Who are Donald Trump’s supporters? That’s the question every pollster, pundit and politico has been asking ever since the Manhattan mogul launched his candidacy, ascended to the top of the polls and kicked off the GOP primary battle as we know it.
For months, many rank-and-file Republicans admitted that they had no idea who was backing Trump.
“I’ve never met a single one of them,” a New Hampshire resident named Doug Cleveland told the New York Times in January. “Where are all these Trump supporters? Everyone we know is supporting somebody else.”
But now it’s more than halfway through March. Thirty-one states, three territories and the District of Columbia have voted. Entrance and exit polls have been conducted in 20 of those states. More than 30,000 actual voters have been surveyed. If you want to know which Americans Trump is performing best with — not in theory, but at the ballot box — you simply have to sift through the results.
At the same time, researchers have been busy probing the electorate’s attitudes, intentions and choices. Two of the most interesting polling projects — the 2016 RAND Presidential Election Paneland the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics panel at the University of Pennsylvania — have returned again and again to the same respondents, measuring how their perspectives and preferences have changed over time.
There is, in other words, no shortage of data on Trump supporters. Yet even the best polling has its limits. It can tell you a lot about big groups of people, but it doesn’t tell you all that much about the people themselves. And the way the polls are publicized is even more reductive, with headlines that treat a candidate’s strongest demographic as if it were his or her only demographic.
So Yahoo Politics is trying something different. We’ve decided to take Trump’s advice and “turn the cameras around”: To focus on Trump’s supporters in much the same way the media has focused on Trump himself. To look at them as people rather than statistics.
Plenty of Trump fans have been quoted in the press, chiming in here or there after a rally. But our goal is to dig deeper. After talking to scores of Trump voters in more than a dozen states, we identified six who seemed to embody the spectrum of Trump’s support and whose stories supplied the sort of nuance that numbers alone can’t convey: Ron Vance, 59, an insurance agent from Pahrump, Nev.; Eileen Schmidt, 46, a mother of two from Tiffin, Iowa; Justin Neal, 39, a vehicle maintenance foreman from Bealeton, Va.; Rick Cruz, 62, a semiretired contractor from Royal Oak, Mich.; Nell Frisbie, 79, a real estate agent from Kiln, Miss.; and A.J. Delgado, 36, a public-interest lawyer from Miami. Then we circled back, spending hours with each of them, asking about their lives, their hopes, their fears and, of course, their fondness for Trump.
All six are profiled below.
Polls and studies have taught us a lot about the Trump phenomenon. Since 2007, the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics has been surveying the same panel of voters, many of whom have sided with Trump in the current GOP contest; the institute’s most recent survey wrapped up in early February. The results, as ISCP political science professor Daniel J. Hopkins recently put it, provide “an unparalleled look at Trump supporters’ attitudes long before they even knew Trump would run, whether in 2007, 2008 or 2012.”
So what did Hopkins & Co. discover? Prior to Trump, the people who would go on to back him in 2016 rated themselves much less conservative than the people who would go on to back Ted Cruz. The distinction was most pronounced on social issues: Future Trump supporters were almost as pro-choice as future Hillary Clinton supporters; they were also a little less opposed to same-sex marriage than future Cruz supporters. Yet they were more populist on economic issues as well: slightly more supportive of government spending in general, a bit less likely to favor repealing Obamacare, and far more hostile toward NAFTA. In 2012, they were markedly less likely to have favored a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
On foreign policy, Trump’s future supporters tended to call themselves hawks. But in 2007, compared to those who would later support Cruz, they were far more likely to oppose keeping troops in Iraq — a position that neatly aligns with Trump’s. They also scored higher on measures of anti-Hispanic and anti-black prejudice than voters who would go on to back either Cruz or Marco Rubio — a theme that has continued to resurface in coverage of the 2016 contest.
The RAND poll fleshed out these observations. Contrary to popular belief, RAND found that a substantial proportion of the GOP primary electorate is relatively liberal on pocketbook issues: 51 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” favored increasing taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year, for instance, while 38 percent had a favorable or very favorable opinion of labor unions. Trump performed especially well with these voters, outpacing Cruz by 45 percent among Republicans who “strongly favor” raising taxes on the rich and 37 percent among Republicans who feel “very favorably” toward labor unions.
