it has been a pleasure to have you with us. thanks for >> c-span's washington journal. every day we take your calls live on the air on the news of the day. and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. monday morning, we talk about the start of the second impeachment trial of donald trump with a constitutional law professor and author. and with the former press secretary for president trump, sean spicer. watch c-span's washington journal live at 7:00 monday morning. join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook messages, and tweets. >> next, a forum on former president trump's role and influence in the republican. -- republican party following

his election defeat. a recent survey of people who voted for him suggest that they feel under threat. analysts review what it means for the future of the republican party. the american enterprise institute hosted the event. it s for the future of the republican party. the american enterprise institute hosted the event. karlyn: good afternoon, i am karlyn bowman, and i would like to welcome all of you to today's event called "donald trump aunt the future of the gop. henry olson, a former colleague and now a senior fellow at the ethics and public policy center has long been one of the nation's most student observers of the republican party. his book has been widely praised for his analysis of different factions within the gop. he is able to look at one of the most important new groups, trump voters, and put them under the polling microscope.

we are delighted to give him this forum to discuss the new pole. late last year, henry approached about doing a survey of 2020 trump voters. you gov agreed and they partnered to survey 1000 from voters. the survey only looks at self identified trump voters, so it is not representative of the republican party. the questions touch on politics, public policy, and social issues. the top line of the survey will be available to all of you when we send out an event summary within a few hours of this event. we have a superb panel. all fed the opportunity to review the pole. joining us, christian soul -- kristin salt is anderson --

kristin soltis anderson, daniel cox, and shawn trendy. all of their bios are available on the aei website. henry will give an overview of some of the major findings. he will speak initially for 25 minutes. then we will turn to kristen, then dan, then sean. you can submit questions by emailing samantha.golds tein@aei.gov. let me think samantha goldstein who has done great work in helping put this event together, working with aei, and also our wonderful events team. i would also like to thank josh britton, who was very helpful. henry, why don't you begin?

henry: thank you all for spending your lunch hour with us . i would like to start again by thanking yougov, the team in san francisco and the team in london, and for everybody for putting this together. let's dive into the data with some slides. i will turn my face off so you can focus on the face that matters, the face of the trump voters. again, this is only people who are self-described trump voters. when you see liberal, moderate, conservative, or very conservative, this is not of the general electorate as a whole. this is only trump voters who describe themselves by this. we started with the question on everybody's mind. does donald trump dominate today's republican party?

among republicans who support donald trump, he starts in a very strong but i would not say dominant position. two thirds of the people who voted for trump say they are more of a supporter of trump than the party. but that means 34% said they were not. as you can see, the number or share of people who say they are more supportive of donald trump than the republican party rises with self perceived ideological conservatism. the ideological base of the republican party is likelier to say that they are more of a supporter of trump than the people more likely to depart the party when you have a general election. i think one thing we need to look at when i use ideological self descriptions is the group called conservative. this is the largely -- the largest ideological breakdown of the pole -- of the poll.

the group that caused himself conservative and republican primaries vote differently than those who call themselves very conservative. they have the notable distinction of being the only ideological group that always backs the winter. the very conservative group has only backed the winner once since 1990 two, when george w. bush started as the candidate of the conservative center and expanded to become the favorite of the very conservative right, when his colleagues and challengers on the right, gary bauer and steve forbes, drop-down. here we see that two thirds of the conservative voter is more of a supporter. if trump runs in 2024, 54% of his voters say they will definitely back him. that is 52% among the

conservatives. is it very important that the republican candidate is loyal to him. only 36% of the conservative voters. it is worth noting that the very conservative voter is only about 54% of the trump coalition. there are a number of republicans who voted either for joe biden, a third-party candidate, or down ballot. these will surely tilt the numbers within the broader looking primary away from donald trump's favors. this is a high watermark for trump's support within the modern gop. trade is one of those issues that donald trump broke with republican pre-trump sentiment on, by embracing a aggressive

approach, and when he was a nascent candidate coming down that escalator comedy two issues he harped on repeatedly was immigration and trade. as we see, there is a substantial block of people within the trump coalition that would generally agree with donald trump's nontraditional position on trade. 40% say trade hurts america's economy. that number rises for people who switched parties. obama in 2012, voting for a third-party candidate, and voting for donald trump in 2020. what unites his coalition more than divides it is that trade reduces jobs for americans. whether you think it is good in the abstract or not, 60% of trump voters think it reduces jobs. that rises to 71% of the voters

who switched from obama to trump. 16% of all voters for trump in 2020 four people who voted in 2012 either third-party or for obama. these are voters that the republican party cannot afford to lose as it goes forward-looking to turn trump's minority into a majority in the 2024 election. all social classes among trump voters believe that trade reduces jobs for americans. regardless of what they think about trade, they all think it reduces jobs. that is overriding voter sentiment that republican leaders cannot safely ignore. immigration is an issue that trump again rode to providence and it is one that largely

