Who are the Trumpsters?

But two oth­er dis­tinc­tions emerged more clearly from the Quin­nipi­ac and Mar­ist sur­veys that could loom lar­ger as the race de­vel­ops. Trump drew some­what more sup­port from men than wo­men in the Quin­nipi­ac and Mar­ist sur­veys. And he con­sist­ently ran more strongly among Re­pub­lic­ans who did not hold at least a four-year col­lege de­gree than those who did. Those blue-col­lar Re­pub­lic­ans are grow­ing in in­flu­ence in the GOP nom­in­at­ing pro­cess, as a tor­rent of White work­ing-class voters have re­aligned from the Demo­crat­ic to Re­pub­lic­an Party over the past gen­er­a­tion.

The class and gender dy­nam­ics play­ing out in the GOP field com­pound each oth­er, as fig­ures provided to Next Amer­ica by Quin­nipi­ac and Mar­ist make clear. The two polling or­gan­iz­a­tions ana­lyzed the res­ults among White Re­pub­lic­an voters (who com­prise nearly all of the GOP elect­or­ate in Iowa and New Hamp­shire, and about 90 per­cent na­tion­ally) based on gender and edu­ca­tion, and found that Trump’s sup­port gen­er­ally fol­lowed con­sist­ent pat­terns.

In each of the three sur­veys, Trump runs best among White men without a col­lege de­gree, the blue-col­lar core of the mod­ern Re­pub­lic­an co­ali­tion. These work­ing-class White men give Trump 38 per­cent of their sup­port both na­tion­ally and in New Hamp­shire, and 37 per­cent in Iowa. Those are stun­ning num­bers in a field with 16 can­did­ates di­vid­ing the vote. No one comes close to Trump among these men in any of the three polls. In the na­tion­al sur­vey, sur­geon Ben Car­son ranks second with these men at just 11 per­cent. No oth­er can­did­ate at­tracts more than 17 per­cent of these men in Iowa or 13 per­cent in New Hamp­shire.

Trump’s show­ing among White wo­men without a col­lege edu­ca­tion was also strong, though not quite as dom­in­ant: He drew 32 per­cent of them in the na­tion­al poll, 30 per­cent in Iowa, and 27 per­cent in New Hamp­shire. Trump led among them in all three sur­veys, though Car­son (at 24 per­cent in Iowa and 19 per­cent in New Hamp­shire) showed com­pet­it­ively with the so-called “wait­ress moms” as well.

In the 2012 GOP primar­ies, voters without a col­lege de­gree cast a ma­jor­ity of the vote in 13 of the 20 states where exit polls were con­duc­ted, and at least 45 per­cent in four oth­ers. Those voters also gen­er­ally dis­play much more re­ceptiv­ity than col­lege-edu­cated Re­pub­lic­ans to the sharp anti-im­mig­ra­tion mes­sage Trump is de­liv­er­ing.

In the past two GOP pres­id­en­tial races, can­did­ates lead­ing the na­tion­al polls in the fall be­fore the first votes were cast ul­ti­mately faded without cap­tur­ing a single state. But Trump’s re­si­li­ence through re­peated con­tro­ver­sies over the past sev­er­al months have sug­ges­ted that his rivals can­not count on sup­port for him simply evap­or­at­ing: They will need to find a way to ec­lipse him.
Even­tu­ally, the oth­er can­did­ates who had been count­ing on mo­bil­iz­ing the GOP’s “pop­u­list” voters—led by Wis­con­sin Gov. Scott Walk­er and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas—will need to find a way to dent Trump’s strong early stand­ing with these volat­ile, deeply dis­af­fected, blue-col­lar Re­pub­lic­ans. Mean­while, the Re­pub­lic­ans aim­ing more at the party’s more up­scale “ma­na­geri­al” wing—a list headed by Kasich and former Flor­ida Gov. Jeb Bush—will need to con­sol­id­ate the col­lege-edu­cated Re­pub­lic­ans who are already prov­ing the least sus­cept­ible to the Trump wave.