RAND also found that Trump benefited from biases against immigrants, African-Americans and women, clobbering Cruz (by 44 percent) among Republicans who “strongly agree” that “immigrants threaten American customs and values” and trouncing the Texan (by 36 percent) among Republicans who “strongly agree” that “women who complain about harassment cause problems.” Yet the strongest indicator of support for Trump — stronger than gender, age, race/ethnicity, employment status, educational attainment, household income, attitudes toward Muslims, attitudes toward illegal immigrants or attitudes toward Hispanics — was a feeling of voicelessness; according to RAND, Republicans were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer the Manhattan mogul if they “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed that “people like me don't have any say about what the government does.”
“Trump supporters form a powerful populist coalition uniting concerns about immigrants and other groups with support for economically progressive policies,” the RAND study concluded.
Most of the RAND and ISCP observations were borne out once Republicans started voting in February. In state after state — whether Trump finished first or not — entrance and exit polls have showed that he consistently garners a higher percentage of the vote among certain segments of the electorate than he does statewide. Trump tends to overperform among men, for example — usually by five or more percentage points. The same goes for voters who cite immigration as their top concern; in Ohio, he fared 32 percentage points better among these voters than he did among Ohioans overall.
The list of indicators for supporting Trump runs long: voters over 45; voters who earn less than $50,000 a year; voters (especially white voters) who didn’t graduate from college; voters from rural areas; voters who are “angry” at the government; voters who are “very worried” about the economy; voters who think trade “takes away” U.S. jobs; voters who fear that they are “falling behind”; voters who think that illegal immigrants ought to be deported; voters who believe that Muslims should be temporarily banned from entering the country; voters who are convinced that the GOP nominee should come from “outside the establishment”; voters who, above all else, want a president who “tells it like it is” or can “bring about needed change”; voters who settled on their candidate of choice more than a month ago — dig through the entrance and exit polls and you’ll find that these are the primary voters with whom Trump always overperforms.
And so a narrative has taken shape in the media: Trump supporters are white, male, undereducated, lower-income, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and angry — even racist. But the truth is more complicated. To be sure, some Trump fans — especially the ones sucker-punching black protesters at rallies — may resemble this stereotype. Yet relatively few Trump voters belong to every single one of the categories listed above; most of them answered yes to some (or even just one) of these questions and no to the rest.
What’s more, Trump’s strongest supporters aren’t his onlysupporters; he is winning among other demographic groups as well. Trump beat his rivals among women in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, Mississippi, Florida and Illinois. In Florida, he won immigration-centric voters, as usual — but he also won voters who cited the economy, government spending and terrorism as their top concerns. In Illinois, Trump won college graduates and voters under 45; in North Carolina, he won voters making more than $100,000 a year. These groups may not fit the Trump stereotype, but they are part of his coalition, nonetheless.
None of the Trump supporters profiled here completely fit the stereotype, either. Actual human beings rarely do. Ron Vance says he isn’t “angry — just disappointed”; he supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary and admits that she’s still his No. 2 choice for president. Justin Neal acknowledges that Trump has a “narcissistic-type personality” but wonders if that’s what it takes to “succeed” these days. Eileen Schmidt is a registered nurse who’s completing a graduate degree in health administration. Rick Cruz is a Filipino-American who studied at Trump University and admires the candidate’s business acumen. A.J. Delgado is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and a Harvard-educated lawyer. Nell Frisbie is a former RNC delegate who has been campaigning on behalf of establishment Republicans her entire adult life. And none of them are particularly enthusiastic about Trump’s most outrageous remarks, insisting, when asked, that even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying — he’s merely “playing the game.”
Ultimately, if Trump ends up winning the game — if he becomes the next Republican nominee and, beyond that, the next commander-in-chief — he will have voters like Vance, Neal, Schmidt, Cruz, Frisbie and Delgado to thank. There simply aren’t enough stereotypical Trump fans out there to elect a president.
