Poll: GOP Candidates Culturally Out of Step with Most Americans

National Journal

By Ronald Brownstein

October 2, 2015

Poll: GOP Candidates Culturally Out of Step with Most Americans

­Repub­lic­ans have many reas­ons for op­tim­ism about the 2016 pres­id­en­tial elec­tion, but the latest NBC/Wall Street Journ­al poll re­leased this week shows again that so­cial is­sues may be their biggest obstacle in re­cap­tur­ing the White House next year.

On every ma­jor cul­tur­al is­sue the sur­vey tested, more Amer­ic­ans en­dorsed po­s­i­tions that the Demo­crat­ic nom­in­ee is likely to sup­port next year, while in al­most every case most Re­pub­lic­an primary voters em­braced the minor­ity view.

That sug­gests cul­tur­al af­fin­ity could re­main the hole card for Demo­crats in an elec­tion in which the pub­lic’s as­sess­ment of Pres­id­ent Obama’s per­form­ance re­mains equi­voc­al, fa­vor­able rat­ings of Demo­crat­ic front-run­ner Hil­lary Rod­ham Clin­ton have plummeted, and the pub­lic di­vides al­most ex­actly in half in early sound­ings on which party it would prefer to hold the pres­id­ency in 2017.

The sur­vey tested a series of cul­tur­al policy is­sues that have flared in the 2016 primary races, in­clud­ing end­ing birth­right cit­izen­ship for the chil­dren of un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants and elim­in­at­ing fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood. More broadly, it also asked Amer­ic­ans to as­sess wheth­er a series of longer-term trends, such as grow­ing ra­cial di­versity and in­creased leg­al pro­tec­tions for gays, rep­res­en­ted a step in the right dir­ec­tion, the wrong dir­ec­tion, or won’t make any dif­fer­ence in life in the U.S.

On al­most all of these ques­tions, most adults took po­s­i­tions at odds with the dom­in­ant view among the 2016 GOP pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates—and the pref­er­ences of most of those the sur­vey iden­ti­fied as likely voters in the party’s pres­id­en­tial nom­in­at­ing con­tests next year. As im­port­ant, the sur­vey found that these is­sues gen­er­ally united the grow­ing groups that powered both of Pres­id­ent Obama’s vic­tor­ies: the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion, people of col­or, and col­lege-edu­cated whites, par­tic­u­larly wo­men.

Cu­mu­lat­ively, the sur­vey un­der­scores the sense that Demo­crats now rep­res­ent a “co­ali­tion of trans­form­a­tion” com­fort­able with the demo­graph­ic and cul­tur­al changes upend­ing Amer­ic­an life while the GOP rep­res­ents a “co­ali­tion of res­tor­a­tion” that largely re­volves around the groups most un­settled by the changes.

For in­stance, by an over­whelm­ing ma­jor­ity of 69 per­cent to 26 per­cent, likely GOP primary voters said they would end birth­right cit­izen­ship for the chil­dren of un­doc­u­mented im­mig­rants, as Don­ald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, and oth­er GOP pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates have pro­posed. But a 53 per­cent to 42 per­cent ma­jor­ity of all Amer­ic­ans said they would pre­serve birth­right cit­izen­ship.

The con­trast was even more strik­ing on the ques­tion of elim­in­at­ing fed­er­al fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood, as House Re­pub­lic­ans and the lead­ing GOP pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates have urged. Likely GOP primary voters backed the idea by 60 per­cent to 35 per­cent; but the pub­lic over­all re­jec­ted the idea by vir­tu­ally the same mar­gin, 61 per­cent no, to 35 per­cent yes.

On the broad trends the sur­vey meas­ured, the cul­ture gap per­sisted.

Asked about the pro­spect of fur­ther re­stric­tions on abor­tion, 60 per­cent of likely GOP primary voters said it would rep­res­ent a step in the right dir­ec­tion; just 23 per­cent called it a step in the wrong dir­ec­tion. But among the pub­lic over­all, more adults called such re­stric­tions a step in the wrong dir­ec­tion (45 per­cent) than the right one (36 per­cent). And while more Re­pub­lic­an primary voters called le­gis­la­tion that pro­tects the rights of gays and les­bi­ans a step in the wrong dir­ec­tion (41 per­cent) than the right dir­ec­tion (36 per­cent), the ver­dict among the pub­lic over­all was em­phat­ic­ally dif­fer­ent: 59 per­cent right dir­ec­tion, just 23 per­cent wrong. 

The gap between GOP par­tis­ans and oth­er Amer­ic­ans was also large on two oth­er ques­tions. While likely Re­pub­lic­an primary voters split about evenly on wheth­er in­creased polit­ic­al in­volve­ment of re­li­gious groups was a step in the right dir­ec­tion (36 per­cent) or wrong dir­ec­tion (35 per­cent), just 24 per­cent of the pub­lic over­all viewed it as a pos­it­ive de­vel­op­ment, with 54 per­cent call­ing it a step in the wrong dir­ec­tion.