unites the voter base but not one that is as uniting as other issues. two thirds of trump voters believe that america should reduce immigration and 62% believe that the united states should deport illegal immigrants rather than giving them permanent residency within the united states without giving them a path to citizenship for providing a path to citizenship. in the 2016 primaries, most republican voters in all but two states, a majority, supported a path to citizenship. this strongly suggests that the sort of republican who might reenter the party in 2024 would again be somebody who supports the pre-trump consensus rather than the trump position. but look at this on the bottom. the question of building a wall on the united states border with mexico largely unites the trump

administration, the people who think they are more of a supporter of the republican party than trump support this position. a whopping 89% say the republican party should require employers to certify that employees are legally able to work in the united states before hiring them. this is essentially mandatory e-verify. this might be a way for a uniting and olive branch took nondrug voters, a way to talk about immigration while adding to the republican side rather than dividing it. slide four please. there is a lot of pre-trump conservatism that still exists in the trump coalition. that makes sense, that the vast majority of trump voters are people who voted for republican candidates in the past. 68% of the trump voters in 2020

voted for mitt romney in 2012. many of the people who do not fit into either category are people who aged into the electorate in 2012. if you are between 17 and 10, you are eligible to vote in 2020 but were not eligible to vote in 2012. that is a group that is likely to be substantially more republican as opposed to party switching. 74% of the voters say the government does too many things that charities and private businesses could do better. that is kind of the top level antigovernment support that reflects the pro-trump consensus. even many of the obama-trump voters agree with this figure. strong support for the idea that government is too big, strong support for the idea that taxes are too high. 45% of trump voters believe that government should guarantee a

minimum standard of living if people work to the best of their ability. that is the sort of government intervention that you never hear about from the heart right. only 34% of the romney-trump voters and a minority of very conservative voters agree with that. when you move up the ideological scale to the party switchers, that becomes a much more popular position. 53% of moderate to liberal voters agree that people should guarantee -- that government should guarantee a minimum standard of living for people who work hard. and a majority of the party switchers do. this shows that the more specifics you put on a small government or antigovernment platform, the more you drive away potential allies then you do attract them. we will see that clearly in the next slide. supply-side economics and paul ryan's entitlement cuts were all the rage 10 years ago in the

republican party. if you asked virtually every candidate running against trump in the public and primary in 20, they would have endorsed those in theory if not specifics. the first question asks, what is the most important value for social security, keeping benefits at the same level for future retirees as they are now, even if we have to raise payroll taxes. nearly two thirds would have to raise taxes than the people who would prefer to keep payroll taxes level even if it means benefit cuts. this is a value shared regardless of the ideological perspective. 60% of people would rather support keeping social security benefits the same and raising taxes. take a look at the second part of the -- is it more value to

ensure benefits to taxpayers or make sure regardless for the rest of us. 45% prefer keeping health care going even if it means that we have to pay for it. again, this is an ideological question. 63% of the very conservative base prefer cost control. 43% of the liberal and moderates. who are over 20% of the trump voters, do not. 57% prefer keeping health care the same. this is a big split on party switchers versus party loyalist. controlling the cost of medicare , only 56% of obama-trump voters say the same. look at the cardinal virtue of supply-side economics. that is based on the idea that

cutting the rate of taxes paid by the wealthiest americans helps increase the economic pie for all of us. that has been a cardinal virtue of the republican party for nearly 25 years. only 54% of the trump voters believe it. this is again an ideological question. again, big split based on party switchers. 46%. 46% agree with supply-side economics. party loyalists, 58%. talking specifics about the small government agenda divides the trump coalition rather than unites it. let's see a little more about what might unite it on the next slide. oddly enough, climate change is one of those issues. for all of the beliefs and statements that the trump administration -- the trump coalition are filled with climate deniers, when we ask people a three-point question, do you believe that climate

change is real and government action is needed to deal with it immediately, whether it is real but that science and technology can make its effect less severe, or whether climate change is not real and nothing should be done to combat it, a clear majority takes the second option. another 9.5% take the first option, which is basically the climate alarmist position. that means that two thirds of trump voters believe that climate change is real and something should be done about it. a plurality of very conservative voters take the climate denial list position, but not even a majority. a small four or 5% take the alarmist position. the three groups that republicans tend not to do as well with, younger voters, college grads, and females, take the more climate realist versus the climate denial list position. this shows that a moderate approach to climate change is

something that would unite the majority of trump voters while providing a branch or a bridge to get into the non-trump majority. there are other united issues that we will see on the . -- on the next slide? virtually everyone in the trump coalition agrees. christianity is under attack in america today, 89% of trump voters agree. america is the greatest country in the world versus simply one great country among many. in pupils, democrats are much more likely to take the second position. 89% of trump voters say it is the greatest. the fear that america is being lost is also a uniting issue. notice that there is no difference between party voters

and party loyalists on this -- between trump voters and party loyalists on this. the mainstream media as part of the democratic party is the one agreed to by 92% of trump voters and 98% of party loyalists. it shows how you can unite trump voters among four general senses of feelings about the nation as a whole than if you get into some of the messy specifics about policy on economics and how to adapt to the current situation. social issues are also a uniting issue or group of issues among the trump coalition, although it is less so than the pure cultural position. the abortion issue, 78% are broadly pro-life.

