Favorabilities for the Russian asset in the White House, among women:
And among men:
That’s a 26-point gender gap, which is breathtaking.
Women have been sour on Trump since forever, and that antipathy carried Democrats to their historic 2018 election gains. Nothing is likely to change on that front this cycle, since current events appear to have no impact one way or the other. Women f’n hate him, end of story. (Even among independent women, Trump’s favorables are only 35 percent, with 61 percent unfavorable.)
Men are a little more fickle, with no seeming rhyme or reason when it comes to what moves his numbers overall. Both Republicans and Democrats are locked in, and ittle will change either’s minds. Independent men, however, are all jumpy:
I’ve been saying that the most important swing group in American politics is white suburban women. They voted Trump in 2016, then swung hard Democratic in 2018. But they don’t appear to be swingy anymore, at least not while the Republican Party is held in thrall by Russian puppets.
These independent men, however, look pretty swingy. But who are they? Apparently, they’re pro-Syrian airstrikes, anti-tariff. They trended away from Trump during the Kavanaugh hearings, but toward him during the government shutdown …
The reality is that this is probably a grab bag of different types of people. It includes tea party-types who think the Republican Party is a sellout and not conservative enough. It probably includes some moderate middle-of-the road types, and also includes Bernie-supporting liberal independents.
One thing people have noticed: We’re not showing an overall decline in Trump’s support that’s as dramatic as other public polling. Civiqs polling has always been less sensitive to dramatic shifts because, quite frankly, dramatic shifts in politics are rare. When you see current events move numbers, one frequent culprit is response bias—the phenomenon in which the more motivated side in an issue is more apt to respond to a poll than the demoralized side.
So in the case of the shutdown, having lost the battle, conservatives are less likely to take the time to respond to pollster questions than pumped-up celebratory liberals. (Here is Nate Silver discussing the phenomenon in the wake of Sarah Palin’s selection at the 2008 Republican National Convention.)
It is obviously arguable, but as someone who spends a great deal of time in the conservative media bubble, I don’t sense any great fall-off in Republican support for Trump. We certainly saw his people come out strong for Republicans in 2018; it just happened that more of our people turned out. If they were with him in 2018, after two years of Trump Crazy, there’s little reason for them to drop off now, shutdown or not.
Civiqs’ methodology is particularly immune to response bias, and as such, is well-placed to track any shifts in partisan loyalty. And as of now? Republicans haven’t gone anywhere.
We can assume that won’t change. (Many who are abandoning him are dumping the “Republican” label are self-identifying as “independent” now.) The Republican Party is the Party of Trump, and Trump is the Republican Party. They are inextricably linked, one and the same, gleefully driving off that cliff with their red MAGA hats fluttering in the wind, thinking they are triggering snowflake liberals as they and their racist ideology crash and burn.
What that does mean, however, is that Trump has a solid floor, one that he won’t breach absent a genuine betrayal of his base. That’s why he’ll declare a national emergency to build his wall, happy to blame the courts for his failure when they inevitably rule the action unconstitutional. He can’t personally betray his base, because they’re the only thing propping him up.
Meanwhile, that gender gap is real, it’s dramatic, and it isn’t going anywhere. That’s why our presidential nominee will be a woman, and that’s why that woman should pick another woman as her VP. Our party is now driven by women (only 39 percent of white men voted Democratic in 2018), and our nation’s opposition to Trump is driven by women (see above).
It’s called “going with the flow”—except that in this case, the flow is more like raging rapids.