For months, many rank-and-file Republicans admitted that they had no idea who was backing Trump.
“I’ve never met a single one of them,” a New Hampshire resident named Doug Cleveland told the New York Times in January. “Where are all these Trump supporters? Everyone we know is supporting somebody else.”
But now it’s more than halfway through March. Thirty-one states, three territories and the District of Columbia have voted. Entrance and exit polls have been conducted in 20 of those states. More than 30,000 actual voters have been surveyed. If you want to know which Americans Trump is performing best with — not in theory, but at the ballot box — you simply have to sift through the results.
At the same time, researchers have been busy probing the electorate’s attitudes, intentions and choices. Two of the most interesting polling projects — the 2016 RAND Presidential Election Paneland the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics panel at the University of Pennsylvania — have returned again and again to the same respondents, measuring how their perspectives and preferences have changed over time.
There is, in other words, no shortage of data on Trump supporters. Yet even the best polling has its limits. It can tell you a lot about big groups of people, but it doesn’t tell you all that much about the people themselves. And the way the polls are publicized is even more reductive, with headlines that treat a candidate’s strongest demographic as if it were his or her only demographic.
So Yahoo Politics is trying something different. We’ve decided to take Trump’s advice and “turn the cameras around”: To focus on Trump’s supporters in much the same way the media has focused on Trump himself. To look at them as people rather than statistics.
Plenty of Trump fans have been quoted in the press, chiming in here or there after a rally. But our goal is to dig deeper. After talking to scores of Trump voters in more than a dozen states, we identified six who seemed to embody the spectrum of Trump’s support and whose stories supplied the sort of nuance that numbers alone can’t convey: Ron Vance, 59, an insurance agent from Pahrump, Nev.; Eileen Schmidt, 46, a mother of two from Tiffin, Iowa; Justin Neal, 39, a vehicle maintenance foreman from Bealeton, Va.; Rick Cruz, 62, a semiretired contractor from Royal Oak, Mich.; Nell Frisbie, 79, a real estate agent from Kiln, Miss.; and A.J. Delgado, 36, a public-interest lawyer from Miami. Then we circled back, spending hours with each of them, asking about their lives, their hopes, their fears and, of course, their fondness for Trump.
All six are profiled below.
Polls and studies have taught us a lot about the Trump phenomenon. Since 2007, the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics has been surveying the same panel of voters, many of whom have sided with Trump in the current GOP contest; the institute’s most recent survey wrapped up in early February. The results, as ISCP political science professor Daniel J. Hopkins recently put it, provide “an unparalleled look at Trump supporters’ attitudes long before they even knew Trump would run, whether in 2007, 2008 or 2012.”
So what did Hopkins & Co. discover? Prior to Trump, the people who would go on to back him in 2016 rated themselves much less conservative than the people who would go on to back Ted Cruz. The distinction was most pronounced on social issues: Future Trump supporters were almost as pro-choice as future Hillary Clinton supporters; they were also a little less opposed to same-sex marriage than future Cruz supporters. Yet they were more populist on economic issues as well: slightly more supportive of government spending in general, a bit less likely to favor repealing Obamacare, and far more hostile toward NAFTA. In 2012, they were markedly less likely to have favored a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
On foreign policy, Trump’s future supporters tended to call themselves hawks. But in 2007, compared to those who would later support Cruz, they were far more likely to oppose keeping troops in Iraq — a position that neatly aligns with Trump’s. They also scored higher on measures of anti-Hispanic and anti-black prejudice than voters who would go on to back either Cruz or Marco Rubio — a theme that has continued to resurface in coverage of the 2016 contest.
The RAND poll fleshed out these observations. Contrary to popular belief, RAND found that a substantial proportion of the GOP primary electorate is relatively liberal on pocketbook issues: 51 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” favored increasing taxes on individuals who make more than $200,000 a year, for instance, while 38 percent had a favorable or very favorable opinion of labor unions. Trump performed especially well with these voters, outpacing Cruz by 45 percent among Republicans who “strongly favor” raising taxes on the rich and 37 percent among Republicans who feel “very favorably” toward labor unions.