again, that increases with your perceived ideological conservatism. even 64% of liberal and moderate trump voters say that they are pro-life except for cases of rape, incessant, or threat to the mother's life. among liberal and moderate voters, there seem to be a number of people who are pro-life in theory but are perfectly content to let roe v. wade remain the law of the land. but it is still a uniting issue. opposition to same-sex marriage is also a uniting issue. were we to look at age brakes, we would see a significant difference on that. this is one with severe ideological differences. the vast majority of liberals and moderates think it should be

legal where is the vast majority of conservatives think it should be illegal. if you speak about abortion, you tend to unite the coalition. this slide talks about the strong differences that evangelicals have with the rest of the trump coalition. one of the defining features of republican intraparty politics the last 30 years has been out the second place candidate tends to be the candidate that is the favorite of the religious right. pat buchanan in 1996. mike huckabee in 2008. rick santorum in 2012. ted cruz and 2016 all became the favorite of the religious evangelical candidate.

these candidates always lose when they get to less evangelical dominated places such as the midwest and especially the northeast or the pacific coast. why is that? it is because evangelicals are only 40% of the trump coalition and exit polls also showed they are a minority among primary voters. nonevangelicals have a strongly different view on the very different issues and rhetoric that attracts evangelicals to support their candidate. how many times have you heard candidates courting evangelicals say how much of a faithful practicing christian they are? 40% of trump voters say it is very important to them. virtually none of the 60% majority is say they are nonevangelicals. pro-life is extremely important

to evangelicals, not so important to nonevangelicals. how many times have you heard candidates like ted cruz saying you have to start your day on your knees in prayer in the office? i think you look at the questions about religiosity expressed more generally. 77% of evangelicals say religion is very important to their lives but only 28% of nonevangelicals two. the candidate who talks about religion being crucial to their own faith attracts one set while not attracting another. 1258% of evangelicals go to church more than -- while 58% of evangelicals go to church once a week or more -- many trump

voters say they do not practice religion at all. this is why the evangelical candidate when they move into places where there are smaller numbers of evangelicals lose in the primaries. in new england, according to our poll, only 9% of trump voters in new england -- or the northeast, which comprises new england, new york, new jersey, are evangelical. think about the paltry portions of the vote that ted cruz got in the primary there. when you cannot get any support out of an area that sends around one quarter of the delegates to the national convention, you have a real problem getting nominated. this is one of the real divides in the republican party that a candidate who wants to become the next presidential nominee estimate -- nominee has to navigate. why do you hear a lot about the

second amendment? it is because 81% of trump voters believe it is very important that the second amendment reserves the right of every american to own a gun. is it more important for police officers to fight crime then protect citizens from excessive police violence? 84% say it is. what about the racial and gender questions that so animate the democratic party? trump voters believe that blacks come other minorities, and women have a mostly fair chance to succeed in today's america. polls show that my credit voters and particularly biden supporters strongly disagree or have significantly less levels of agreement on this. this issue of a fair, gentle, good america that supports the ability of individuals to safely

use guns and police officers to enforce the law, that no one can disregarded. next question. democrats are bad, but. take a look at some of these views about products and whole -- about partisan polarization. massive unity on the idea that democrats do not believe in making america great. a very hard view of partisan animosity giving people the option to say that democrats are mostly good people who have bad ideas, or that they have lots of bad ideas, a majority of trump voters take the hardest option. again, this is very ideologically polarized. a third of liberals and moderates agree. but, when we say, what about working with those people?

57% of the trump voters would prefer to work together, saying it is a good idea. there you have the reverse ideological split. only one third think they are bad people. nearly 60% think we should still work with them. that is something that you navigate to try and address the question of decreasing partisan polarization. you don't have to simply -- to the idea that democrats are awful and need to be opposed in all circumstances. you can be both against democrats and for cooperation, and unite the trump coalition. last slide please. it is really important when you are thinking about the coalition to understand the difference

between the party base and party switcher. who are loyal republicans are different demographically and attitudinal he than the people he attracted. 36% of the romney voters say they are working class or poor. 57% of the parties which are says that. the romney-trump footer is a much more evangelical christian than the party switcher. look at the religiously unaffiliated number. only 19% of the romney-trump voter said they are atheist, agnostic, practice nothing in particular, or practice something else such as judaism, buddhism, or hinduism 41% of the obama-trump voter said that. this is significantly in number of people who may identify in

some way as christian but do not have any sort of religion in their lives. take a look at the liberal-moderate split. 43% of the obama-trump voter said they are liberal or moderate. if we expanded that outcome of the smallish share of the people in the obama-trump group are the people who say they are very conservative. the party switcher's are not a group who look at themselves and have the same demographic grounds as the peer loyalists. what you need to do if you already republican leader is added to the coalition rather than subtract. if you think you will add new people who are the defected romney voters, and you think you will add new obama voters, you are just shuffling deck chairs on the titanic. this is one of the key lessons you can learn from this survey,

