Sareen Habeshian at Axios:

College protests against Israel's war in Gaza are dominating headlines. But only a sliver of students are participating or view it as a top issue, according to a new Generation Lab survey shared exclusively with Axios.

Why it matters: The poll hints that the war — and the accompanying protests — might not hurt President Biden's election prospects among young voters as much as previously thought.

By the numbers: Only a small minority (8%) of college students have participated in either side of the protests, the survey of 1,250 college students found.Students ranked the conflict in the Middle East as the least important issue facing them out of nine options.

It landed behind health care reform, racial justice and civil rights, economic fairness and opportunity, education funding and access, and climate change.

What they found: The survey found that three times as many college students blame Hamas for the current situation in Gaza than they do President Biden.Some 34% blame Hamas, while 19% blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 12% blame the Israeli people and 12% blame Biden.

Zoom in: A large majority (81%) of students support holding protesters accountable, agreeing with the notion that those who destroyed property or vandalized or illegally occupied buildings should be held responsible by their university, per the survey.A majority also said they oppose the protest tactics: 67% say occupying campus buildings is unacceptable and 58% say it's not acceptable to refuse a university's order to disperse.

Another 90% said blocking pro-Israel students from parts of campus is unacceptable.

The other side: Students were still more likely to say they support the pro-Palestininan encampments than oppose them.45% said they support them either strongly or a little bit. 30% were neutral, and 24% were strongly or a bit opposed.

Trump's Rant

Our books have discussed Trump's low character, which was on display this weekend. 

Dasha Burns, Abigail Brooks, Olympia Sonnier, Henry J. Gomez and Amanda Terkel at NBC

Donald Trump compared President Joe Biden’s administration to the secret police force of Nazi Germany in remarks at a private, closed-door donor retreat on Saturday afternoon.

The former president’s comments came as he was talking about his legal troubles, attacking the prosecutors in the cases and bemoaning the recent indictments in Arizona of several of his former top aides, along with 11 so-called fake electors from the 2020 election.

“These people are running a Gestapo administration,” Trump said, according to audio of the luncheon provided to NBC News. “And it’s the only thing they have. And it’s the only way they’re going to win in their opinion.”

“Once I got indicted, I said, well, now the gloves have to come off,” Trump added, saying Biden is “the worst president in the history of our country. He’s grossly incompetent. He’s crooked as hell. He’s the Manchurian candidate."

 Marianne LeVine, Josh Dawsey and Maegan Vazquez at WP:

He called [Jack] Smith — who is prosecuting federal cases involving Trump’s handling of classified documents and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — a “f---ing a--hole.” He continued to mock another prosecutor, District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D) of Georgia’s Fulton County, for her past relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade, calling her “Mrs. Wade” and “a real beauty.”

 ...

The event, according to the audio and attendees, was quintessential Trump. At one point, as if he were at an auction, he told the crowd: “Anyone who makes a $1 million donation right now to the Republican Party … I will let you come up and speak.” Two donors then came to the stage, and one told the crowd: “Donald J. Trump is the person that God has chosen.”
...
“When you are Democrat, you start off essentially at 40 percent because you have civil service, you have the unions and you have welfare,” Trump said. “They get welfare to vote and then they cheat on top of that. They cheat.”

First Street Legal

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. The nomination phase has effectively ended. Trump has begun turning the RNC into his personal fiefdom. 

NBC:

Republican National Committee chief counsel Charlie Spies is parting ways with the party apparatus just months after stepping into the role. He was “pushed out," according to a source familiar with the move.

The RNC tried to balance their interests by pairing a bona fide lawyer who is not a conspiracist with a MAGA lunatic.

One month later the normal lawyer is out https://t.co/Me8xeAGs58 https://t.co/2WmhAsocwh

— Tim Miller (@Timodc) May 5, 2024

Dems Fight RFK Jr.

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun.

 Voters are not happy about having to choose between Trump and Biden.  Trump allies are trying to boost RFK Jr. in an effort to split the anti-Trump vote.

 Elena Schneider at Politico:

The coalition of Democratic groups that pressured No Labels out of the 2024 contest is now turning its sights on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Billboards funded by the Democratic National Committee have begun popping up outside Kennedy’s events. Trackers paid for by American Bridge, a Democratic super PAC, are following him with cameras. And another super PAC, founded exclusively to take on third-party threats, is message-testing ads on Kennedy in coordination with Future Forward, the flagship pro-Biden super PAC.

