The Manhattan Institute carried out a poll that dissects the current Republican coalition. It’s not a particularly trustworthy think-tank — Christopher Rufo is a senior fellow, and it publishes the City Journal, a magazine that only catches my eye because it is egregiously racist and pro-eugenics — so don’t accept its conclusions without question. A major result of the poll is that it detects two broad categories within the party that are somewhat in conflict, but also have much in common with each other.
- Core Republicans (65%)—longstanding GOP voters who have consistently backed Republican presidential nominees since 2016 or earlier; and
- New Entrant Republicans (29%)—recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.
I don’t like either group. The Core Republicans are boringly familiar, they fit the old stereotype of Republicans. The New Entrant Republicans are much more interesting and unexpected (to me), and have a more complex perspective. They’re a mess, and I don’t understand how they’ve aligned themselves to Republicans — they mainly look a bunch of flighty and weird people who bumble about looking for self-justification of their views, some of which I might agree with, except they somehow end up supporting Trump.
This description starts out positively, and ends up horrifically.
But a sizeable minority—new entrants to the GOP coalition over the past two presidential cycles—look markedly different. Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives. A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence. Yet they overwhelmingly identify as Republicans today and voted for Donald Trump in 2024.
Yikes. “A significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence” — I think that alone is enough to explain why they ended up in the Trump camp. That’s the glue that is holding the coalition together.
With one other feature: they’re crackpots. This is the lunatic party.
Over a third of the Republican party thinks vaccines cause autism, that NASA faked the moon landing, that the Holocaust was exaggerated, that 9/11 was engineered by the US government. Over half believe Trump’s claim that his election losses were criminally engineered, and that the pandemic was produced by China. They’re nuts. This party is not salvaged by the fact that most might disagree with these conspiracy theories, it contains a substantial number of loons.
This explains a lot about the Republican party.
Although I’d like to see a similar analysis of Democratic voters — I’m lacking too much context here.
Conspiracism and related anti-intellectualism seem to be common factors here and a driving force in the steep and growing steeper all the time decline of the USoA.
That and the horribly human tendancy toseek scapegaots and demonise other öut-groups rtaher than take responsibilityand graps complex, difficult answers has a lot to do with esp the New Entrant Republicans group I reckon.
PS.
Might also worth be looking at & comparing with the anti-Science Greens party considering e.g. noted Putin shill and anti-vaxxer Stein. There’s a lot of conspiracism and anti-intellectualism there too. Of course, they are a very tiny 1% ~ish minority anyhow but even when you take so-called Independents into acount here – too many USAicans just don’t believe in scientifically demonstrated reality and do believe in too much that really isn’t true and cannot seem to do critical thinking.
Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain…
I suspect most of them have switched to the right because the Democrats have simply failed, or refused, to reach out to them, speak to them in language they can relate to, and show they’re really willing and committed to fight for those progressive values they’ve claimed to be for. The original German Nazis had similar success among a similar demographic in the last century.
“New Entrant Republicans (29%)—recent first-time GOP presidential voters, including those who supported Democrats in 2016 or 2020 or were too young to vote in cycles before 2020.”
The other side of the “Deep Rifts”, among others.
You know, the bigoted atheists and secularists who hates being called out. They went somewhere.
I read “dingle-bunnies” as “dingle-berries” and I don’t know which one I like better.
If you vote Republican nowadays, you vote to support the Trump/Russia/Israel crime cartel. You’re not just a good neighbor who is worried about migrants, their retirement or child abuse in pizza shops. You vote Republican because you are a bad person.
I have figured out why Trump does what he does.
He is very rich, old, politically invulnerable, sick, dying, and his mind is going fast and he knows it.
He has survived two impeachments, an assassination attempt, and numerous court cases against him.
He has nothing to lose and can do whatever he wants and no one can stop him.
@7,
There was no assassination attempt, ear cartilage doesn’t magically grow back.
He is not dying.
He has a lot to lose in fact, should Elon not manipulate the Midterms for him like he did before. (voting machines, Starlink internet, all that)
Otherwise, good comment.
I still haven’t figured out why anyone voted for Trump though.