that adding by subtracting is a bad idea. adding by adding is a great idea. with that, i would like to close. the top lines will be available both on the website of the event and the event summary. crosstabs, the information that divides the questions into demographic subgroups, will be available on request. thank you for the opportunity to listen and i am looking forward to hearing my panelists comments. karlyn: thank you very much. if you have questions, please submit them by emailing samantha. goldstein@aei.org. henry, you have covered an enormous amount of ground in a various of synced presentation. i wonder if you could tell me what your top take away from this survey is? >> the top take away is that the trump coalition is a

conservative-populist alliance where both have this need the other in order to thrive. despite that, we know from the election results that that is just not enough. it way forward is preserving what you've got and finding a way to add that extra percent, 4%, 5% to move to 51.5%. karlyn: let's turn to kristen soltis anderson, the author of an important book on the millennial generation. she is one of the most astute analysts of the younger generation in the republican party today. what struck you most about the survey? kristen: this is a topic that i have cared deeply about for over a decade, since i started studying younger voters, why they were gravitating away from the gop, and what that might

mean for the roof moving forward. the trump era lou up a lot of expectations and notions about what the republican party was and what it could be in the future. initially, i struggled with what my thoughts would be on what this survey means for the republican coalition moving forward. as we have repeatedly noted, this is a survey of 1000 trump voters, which is a very large coalition, a coalition of 74 million americans. that is not, unfortunately for the, a majority coalition. it is clear that there needs to be much more addition than subtraction moving forward. the question is, is it possible to do much at dish and with the coalition as currently constructed. i looked at this survey with an eye toward understanding, what are the things that really find this coalition together? what are the items where we see

in the highest levels of agreement between these factions. as henry pointed out, views even within the republican party are much more heterodox on social, cultural, and economic issues in many ways than perhaps was previously acknowledged. take the question about supply-side economics. even voters who voted for romney in 2012 and stuck trump in 2020, only 58% of them agreed on supply-side economics. very large coalition of people who are perhaps more economically moderate than progressive than is typically given acknowledgment or credit or attention in a lot of analysis of american politics. donald trump i think successfully tapped in to some of that in assembling a coalition. i am less convinced that he has

changed what voters believed as much as understood or revealed what was already there. it is notable to me that come in addition to the many divides around economic issues, such as what should the government's role be in guaranteeing a good quality of life, there are these divides around what i think 10 years ago we would have classified as the key social issues for the party. henry's data points out that there are pretty sizable divides. an issue like gay marriage is not a sizable feature of the trump coalition, neither is something as potent as roe v. wade. instead, i went into this looking at what binds all of these people together. what seems clear is a sense of feeling under threat and under siege. in the survey, 89% of

respondents saying they believe that christians are -- christianity -- pew research center about a survey this week where they asked people, who do you believe will be gaining or losing influence under the by didn't just ration? republican and republican leaning voters, two thirds of them, said people like me will lose influence under the divided administration. when it comes to evangelicals, again, two thirds think they will be losing influence. i think there is a real sense of feeling under threat. in my survey, we asked this past month, what do you believe is the goal of politics? to enact good public policy or fight for the survival of the country as we know it? according to replicants, they lean toward saying it is about survival rather than public policy.

all of which sort of leads me to the worry that what has bound the trump coalition together is not policy but rather a posture, a belief that people who feel under siege want to leave someone will be in the foxhole with them fighting against what they view will be hostility outside. where i struggle is i would very much like to see a republican that forward a positive policy agenda that talks about uplifting the economic fortunes of americans, that talks about human flourishing, and that is able to hold onto its current coalition but use that hard work of addition. but if the thing that is primarily binding this coalition together is the emotional threat, does that foster an environment where you can have this forward-looking policy agenda? or does it actually create a barrier?

on that, i think that is an open question. on the one hand, it certainly suggests a flexibility in terms of policy that the republicans would be adventurous in terms of describing things like paid family leave, etc., without fear that they were going to alienate their pace. in some ways, the base is stuck in the coalition. in terms of offering flexibility, does it mean that it is primarily bound together by issues like guns, race, or religion, that is welcoming to someone who may be that suburbanite, who was turned off pretty trump coalition and is looking for what is coming back. that is i think the key question -- the key problem of what trump voters will be facing as they head into a presidential election where and evidently people have to run not just on an opposition message but on something positive.

i struggle with knowing how the republican party will grapple with how what holds the coalition together now i think has some limited appeal. with that, i would love to hand back to my cope lists. karlyn: -- to my co-panelists. karlyn: it is my pleasure to hand it back to dan cox. i would urge you to look at the kind of work that dan and his team are doing. dan is an expert on religion and religious polarization. we have asked them to look at some of the things he found most interesting in the survey. i hope he will talk about the religious angle overall. dan: thank you, henry, forgive me a shot at looking at this fascinating survey. i will absolutely be looking at some of the religious breaks. one of the first things that

