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A survey from Working America found that only 77 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2016 will vote for him again.
Almost half of “persuadable” voters think that President Donald Trump has made no difference in their lives since his term began, according to new survey results of working-class communities in the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin released today by Working America, an advocacy arm of the AFL-CIO.
The report also indicated that those who voted third-party in 2016 are now “more than twice as likely to pick the Democratic nominee as they are to stick with a third party.” Also notable is that 86 percent of those who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 say they will support the 2020 Democratic nominee, but only 77 percent of those who voted for Trump in 2016 will vote for him again.
Released on the day of the Iowa caucuses, the report could offer hope to the future Democratic nominee that it’s possible to win over some key voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2016.
The survey, conducted from December 17, 2019, to January 17, 2020, shows the results of interviews with 1,153 “persuadable and Democratic-leaning infrequent voters.” Working America also re-interviewed 1,920 voters that the group has tracked since the 2016 cycle from January 3 through January 8, 2020. Canvassers for what Working America calls its “Front Porch Focus Group” said on a press call that those interviewed showed strong inclination toward supporting Democratic issues, even if they previously voted for Trump.
“People, regardless of race and whether they supported Trump or not, they were with us on the issues,” said canvasser Fred Berry Jr.
Laura Jensvold, a canvasser based in Pennsylvania for the survey, said, “Based on these conversations, I was personally surprised by the emotional and the contradictory answers.” She said she spoke to voters who like Trump but are passionate about health care, voters who favor the Green New Deal but plan to vote for Trump, and pro-union voters who say they are undecided between Trump and the future Democratic nominee. “Many of these voters don’t think in clear-cut ideological terms,” she said. “There’s a real opportunity to win these voters though face-to-face engagement.”
The survey turned up pervasive cynicism toward the president’s tax plan passed in 2017. Working America says this shows “surprising potential for voter persuasion against him.” Even among the Republicans whom the group interviewed, only 40 percent had a positive view of Trump’s tax legislation. Writing Monday in the Financial Times, liberal pollster Stanley Greenberg noted that “slashing tax rates for corporations and the top 1 per cent was the last straw” for many such voters. The disfavor toward the tax cut crossed the urban-rural divide: “Regardless of the type of community where voters live,” the report states, “the tax law is overwhelmingly unpopular.”
In his column, Greenberg observed that “the shift against Mr. Trump among working people [in the 2018 midterm election] was three times stronger than the shift in the suburbs, where the Democrats were poised to flip seats. That obscured the working-class revolt.” Greenberg added that the contest for white working-class women will be even more competitive this year.
“[Donald Trump’s] base is visible and vocal but smaller” than it was in 2016, said Matt Morrison, executive director of Working America.
But the sentiment against Trump is not the only thing that looks to favor Democrats; the Democratic base seems to have unified against Trump as well. More than 80 percent of Clinton voters and Democratic base voters who did not vote in 2016 now say that they will support the eventual Democratic nominee.
Across the urban-rural divide, Americans are most concerned about health care. It was the top issue in Working America’s survey in rural, suburban, and urban communities, followed by the economy and the environment. One issue that ranked higher among urban residents than among their rural counterparts was education, which in urban communities was tied with health care in importance. Also notable was that urban voters said that they were most concerned about their economic future, compared with a majority of rural voters who said they were confident in their economic future. This contrasts with macroeconomic indicators that show “positive growth in urban areas,” but it’s likely that a high cost of living and education contribute to urban voters’ uncertainty.
Despite distrust in politics and politicians, persuadable voters in the survey showed an inclination toward progressive policies. The majority of persuadable voters support the Green New Deal and building on the Affordable Care Act, nearly mirroring the more than 70 percent of the Democratic base that support these policies. However, only one in three of the persuadable voters in the survey supported Medicare for All, despite its popularity with the base. Canvassers reported that voters expressed concern for urgency on health care and climate change, but when asked about the Affordable Care Act or the Green New Deal, they were likely to respond with “Fox News-inspired talking points.”
How voters feel toward Medicare for All does seem to depend on location, Morrison noted. “Support is least robust in places where folks are not feeling the pinch as much. The Twin City suburbs is a great example.” But there are surprising pockets of support, such as in rural Pennsylvania and rural Wisconsin.
“Voters are not as fixed to their partisan loyalty as we might perceive from afar,” Morrison said. He added that voters are aware of the urgency of climate change; they know there have been several 60-degree days in January. But, Morrison explained, there’s a “real skepticism of how would you complete something like [the Green New Deal] in ten years.” Additionally, nearly 60 percent of persuadable voters support making it easier to join a union, as does more than 75 percent of the Democratic base.
The survey was conducted in the midst of the evidence-gathering in the House and eventual vote to impeach President Trump. The report notes that voters interviewed had “deep cynicism” toward politicians as a group, and that meant that even if they thought Trump had done something impeachable, other politicians had done something similar. Ninety-one percent of voters who said they would support the eventual Democratic nominee believed President Trump committed an impeachable offense, but only 11 percent of those who intend to vote for Trump this November agree. Nearly half of those undecided about whom to support in November believe that Trump committed an impeachable offense.
This survey is one of 30 that Working America has conducted since 2016 and, while analogous in some ways to a poll, it focused on in-person conversations. The organization notes that this structure is different from polling because instead of polling a random group, Working America homes in on “Democratic-leaning infrequent voters and voters identified as persuadable through the Working America persuasion model for this project.” The group notes that their approach was the “first to report on Trump’s appeal among white working-class voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
“Each time, what we find is that voters’ sentiment is more easily detected by having these face-to-face conversations,” Morrison said. “A year ago, we could see in Iowa that an overarching concern of the Democratic primary voters was whoever could beat Trump, and it seems that that is still one of the predominant trends as we perceive there.”