Re­pub­lic­ans were also much cool­er when asked about the im­plic­a­tions of “ra­cial and eth­nic minor­it­ies in­creas­ing as a per­cent­age of the US pop­u­la­tion.” Just 21 per­cent of likely GOP primary voters said that trend rep­res­en­ted a pos­it­ive change while 24 per­cent viewed it neg­at­ively (half said it would have no im­pact). The pub­lic over­all was con­sid­er­ably more pos­it­ive: 35 per­cent called it a step in the right dir­ec­tion, com­pared to just 14 per­cent who called the grow­ing di­versity a neg­at­ive change.

On two oth­er is­sues that have at­trac­ted con­sid­er­able at­ten­tion in the GOP race, opin­ion among Re­pub­lic­ans didn’t tilt as far right as in some oth­er re­cent sur­veys. Likely GOP primary voters were only slightly more neg­at­ive than the pub­lic over­all about the im­pact of “an in­crease in the num­ber of leg­al im­mig­rants” and the im­plic­a­tions of more in­ter­na­tion­al trade agree­ments. Still, it is a meas­ure of the class re­align­ment in Amer­ic­an polit­ics that likely GOP primary voters ex­pressed a slightly more neg­at­ive view about fur­ther trade agree­ments than likely Demo­crat­ic primary voters.

On almost all of these questions, most adults took positions at odds with the dominant view among the 2016 GOP presidential candidates.

The sur­vey also un­der­scored the ex­tent to which shared cul­tur­al val­ues un­der­pin the heav­ily urb­an­ized con­tem­por­ary Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion, which re­lies primar­ily on votes from the mil­len­ni­al gen­er­a­tion, ra­cial minor­it­ies, and col­lege-edu­cated whites (par­tic­u­larly wo­men).

For in­stance, two-thirds of those aged 18-34, three-fifths of non­whites, and over 70 per­cent col­lege-edu­cated white wo­men said they op­posed cut­ting off fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood. Two-thirds of 18-34-year-olds and minor­it­ies, and just over three-fifths of col­lege-edu­cated white wo­men also op­posed end­ing birth­right cit­izen­ship. Among those groups, the share who called in­creas­ing di­versity a pos­it­ive rather than a neg­at­ive de­vel­op­ment for Amer­ic­an so­ci­ety hit six-to-one among young­er adults; nearly sev­en-to-one among Afric­an-Amer­ic­ans; al­most four-to-one among His­pan­ics; and over three-to-one among col­lege-edu­cated white wo­men.

More urb­an than rur­al res­id­ents con­sist­ently en­dorsed lib­er­al po­s­i­tions across these ques­tions, par­tic­u­larly on is­sues re­lated to gay rights, grow­ing di­versity, and con­tinu­ing birth­right cit­izen­ship. One ex­cep­tion: Rur­al res­id­ents were not much more likely than urb­an ones to sup­port cut­ting off fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood.

Col­lege-edu­cated white wo­men also con­sist­ently took more lib­er­al po­s­i­tions than oth­er whites on these ques­tions, with 63 per­cent de­scrib­ing more leg­al im­mig­ra­tion as a pos­it­ive step, 64 per­cent sup­port­ing birth­right cit­izen­ship, 70 per­cent view­ing more polit­ic­al in­volve­ment by re­li­gious groups as a neg­at­ive step, 71 per­cent op­pos­ing end­ing fund­ing for Planned Par­ent­hood, and fully 79 per­cent term­ing more gay rights a pos­it­ive de­vel­op­ment.

Those wo­men have been the fast­est-grow­ing seg­ment of the white elect­or­ate in re­cent elec­tions. In 2012, for the first time, they cast a lar­ger share of the gen­er­al-elec­tion vote than white men without a col­lege edu­ca­tion—a gen­er­ally cul­tur­ally con­ser­vat­ive group that has emerged as a bed­rock of Re­pub­lic­an sup­port.

More cracks in the Demo­crat­ic co­ali­tion emerged on abor­tion re­stric­tions and gay rights, with Afric­an Amer­ic­ans and Lati­nos less likely than young people or col­lege-edu­cated whites (es­pe­cially wo­men) to view the trends pos­it­ively. But a sol­id plur­al­ity of both Afric­an Amer­ic­ans and His­pan­ics sided with the pre­dom­in­ant Demo­crat­ic po­s­i­tion on abor­tion, as did a ma­jor­ity on gay rights.

For the sprawl­ing Re­pub­lic­an field, these res­ults re­in­force the chal­lenge of ap­peal­ing to a primary base largely ali­en­ated from the cul­tur­al and demo­graph­ic trends mak­ing mod­ern Amer­ica, without ali­en­at­ing the ma­jor­ity of gen­er­al-elec­tion voters largely com­fort­able with these changes. 

The NBC/Wall Street Journ­al sur­vey, con­duc­ted by the Demo­crat­ic polling firm of Hart Re­search As­so­ci­ates and the Re­pub­lic­an firm Pub­lic Opin­ion Strategies, sur­veyed 1,000 adults by land­line and cell phone Sept. 20-24. It has a mar­gin of er­ror of ±3.1 per­cent­age points.

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com