struck me when i started looking around at the data, that the white evangelical trump voters did not look that different from trump voters as a whole as a poster, we tend to be biased toward looking for differences, groups that are distinctive from the rest. that is a really interesting story often. in this survey, with something like 100 questions, the white evangelical voters in the trump coalition to have this unique profile when it came to politics. religiously, they are distinct in terms of practice and belief. when it came to politics, they had a lot mostly in common with other trump voters. i was particular attention to the white evangelical trump voters and a nonreligious trump voters. there are a significant amount of nonreligious voters in trump coalition. when it comes to policy questions, there is not a lot of

daylight. they nonreligious trump voters tended to be a little bit more libertarian but most were solidly conservative on most economic questions. looking at issues of climate change, gun rights, immigration, or what america's foreign-policy posture should be, white evangelicals and nonreligious trump voters tended to be pretty aligned. as kristin mentioned, the central question on, is christianity under attack? do you think whites will face more discrimination? there is widespread agreement among both the nonreligious and religious aspects. the place where we did see some differences come on abortion and same-sex marriage, the white evangelical and nonreligious voters differed on those questions. trump voters overall are more closely aligned with the evangelical coalition than the

nonreligious part of his coalition. for me, that was interesting and it suggests that conservative christians have become a dominant faction in the trump-gop coalition. that is really interesting given the history. at one point, christian conservatives operated outside the republican party and formal party apparatus. slowly, they began to take over some of the local and state the organizations. if you look back in the 1980's and 1990's, there was considerable trepidation among certain segments of the gop about fully welcoming the christian right into the fold the fear was that these voters who were prioritizing partisan issues and questions would move the party too far outside the mainstream. this has been i think an ongoing tension within the gop for years. i think for that reason, some within the gop have attempted in

various ways to keep these most conservative christian voters at arms length. they really fascinating quote -- fascinating quote i ran across from president reagan up against pollster above said it would be wise for republicans to appeal to religious conservatives in churches but not to be to public as to not be linked to their extreme views. he said this step and new york times reporter. i think where trump really differed in his approach and something that really endeared him to evangelical christians was that he was vocally and fully embracing them sometimes literally, throughout his presidency. i dig it is clear that white evangelicals appreciated his pugilistic tendencies. they wanted a fighter. but i think he also made common cause with evangelicals by going after the groups and institutions that they viewed as

antagonistic to their own reliefs and valid -- their own beliefs and values. he signaled, your enemies are my enemies. with that, i think he gained loyalty and support. early on in trump's presidency, he instituted this immigration ban, but one particularly targeting people coming from predominately muslim countries. this was, i think for many of the people in the bubble, kind of a curious policy. it was not overly popular among the public but had tremendous support among white evangelical republicans, many of whom see islam as incompatible with american values. for this and other reasons, i think white evangelicals have been committed to trump throughout his presidency. i think his support dipped below 70% once throughout the past four years.

white evangelicals were much more likely to support her in members who refused to certify the 2020 election results. because i am a poster and i can't not talk about my own poles, we found that given the choice of identifying with either trump or the gop, white evangelicals were about 10 points more likely to identify with trump than other republicans. i think that the strength and durability of this evangelical commitment to trump was evidenced throughout and really should not have been as surprising for some. when you look at evangelicals compared to other conservative groups, even before trump, evangelicals often viewed themselves as odds with many of the secular cultural institutions in the u.s. they were more likely to be

against the media and higher ed. something that we found in our pulling was that white evangelicals, republicans versus other republicans, are more likely to believe conspiracy theories, whether it is qanon, the deep state, or that the 2020 election was stolen from president trump. that is interesting. having forward, i think this represents a pretty significant challenge for the gop but it has been an ongoing challenge, not something that is that new, i don't think. over the past few years, there are a lot more culturally conservative voters in the u.s. than many of us thought. given the structural advantage that the gop currently enjoys, i think the next several elections will be incredibly competitive. what is clear, to me anyway, is that you cannot win a national primary without strong evangelical support.

henry mentioned that 40% of trump's voters were evangelical in the 2016 primary. even though there was a lot of reticence initially, a significant number of white evangelical voters still supported him. i will note that i think even jill goes will be increasingly important for us and they'll be operating more inside the party than outside. but i welcome any disagreement on any of these points and thank you so much for the opportunity. karlyn: thank you very much. and i am sure there are some questions about some things he raised in your presentation. last but not least we are going to turn to sean trende. an analyst of historical and contemporary political currents, making him uniquely situated to speak about the future of the gop. sean. i think you are muted. sean: you would think at this

point in the pandemic you would know how to -- i would know how to unmute myself, but you would be wrong. it is really intimidating going last in this group because i figure by this point, all the good stuff would be covered. so i would like to do something a little different. i took the raw data from the survey and what to do you some statistical techniques i will not go into to try and flesh out a little better what the divisions really are. because we if we are thinking about whether the trump coalition is sustainable, knowing the fault line is really important when the gop is thinking about what type of candidates it wants to nominate, and how far in a non-trump direction it needs to go for a popular vote victory.

