Donald Trump’s Strongest Republican Supporters: Registered Democrats?

HotAir.com:

There’s something for everyone in Nate Cohn’s new post. If you’re a Trump fan, here’s the smoking gun that he really is a new Reagan, the guy who’s going to broaden the tent and sweep to victory in November by bringing centrist Democrats into the GOP. If you’re a Trump critic, here’s further proof that he’s the RINO of RINOs, a man who’s blended nationalism, center-left economics, and Jacksonian foreign policy into something that tastes better to members of the other party than it does to conservatives. That sounds a lot like Perotism, frankly — except, according to the (Democratic) pollster who provided Cohn with data, Trump’s geographic support is the opposite of Perot’s. Perot did best in the west and in New England. Trump cleans up in the south, up through Appalachia, and into the industrial northeastern states like New York. How do you explain that?

Cohn’s theory, comparing Trump’s map of support to a map of “racially charged Internet searches,” is that prejudice is driving some of his votes. There was nothing comparable in Perot’s campaign to Trump inveighing against rapists from Mexico and calling for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States. (There’s no disputing that Trump is the favored candidate of the white nationalists of the “alt-right.”) On the other hand, how many Trump voters in economically distressed industrial areas in the eastern U.S. like Trump’s immigration rhetoric because they “hate” Mexicans and how many simply want less competition from foreign labor in the name of bringing back jobs to America? According to Cohn, Trump’s best state is West Virginia; West Virginia also happens to be the only state in the U.S. where (as of March of this year) less than half of the adult civilian population is employed. Being a protectionist doesn’t make you a racist. Either way, though, this part is certainly true — and important to the future of the GOP:

In many of these areas, a large number of traditionally Democratic voters have long supported Republicans in presidential elections. Even now, Democrats have more registered voters than Republicans do in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, which have been easily carried by Republicans in every presidential contest of this century. As recently as a few years ago, Democrats still had a big advantage in partisan self-identification in the same states.

But during the Obama era, many of these voters have abandoned the Democrats. Many Democrats may now even identify as Republicans, or as independents who lean Republican, when asked by pollsters — a choice that means they’re included in a national Republican primary survey, whether they remain registered as Democrats or not.

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