It’s a widespread effort among Democratic donors and strategists to neutralize Kennedy’s third-party threat to President Joe Biden’s reelection.

And Biden’s allies are now considering going even further, with a coalition of major Democratic groups privately discussing running a negative ad campaign against Kennedy.

Talks are preliminary, and the size and scope of the campaign — and even if it will go forward — remain unclear. But should it get the green light, the effort would likely be spearheaded by Future Forward; Clear Choice, another super PAC founded to stop third-party candidates; and American Bridge, another Democratic super PAC, according to two people involved in the effort who are not authorized to talk about it publicly.

If they cannot keep him off the ballot, they might try to drive antivax Trump voters into the RFK camp.

 

Joe Biden should run some ads about how he and Donald Trump don't agree on much, but they do agree that the COVID-19 vaccine Trump shepherded to completion and Biden successfully distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans was a modern miracle that saved lives. https://t.co/aUof7YrgN2

— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) April 30, 2024

Abortion Opinion

Our 2020 book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses the state of the parties. The state of the GOP is not good. Abortion was a big issue in the 2022 midterm. It will be a big issue in 2024.

PRRI:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans support abortion legality in all or most cases; partisans remain deeply divided. 

• More than six in ten Americans (64%) say abortion should be legal in most or all cases; by contrast, 35% of Americans say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.
• Just 9% of Americans believe that abortion should be illegal in all cases.
• Republicans and Democrats are deeply divided on abortion, with a 50-point gap between them: 86% of Democrats say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 36% of Republicans. Just 15% of Republicans believe abortion should be illegal in all cases.
• While Republican attitudes on abortion legality remain largely unchanged since 2010, Democratic support for abortion legality increased from 71% in 2010 to 86% in 2023; Support for abortion legality has also increased among independents over time, from 54% in 2010 to 67% in 2023.

...

A majority of residents in most states say that abortion should be legal; in no state do more than 16% of Americans support a ban on abortion.

• A majority of residents in most states say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases; there are only five states where a minority of residents support abortion legality.
• Roughly one in ten residents in most states say abortion should be illegal in all cases. This belief is most common in Kentucky and North Dakota (both 16%).
• Majorities of residents in blue states (70%) and red states (57%) and nearly two-thirds (64%) of residents in battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Abortion has become a more salient voting issue in the last five years; Democrats continue to prioritize abortion as a voting issue compared with Republicans, as do women and younger voters.

• Over one-third of Americans (36%) say they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion. In 2018, a notably lower number of Americans (21%) said they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion.
• Democrats (47%) are more likely than Republicans (34%) to say that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion; in 2018, about one-fourth of both Democrats (23%) and Republicans (25%) said they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion.
• Women (40%) are more likely than men (32%) to say that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their view on abortion.
• More than four in ten young Americans ages 18 to 29 (43%) say they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion; 53% of Democrats 18 to 29 report that they would only vote for a candidate who shares their views, compared with 41% of Republicans in that age group.

In battleground states, Democrats and women prioritize abortion as a voting issue more than Republicans and men.

• Democrats are 12 percentage points more likely than Republicans in battleground states to say that they will only vote for a candidate who shares their abortion views (46% vs. 34%).
• Women in battleground states are 9 points more likely than men (41% vs. 32%) to say that they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion.
• Half of Democratic women in battleground states (50%) say they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion, compared with 42% of Democratic men in battleground states.
• Similarly, Republican women are more likely than Republican men in battleground states (38% vs. 30%) to say that they will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on abortion.

Trump Interview and a NATO Kicker

Our latest book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  The 2024 race has begun.  Biden is calling Trump a threat to democracy.

 Former President Donald Trump sat down for a wide-ranging interview with TIME at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on April 12, and a follow-up conversation by phone on April 27.

You would use the military inland as well as at the border?

Trump: I don't think I'd have to do that. I think the National Guard would be able to do that. If they weren't able to, then I’d use the military. You know, we have a different situation. We have millions of people now that we didn't have two years ago.