so the first thing i did, and for those who are interested, this is from a principal components analysis, but i brought up some gimme questions, things that are a straight up clue you have a trump voter. and look at more the ideological, demographic, the thermometer questions, how do you feel towards these different groups. what this pca analysis does is a tries to boil down a bunch of questions into a few different ways that the data divides. if you have a bunch of questions where people answer them yes or no the same way, it tries to group those together and say here is a type of question where the data really starts to break down. so what do we see here? the strongest dimension in this

data is what we might call the group thermometer voters, versus the ideology and demographics voters. what do i mean by this? on one poll of this dimension, you have people who are very interested in questions about race. on the other poll, you have people more motivated by ideological questions. do you believe working with democrats is good or bad? what are your edit towards towards racism? what is your religious identification? things of that nature. so i think a lot of this will make sense, and it echoes what has been said before and what has been said in the general commentary, but it is interesting to see had borne out by this unique survey of 1000

trump voters. one of the fault lines is a group thread versus more traditional ideological voters. if you look on the second and third dimensions, what is interesting to me is you see a breakdown within the thermometer question. so when i look really closely at what these questions were to move people heavily one way or the other, there was a group thermometer versus an ideological group thermometer. even attitudes towards different groups there is kind of a breakdown. so when i say the general group thermometer, that is the, what are your feelings towards african-americans, towards business persons, christians, and hispanics. the ideological group, which again, it bears out that it is a little distinct from the traditional group dynamics -- what are your attitudes towards the world health organization? your attitudes towards the wto?

hollywood? feminists? china? nato? these are these new emerging divisions. and some traditional ones with hollywood as well, but this seems to be more of an ideological/culture war aspect versus the traditional in group, outgroup questions. now, kind of the bad news is that there are a lot of ways that the trump coalition breaks down. so there are one million fault lines within it. i don't have time to go into those but those are the major ones. to try and flesh things out even more, one of the concerns for the republicans going forward, and i think this was borne out in the georgia runoff, is who is just a trump voter, versus who

is a republican voter who happens to vote for trump. keeping those voters -- keeping those republican voters who happened to vote for trump in the coalition and maybe trying to bring back republican voters who did not vote for trump, i think is one of the crucial distinctions. the question is how do you do that without alienating the trump voter who just happened to both -- happened to vote republican. or she. again, the mouthful i used was just analysis, but what this tells us is of the questions in this data set, and there are a lot of interesting questions and i urge everyone to look at the actual youtube report to see them all. it is such a rich source of information. but what did the most work in predicting whether a person would be a republican first or a trump voter first? it turns out, the thing that did

the most work among the statistically significant protectors, controlling for every thing else, is whether you opposed to the wall or support of the wall. if you supported the wall, the odds of you being a republican versus a trump supporter increased by about 2.5 times. so a big increase in that. again, that is trump's signature issue, but that suggests that backtracking on immigration going forward might be a good weight -- good way for republicans to lose a lot of these trump voters. another thing was attitudes towards diplomacy versus what we might have called back in the day, peace through strength. if you believe diplomacy is the way to peace, you were about twice as likely, all the things equal, to identify as a traditional republican versus a trump voter. trump voters were much more

likely to say they believed in peace through strength. what makes you less likely to be a traditional republican? if you believe that the main job of the police, or going forward with police, was to protect citizens from police violence, you were way less violent -- way less likely to be a traditional republican. if you believe that government should do less -- i am sorry, if you believe the government should do more, all other things being equal, you are about half as likely to be a traditional republican. if you believed that trade decreased jobs, you were about half as likely, all other things being equal, to be a traditional republican. so this kind of echoes a lot of what henry was getting to in his presentation, but it suggests that even these are not just things that show up in the data sets. these are things that really

divide traditional republicans versus trump republicans. even if you get a lot of traditional republicans who might say, yeah, i want to build a wall. nevertheless, if you are just of looking at the odds in how you predict someone being a traditional republican versus a trump voter, when you put controls in place, that has a big effect. now, those are kind of the six strongest predictors of whether someone is a traditional republican or a trump republican. there are some other things. again, this perhaps bears out our traditional understanding of the coalition, but it is interesting to see this flesh out even among this unique data set of just trump voters. people who self described as poor or working-class were much more likely to consider themselves trump voters rather than republican voters. people with high levels of education were much more likely to consider themselves

traditional republicans versus trump voters. we hear the story about how trump energized a lot of poor people voters. but this data set suggests those voters are still trump voters and are not yet republican voters. again, this could help explain the loss in georgia. if you look at the places where republican turnout was down from the general election to the runoff election, places like northwestern georgia, places with a lot of whites without college degrees, the explanation would be they turned out to vote for trump, but when the runoff came around were not so interested in just voting for republican. there are some ideological questions that divide a trump voter from a republican voter. if you believe that roe v. wade should be affirmed by the supreme court, you are about twice as likely, all the things being equal, to be a republican

voter versus a trump voter. if you think that democrats believe in making america great, you are about twice as likely to be a traditional republican voter versus a trump voter. if you believe that climate change is fake, or systemic racism is fake, or that you should not have to get a job to receive benefits, that made you much more likely to be a trumper. so again, we kind of see this overall conservatism bond with more economic populism in the trump coalition. finally, one thing that is interesting, and i want to wrap up so we have plenty of time for questions, but the phase angle that angry got out his born at -- that henry got out is borne out by this analysis as well. one thing that is interesting is when you run the statistic analysis to try and control for everything else, the attitude questions or the thermometer questions are statistically significant, but they are not practically significant.