RAND also found that Trump benefited from biases against immigrants, African-Americans and women, clobbering Cruz (by 44 percent) among Republicans who “strongly agree” that “immigrants threaten American customs and values” and trouncing the Texan (by 36 percent) among Republicans who “strongly agree” that “women who complain about harassment cause problems.” Yet the strongest indicator of support for Trump — stronger than gender, age, race/ethnicity, employment status, educational attainment, household income, attitudes toward Muslims, attitudes toward illegal immigrants or attitudes toward Hispanics — was a feeling of voicelessness; according to RAND, Republicans were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer the Manhattan mogul if they “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed that “people like me don't have any say about what the government does.”
“Trump supporters form a powerful populist coalition uniting concerns about immigrants and other groups with support for economically progressive policies,” the RAND study concluded.
Most of the RAND and ISCP observations were borne out once Republicans started voting in February. In state after state — whether Trump finished first or not — entrance and exit polls have showed that he consistently garners a higher percentage of the vote among certain segments of the electorate than he does statewide. Trump tends to overperform among men, for example — usually by five or more percentage points. The same goes for voters who cite immigration as their top concern; in Ohio, he fared 32 percentage points better among these voters than he did among Ohioans overall.
The list of indicators for supporting Trump runs long: voters over 45; voters who earn less than $50,000 a year; voters (especially white voters) who didn’t graduate from college; voters from rural areas; voters who are “angry” at the government; voters who are “very worried” about the economy; voters who think trade “takes away” U.S. jobs; voters who fear that they are “falling behind”; voters who think that illegal immigrants ought to be deported; voters who believe that Muslims should be temporarily banned from entering the country; voters who are convinced that the GOP nominee should come from “outside the establishment”; voters who, above all else, want a president who “tells it like it is” or can “bring about needed change”; voters who settled on their candidate of choice more than a month ago — dig through the entrance and exit polls and you’ll find that these are the primary voters with whom Trump always overperforms.
And so a narrative has taken shape in the media: Trump supporters are white, male, undereducated, lower-income, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and angry — even racist. But the truth is more complicated. To be sure, some Trump fans — especially the ones sucker-punching black protesters at rallies — may resemble this stereotype. Yet relatively few Trump voters belong to every single one of the categories listed above; most of them answered yes to some (or even just one) of these questions and no to the rest.
What’s more, Trump’s strongest supporters aren’t his onlysupporters; he is winning among other demographic groups as well. Trump beat his rivals among women in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Vermont, Mississippi, Florida and Illinois. In Florida, he won immigration-centric voters, as usual — but he also won voters who cited the economy, government spending and terrorism as their top concerns. In Illinois, Trump won college graduates and voters under 45; in North Carolina, he won voters making more than $100,000 a year. These groups may not fit the Trump stereotype, but they are part of his coalition, nonetheless.
None of the Trump supporters profiled here completely fit the stereotype, either. Actual human beings rarely do. Ron Vance says he isn’t “angry — just disappointed”; he supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic primary and admits that she’s still his No. 2 choice for president. Justin Neal acknowledges that Trump has a “narcissistic-type personality” but wonders if that’s what it takes to “succeed” these days. Eileen Schmidt is a registered nurse who’s completing a graduate degree in health administration. Rick Cruz is a Filipino-American who studied at Trump University and admires the candidate’s business acumen. A.J. Delgado is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and a Harvard-educated lawyer. Nell Frisbie is a former RNC delegate who has been campaigning on behalf of establishment Republicans her entire adult life. And none of them are particularly enthusiastic about Trump’s most outrageous remarks, insisting, when asked, that even he doesn’t believe what he’s saying — he’s merely “playing the game.”
Ultimately, if Trump ends up winning the game — if he becomes the next Republican nominee and, beyond that, the next commander-in-chief — he will have voters like Vance, Neal, Schmidt, Cruz, Frisbie and Delgado to thank. There simply aren’t enough stereotypical Trump fans out there to elect a president.
