So, Where Did Those Nikki Haley Voters Go?
I came across a very interesting article in The New Republic yesterday, written by Greg Sargent. It’s a conversation with reporter Marc Caputo who writes for the conservative site, The Bulwark. The article they discuss is titled -- "Trump Suddenly Losing Crucial GOP Support in Surprise Data."
The discussion that the two well-regarded journalists have concerns a new poll that was reported in The Bulwark on how many Nikki Haley voters (most of them women) say they will vote for Kamala Harris.
The poll was conducted by a Democratic-leaning group, Blueprint, but Caputo says he believes the numbers. They’re not only supported by a recent poll in the NY Times that shows Harris making inroads among GOP voters, but also what he hears from people he knows who run Republican focus groups. The poll found that “that Trump is supported by just 45 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning independent voters who backed Nikki Haley in the primaries. Thirty-six percent of those voters are backing Harris.”
Even more than the poll numbers, what I find most-notable is a passage in the article that refers to those GOP focus groups that Caputo brings up, which support the poll results. Poll results are flexible, but these comments are what people actually told the focus group how they feel. Caputo says --
“The problem that Republican data guys, when they hold these focus groups with women, are encountering is the utter antipathy that they have for Donald Trump. One told me that, invariably, when you see these women being interviewed, a word that will always come up is either ‘disgusting’ or ‘pig’, or sometimes both, to describe Trump. Some of these people very closely align with or did vote for Nikki Haley, and that is a significant portion of this base of supporters we’re talking about.”
I love the follow-up to this by Greg Sargent -- "I’m not a political strategist, but I’m going to surmise that being called a ‘pig’ by a lot of voters probably isn’t a great thing for your ...” To which Caputo replies -- “Suboptimal”.
Are the poll numbers valid? Conservative Marc Caputo explains why he thinks so. But if so, why haven't they shown up in the national or state polls? Or have they?
A few possible thoughts –
1) Polls reflect the period during which they polled, usually a couple weeks earlier. I don’t know when this poll of Nikki Haley voters was done, so I don’t know if it would registered in state/national polls yet or not. I do note that the title of the article says Trump is "Suddenly" losing support. So, it's possible that this is an under-polled demographic until now.
2) For all we know, maybe it is registering. We accept poll numbers as specific, but with margin-of-error built in, if a candidate is shown ahead by one point – maybe they’re really ahead by two points. Or three. (For that matter, a poll showing someone behind by a point could actually – with margin-of-error -- be ahead by two points.)
3) Also, the article notes that this is a small demographic – but a “Critical” one. So, maybe it’s too small a group to register much in a poll, but enough to make a difference in a swing state.
4) I don’t know.
But whether I know or not, the poll and focus group comments help support the sense (and other polls) that Trump is getting pummeled by women voters. All the better if they include Republican women voters.
More important to me than what the poll numbers showed is what the focus group comments were. Poll numbers are flexible, focus group comments show what people actually think. And as Greg Sargent sardonically notes, "I’m not a political strategist, but I’m going to surmise that being called a ‘pig’ by a lot of voters probably isn’t a great thing.” More to the point, “called ‘a pig’” by women in your own party.
You can read the full article here, if you’re interested.
Or if you'd prefer a video, this is the same story and same details, though different people from the article. Instead, this is Sam Stein of Politico and Evan Roth Simon from the firm that actually did the polling, Blueprint, who discuss the Bulwark article about the poll.
Same story, just different reporting. It runs 13 minutes.
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