The data provided to me by Quinnipiac does appear to suggest the possibility that this demographic [white blue collar women] is getting driven away from Trump.
The poll finds that among overall registered voters, 54 percent say they will “definitely not” vote for Trump in 2020, vs. 32 percent who definitely will, and 12 percent who will consider voting for him. Among non-college-educated whites, 45 percent said they will definitely vote for him, vs. 41 percent who say they will definitely not vote for him.
That last number seemed like a large percentage of non-college-educated whites who definitely won’t vote for Trump. So I asked Quinnipiac for a further breakdown, and here it is:
That’s also striking: A bare plurality of non-college-educated white women disapprove of Trump. (And again, the depth of alienation among college-educated white women is really something to behold.)
Now, to be fair, this is only one poll. But this dovetails with the extensive amount of data and focus grouping Brownstein reported on, so it’s plausible that this is a real thing.
And if this broader dynamic is right, it could be a big deal. This has been a Republican-leaning demographic for many election cycles now, which alone makes this seeming shift striking. More specifically, Trump’s racist attacks are all about three states — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — where Trump hopes to supercharge turnout and vote share among non-college-educated whites from non-metropolitan areas, allowing him to win the electoral college, even plausibly amid a larger popular-vote loss than last time.
But as Democratic pollster Greenberg told Brownstein, this becomes a taller order if the women in that demographic are getting alienated, even if the men are as gung-ho for Trump as ever. “White working-class men look like they are approaching the 2016 margins for Trump,” Greenberg allowed, but he added, “it only works if women are part of the story.”
That’s striking: A bare plurality of non-college-educated white women say they will definitely not vote for Trump. (It’s also worth noting the extreme depth of alienation from Trump among college-educated white women: More than 6 in 10 say they definitely won’t vote for him.)
This is also evident in Trump’s approval. The Quinnipiac poll shows that among registered voters overall, 40 percent approve of Trump and 54 percent disapprove. Among non-college-educated whites, 52 percent approve vs. 43 percent who disapprove — that latter, again, being a surprisingly high number, given this demographic.
America 2019: Ms. Snyder said she divorced her husband of 35 years in 2016 over his support of Trump.
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) July 30, 2019
“He’s always been a R, and I’ve always been a D & that was fine. [But] he became an angry man. I was watching this white guy who I thought I knew all of a sudden become racist" https://t.co/ywzBs7ULPA