Sir, the Posse Comitatus Act says that you can't deploy the U.S. military against civilians. Would you override that?

Trump: Well, these aren’t civilians. These are people that aren't legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before. They're coming in by the millions. I believe we have 15 million now. And I think you'll have 20 million by the time this ends. And that's bigger than almost every state.

...

Let’s shift to the economy, sir. You have floated a 10% tariff on all imports, and a more than 60% tariff on Chinese imports. Can I just ask you now: Is that your plan?

Trump: It may be more than that. It may be a derivative of that. A derivative of that. But it will be somebody—look when they come in and they steal our jobs, and they steal our wealth, they steal our country.

When you say more than that, though: You mean maybe more than 10% on all imports?

Trump: More than 10%, yeah. I call it a ring around the country. We have a ring around the country.

...

Mr. President, in our last conversation you said you weren't worried about political violence in connection with the November election. You said, “I think we're going to win and there won't be violence.” What if you don't win, sir?

Trump: Well, I do think we're gonna win. We're way ahead. I don't think they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time, which were horrible. Absolutely horrible. So many, so many different things they did, which were in total violation of what was supposed to be happening. And you know that and everybody knows that. We can recite them, go down a list that would be an arm’s long. But I don't think we're going to have that. I think we're going to win. And if we don't win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election. I don't believe they'll be able to do the things that they did the last time. I don't think they'll be able to get away with it. And if that's the case, we're gonna win in record-setting fashion.

Trump claims that when he was president, he told the leader of a NATO ally that he wouldn't defend them from Russia unless they "paid up." In other words, he encouraged Russian aggression. pic.twitter.com/wgDFQoPxgq

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2024

Super PACs, Door Knocking, and Coordination

Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics.  Among other things, it discusses party organizations and campaign finance.

David Drucker at The Dispatch:

The Federal Election Commission, in a little-noticed decision that could radically reshape campaign politics, is giving candidates the greenlight to coordinate with super PACs and other outside groups on door-to-door voter turnout activities.

Under the Texas Majority PAC advisory opinion the FEC issued on March 20, candidates for Congress and the White House are permitted to work directly with allied groups on the expensive, labor-intensive work of door-to-door voter canvassing. That includes giving strategic direction to supportive super PACs and other politically active organizations, as well as sharing preferred messaging. Additionally, the FEC’s advisory opinion also permits candidates to access the voter data collected from an allied group’s door-knocking—as long as their campaigns pay for it.

Political operatives on both sides of the aisle describe this development as consequential, saying it could change how candidates—especially presidential candidates—manage field operations. Some Republican insiders worry Democrats will gain yet another fundraising and infrastructure edge heading into November. “We’re concerned that it gives the Democrats an advantage because their outside groups are better funded and their people are easier to canvas,” a GOP election lawyer said, requesting anonymity to speak candidly.

Meanwhile, there are a few legal caveats.

The FEC’s Texas Majority PAC advisory opinion does not apply to phone banking, text messaging, or direct mail, crucial components of any get-out-the-vote effort. In other words, campaigns must still honor the ban on coordinating with outside groups vis-a-vis those activities. Additionally, election lawyers believe groups that coordinate door-to-door canvassing with candidates are going to have to “firewall” that effort from the rest of the organization, to ensure communications with the campaign, and the data gathered, are not used in advertising or messaging.

Until the FEC rendered this interpretation of campaign finance law, candidates were prohibited from communicating with outside groups—no exceptions.

So, even though super PACs can raise unlimited cash versus strict donor limits placed on campaigns, the inability to coordinate strategy and messaging—and to share in the trove of data—made relying on such groups for voter turnout risky. Further, it was usually ineffective. Exhibit A: Ron DeSantis and his 2024 president bid. The Florida governor delegated his ground game to a super PAC, Never Back Down. The effort devolved into infighting and produced a 30-point loss for DeSantis in Iowa’s caucuses.

With the barrier to coordinating on door-to-door canvassing lifted, farming out this key aspect of voter turnout to cash-flush super PACs and other resource-rich outside groups becomes eminently more feasible, strategically, since some of the problems that plagued DeSantis are less likely to emerge. Indeed, knowledgeable Republican sources tell Dispatch Politics that former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, and the Republican National Committee, are planning to cede door-knocking efforts to various outside groups.