in other words, yes, these questions do divide the trump voter and separate them from the traditional republican voter, but practically speaking, to put it in geek terms, the coefficients are very small. even though you can differentiate this way, it does not really increase your chances or your odds of being a republican or a trump voter that much either direction. so there is a real divide there, but in terms of the actual impact, not that significant. in short, we do see things that divide the traditional republican voter from the trump voter. they are things like attitudes towards immigration, a strong, aggressive, muscular foreign policy, some attitudes toys the police and what their role in society is, and traditional populist questions. traditional populists -- traditional republicans

-- this new trump coalition is more likely to favor an activist government role. karlyn: thank you very much. thank you for your very thoughtful comments on the incredibly rich survey, as you can tell from the areas they focused on. we are going to turn to your questions in a minute, but henry, i would like to ask you to quickly respond or anything you want to say about any of the presentations. henry: i often wish i had sean's data skills, and i appreciate his use of statistical analysis to find fisher's. i think that is incredibly important going forward. with respect to the religious differences or non-differences, i appreciate dan' commentss. it is very interesting. you are absolutely right that it is not so much policy that distinction is the evangelical, it is cultural cues that may

distinguish them, which is why i focused on the questions of how important is it that somebody profess their faith as opposed to what you believe about pro-life, that seems to be more distinguishing. and i agree with kristen. it's not easy to see where you go forward from here with this coalition. my concern overall is that there is a very strong institutional bias within the republican party to downplay the fissures in the trump coalition and say it will be kind of easy for us to keep these new voters and add, by going back to the things we all feel comfortable with. that is something we all need to resist. that those fissures are real. just because you got the latino vote this time doesn't mean you'll get it four years from now. it does not take very much slippage in the secular, white

working-class vote that seems to just love trump republicanism, but never was very interested in romney publican is. you -- republicanism. you lose a little bit of that and all of a sudden the margins start favoring the democrats. i would just say, yes, it's very hard to see how we go from here with this coalition. i think it is harder to see how we go from here without it. karlyn: thank you very much. as you might expect, there are a ton of questions. let's get started with them. this one is near and dear to my heart. given concerns raised about the 2016/2020 polling failures to pick up trump voters, how confident are you that this paul captured those failures? henry, i think that is probably for you. henry: we have to be reasonably confident. if anything, what i think we saw

in 2020 is a certain set of the white working-class voter did not answer polls. so, to the extent that this does not capture a group that polls have -- -- towards the culturally conservative, economically populist wing of the trump coalition. because that is what the data seems to suggest to the extent there was a polling error that people missed. taht, t -- that, too, is something they need to understand. karlyn: where it the sense of threat come from that you say is a unifying factor among trump voters? what do trump voters site -- cite as the cause? any of the panelists can respond

to that. henry: i thought for a long time that what unites trump voters is the sense, as somebody said, under siege, fear, scared. what they are scared about different things. blue-collar voters are afraid that the chance to participate in the american dream is going to be taken away. the person who is worried about immigration is afraid that changing demographics is going to place them in a social disadvantage. what unites the trump coalition is, under the rubric of america, is that sense of being under siege. what fuels it is very different depending on where the voter comes from. the singular siege mentality with multiple forces that are seating for castles. karlyn: reactions to that?

daniel: i think liberalism, and increasingly progressivism, has become much more muscular in the last 10 years in its willingness to deploy its cultural power in pursuit of its goals. i don't have -- everyone thinks they have a strong opinion on the trump twitter ban. i don't on the merits. what i do see is a big company flexing its power on cultural issues. you can see it with so-called cancel culture. you can see it with some of the more things that i think would have been unthinkable a decade ago. you know, for photographers who refuse to serve same sex weddings.

i thought you would prosecute these people or fine them. it sounds like a scare story you would try to tell an opposition to it. america being hollowed out. you can see it in the towns. the closed down factories, it is like a bruce springsteen some. i just think -- a bruce springsteen song. i just think there are a lot of things coming together that really make cultural conservatives feel like they are losing, and that because of the cultural power of the people wielding it, makes them think they are losing unfairly. kristen: and critically, it is not just a sense of religion, or even practicing evangelical christianity, because many people in the trump coalition, that is not necessarily their

frame of reference for how they are feeling concerned. i think what is most interesting in some ways is those conventional abortion, gay marriage issue, you do see a wider variety of stances on this issue in this poll that he would have expected. instead, it is more, people like me versus big institutions, and cannot continue working my way of life or are they going to come for me? that is the big issue. daniel: i think there is something real happening here. and if you look at just the rapid change in the landscape the last 20 years, we have gone from 6%, 7% of the country being religiously affiliated, to under 4%. there sa -- there's a tectonic shift in churches being hollowed out, particularly in rural communities. so there is a lot of change

going on really quickly. cultural attitudes are evolving rapidly as well. so, i think it feels like being under duress from all different aspects of your life. culture, religion, economic. so these kinds of things are felt every day, and i think wh ehter -- i think it's people saying yes, you should be afraid, look at what is happening. i think that helps focus the issues. karlyn: what is the take away from the survey for an entity like the republican national committee, which was already focused on the 2022 midterms where we meet -- where we may see more gop incumbents facing challenges? who to start with that? henry? henry: sure. i was letting my panelists jump in first.