.1. Part of it is that life is getting harder and harder for the average American.
I’m a Boomer and am supposed to tell stories about how hard it was back when I was young.
The fact is, our lives, though they were hard, were easier than young people today have.
The average American just struggles more these days, especially financially.
Housing, cars, and college/University educations are at their lowest affordability levels ever.
The same for medical care.
What else do you spend your money on anyway?
To take a few examples, my tuition the first year of University was something like $600, highly subsidized by the state. That same university is now $13,000 a year for tuition alone.
My parents bought their house in the SF Bay area in the 1970s for $38,000. It is now worth $1.3 million.
The cost to raise a middle class child to age 18 is $318,000.
Even factoring in inflation, the necessities of life just cost more.
There is no hope that things will get better, but they are getting worse rapidly.
.2. While life is harder these days for younger people, Trump isn’t going to change that. As a member of the ultra-rich oligarchy, he is going to make things a lot worse.
.3.
This is part of it too.
One of the things that sets the Trump regime apart is their cruelty and viciousness. It’s performative cruelty.
Masked, anonymous agents kidnapping people, putting them in vans, and sending them to places no one has even heard of like…Eswatinit.
Randomly bombing and killing people around the world for no tactical or strategic reasons.
Taking away Medicaid and Food Stamps from poor people so they can get sick and go hungry.
Sending the National Guard and US military into our cities for no reason other than to terrorize the population.
Persecuting a harmless and very small minority, the Trans people, just because they are…small, harmless, and defenseless.
And so on.
.4. Plus the always popular racism, misogyny, and hate.
This might explain the MAGAts or not.
It’s the best I can do after 5 years of this.
There was an assassination attempt. The assassin just missed.
There was a fake blood sachet squeezed. The bullet hit some screen far away, it is simply biologically not possible to not leave a scar, I say as someone who has stitched up quite a few ear cartilages. :-) It’s dangerous to believe anything Trump says is true. These are not the times to trust in Russian asset’s assertions. But I don’t want to derail the threat, sorry.
As someone with a lagomorph avatar, I protest the inclusion of “bunnies” in the equation.
@11) Were the audience member who was killed and the two others who were critically injured also part of the plot?
The assassination attempt did take a small nick out of the rim of Donnie boy’s ear. It is still there. He even showed it to that podcaster bro who also believes multiple ridiculous conspiracy theories.
Relevant article in Vox: https://www.vox.com/politics/473291/gen-z-volatile-young-trump-voters-conservative-democrat-liberal-vote
↓
• After young voters swung toward Republicans in 2024, one popular explanation argued that there are two distinct kinds of Gen Z. Those who came of age during and after the Covid pandemic seemed more Trump-curious and conservative.
• New data suggests that a divide does exist, but it might not be as simple as an older, more progressive cohort and a younger, more right-wing cohort, as some conservatives describe the split.
• Instead, the youngest cohort of Gen Z might be leading a reactionary, anti-system trend among the young Americans, which is fueling frustration at Donald Trump.
That wording suggests that the pandemic was deliberately caused. The wording in the survey:
does not – indeed, the two are arguably incompatible. I’ve noticed this ellision by convinced proponents of the “brought to the wet market by animal sellers” hypothesis before. It is, frankly, dishonest. The Chinese authorities, of course, deny that the virus originated in China at all, claiming it was brought in on frozen food packaging, or else deliberately.
This poll is really strange, but it is pretty typical of right-wing pollsters to misrepresent and misinterpret statistics.
The data for the 2024 elections shows that the independents couldn’t be arsed to go vote and now the whole world is worse off for their basic failure at this thing called civic duty. Thank shrubs ‘No child left behind’ education system that eliminated history, geography, civics, cursive, arts, and music as unimportant parts of a basic high-school education.
https://www.environmentalvoter.org/updates/2024-was-landslidefor-did-not-vote
They did also do the poll on 500 registered voters, so there are vague figures for “everyone” – and very rough figures for Democrats taken from that. PDF with overall numbers here: https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/MI-GOP-Trump-Voters-Toplines-FULL-11.19.pdf , and spreadsheet with crosstabs here: https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/11.26-MI_GOP_Crosstabs_PUBLIC.xlsx
For example, for all registered voters, 25% think childhood vaccines cause autism. And a horrifying majority of both Hispanic and Black GOP/Trump voters think “The Holocaust of Jews in Nazi Germany was greatly exaggerated or did not happen as historians describe” is “definitely true”. That’s 9% for all voters, and another 10% “probably true”.