first, the rnc will largely stay neutral in that they are party builders. with respect to primary challenges, that is really a question the nrc has to answer. what people want, you are going to have the hard core people who are just against the establishment. but there are a lot more people that would like to see a party that represents them. that means taking a more muscular stance in favor of issues the pre-trump party largely did not adopt. i have written before that if liz cheney wants to beat back her challenger, what she needs to do is co-opt the challenge. she needs to come up with a unique way in which she can be aggressively anti-china and aggressively anti-immigrant. that is not simply mimicking jargon. because trump was so nonspecific, there are a legion of ways. you have to say i am angry too. i am fighting too. then you get the credibility of

these people to create that conservative populist effusion in a responsible way, as opposed to an irresponsible nihilist way. karlyn: other panelists? kristen: it is less advice for the rnc, because i suspect large proportions of the group of can apparatus want to stay back and see how this plays out. but i do think a lesson for republican policymakers who are trying to figure out if this coalition is held together things more emotional than policy oriented. where are the areas that we don't talk about enough in terms of policy, where there seems to be some flexibility in this coalition? i think the climate change question in the survey is so fascinating, because not only do you have a majority saying yes, we believe climate change is real, we would like solution. perhaps not a government solution, but the private

sector. this differs from this notion of the private coalition saying climate change is fake, let's focus on coal. so if we are focusing on the future of the republican party, what do these younger people stand for, there are huge differences on this question. young trump supporters, i believe over 80%, believe climate change is happening and want to see something done about it. so i think there are areas where republicans can get creative by putting forth policy solutions that in the apst they have sat back -- in the past they have said no. talking about clean energy is an interesting way to make overtures to the suburban voters without necessarily violating the coalition you have already got. sean: one of the things that has me a little concerned, we have these populist flareups in the u.s. from time to time. and traditionally what has

happened is that one of the major parties co-opts them and channels them. so you have the democrats in the 1890's emerging with the populist, and democratic party changes from being a classic jeffersonian party -- that is what puts it on the path to being the new deal party. fdr is really concerned about he we long in the 1930's, and that is why the second and third new deal shifts leftward, trying to capture that popular ideology without letting it run rampant. i am concerned that, especially among the -- there's too much resistant in the parties to try and capture and consolidate this populist energy. part of how we got trump is that the gop base said in 2005 we don't want this comprehensive

immigration reform policy. they said we don't want this, don't pass it. in 2015 and 2016, the gop establishment lines up behind jeb bush. i like jeb bush. i might have been happy with him as the republican nominee. but given that background, it was a crazy place to put the resources. so there needs to be some give from the gop establishment, or this is going to get really bad. karlyn: given that about 90% of self identified republicans voted for trump according to the exit polls, how different is this survey sample from simply republican voters? henry: it is going to be different on the margin because there are going to be people who will say they are independents, if you push, lean republican, who did not vote for trump but

will participate in the republican primary. so you have the 10% of self-described republicans. again, it is not that this is unrepresentative of republican voters, but there are people in this survey he will not participate in the republican primary but will vote trump republican. and then you have the people who will participate in republican primaries. so i will say this is kind of a survey of roughly 70% to 80% of the expected republican primary base, that would is dominant, but not wholly exclusive. virtually everyone in that extra when he percent to 30% will be somewhere in that, i am a republican first, not a trump person first, because they already demonstrated that by the way they treated trump. again, just for the rough numbers, 75% or 80% of the 24 republican primary electorate, the extra 25% is decisively in the non-trump camp and had the attitudes of the non-trump camp. karlyn: i think we have time for

one more question, but i first want to thank all the panelists. henry, too, for supporting this survey. and as we told you earlier, this will be available soon and will provide subgroup analysis to anyone who would like it. here is final question. if i were a democrat, what does the poll tell me about how i might take some of the voters who supported trump in 2020 and add them to the democratic tally in 2022 or 2024? who wants to take a crack at that first? kristen: i think the economic issues are the most fertile ground. there is no way for the democratic on this and making overtures considering where the center of gravity is the democratic party is. but you can see it around debate around covid relief. mitt romney saying i want to

give $3000 for every child in america and facing backlash in his own party. that is the kind of thing where you can see democrats -- again, i am not sure democrats embracing mitt romney means anything for a variety of reasons. but this economic, stimulus quality-of-life type issues where there is the greatest opportunity for democrats to peel some folks away. karlyn: anyone else, very quickly? henry: i have long said joe biden was the only one who would beat trump of the group, because he was able to be a little more moderate on some of these cultural issues. and i think that this survey is consistent with that, and that is something democrats should remember for 2024. karlyn: i want to thank you all for joining us today. lee wonderful panel for a great discussion this morning. we hope to see you again soon. ththis is two hours and 45

minutes.