Utter denial of reality, of course.
The truth of it is demonstrable.
Which is why it was so important for the museums and institutions and recordings that preserve that horrid truth to be established.
(And why what Israel has done to Gaza is so very very evil; West Bank is next)
John Morales @19
It appears that he lesson taken from the Holocaust was how not to do a genocide rather than to not do a genocide.
Another exception to Betteridge’s law of headlines.
@1,2 StevoR
You’re constantly shuffling baseless accusations and unfounded conspiracy theories, all with the smug overtones of re-educating voters who did not vote exactly the way you wanted in 2024 (or, again, accusing them of things they didn’t actually do). Your brand is toxic, Stevo. No one wants to touch it. If you are at all representative of the typical Democrat, then your sports team is cooked.
[meta]
Behold the beholder:
Are you so daft you’ve missed that he is South Australian?
Another run-by, I see. A bit of personal malicious wankery, then run, run away.
(At least your modus is consistent, no less than your lowercase proper name is apposite)
Look in the mirror, beholder – if, indeed, that produces a reflection! The great majority of commenters here loath you and your lies, and accept StevoR’s change of heart, which led to him being readmitted to the commentariat, as sincere, whether or not we agree with him on particular issues.
I forwarded a link about this poll to PZ the moment I learned of it, but I assume dozens of others did the same. Republicans and their voters are compareable to Germans when democracy was re-introduced in 1948. They have been totally brainwashed for a long time.
.
Going on a tangent: DJT is true to his brand of total ignorance.
“Tilting at windmills: Trump laments death of bald eagle in the US … which was really a falcon in Israel ”
.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/30/trump-wind-turbine-bald-eagle-falcon
If you make a survey of the Democrats, the greatest myth will be the party is to the left, or maybe having a fair attitude to the Israel – Palestine conflict.
Another myth is that the party leadership listens to the grassroots.
.
They are obviously not as vile and corrupt as the Republicans… which is why people raised with a binary way of thinking assumes Hillary Clinton et al are good guys.
rorschach, the idea that Trump assassination attempt was faked is silly. No one in Trump’s circle in their right mind would risk Trump’s life by firing a weapon at him to fake an attempt. Thomas Crooks, the shooter, used a rifle that was previously owned by his father, who had purchased it in 2013, and transferred it to Thomas in 2023.. He was reportedly a poor shot, which sounds like a really bad choice for a patsy in a supposed conspiracy.
That leaves out a great many people in Trump’s circle! (I agree with you on the main point – there is no evidence the assassination attempt was faked.)
P.S. @1 StevoR
Apply that lesson to your own favorite sports team’s string of mistakes before wielding it as an accusation against others.
@24 KG
I’m not posting for the sake of a popularity contest.
Nevertheless, I apparently have a tiny clique that obsessively hate-follows me. That you imagine you’re speaking for “the great majority of commenters” here is delusional.
Most of that commentariat apparently left and never came back. It is not at all clear whether or not they have “readmitted” Stevo or want anything to do with him.
“Nevertheless, I apparently have a tiny clique that obsessively hate-follows me.”
Sez the specimen who pops into threads purely to snipe at StevoR.
Again: he is not a Democrat. Not even USAnian. And whatever sports team he follows, it’s not USAnian.
You make idiotic comments, people will note that. Live with it.
(That’s not hate-following, that’s correcting idiocy and lies)
I invite those who do not loathe beholder and their lies to speak up in their defence.
It was, of course, PZ who readmitted him, just as it was PZ who banned him. All except you and a couple of others interact with StevoR just as they do with other commenters.
Raging Bee @3: IMO the number one reason for more voters shifting rightwards is that the Democratic party ran women as presidential candidates, which is to them against the laws of nature.