Thread by @Monaheart1229

"The young in particular are slipping away."
The GOP is dying, and here's some pretty good perspective about it.
#SundayThoughts #BlueWave2020
nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opi…

2-"Ever since Donald Trump’s upset victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016, much of the media attention has been on how Democrats need to reconsider their strategy for winning voters in future elections, particularly Obama-to-Trump voters. But the results of the 2018 midterm

3-"elections suggest that Republicans have some soul-searching to do as well. They lost the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections and suffered battering losses in the House in 2018. Republican strategists must grapple with how to keep their party viable

4-"nationally, and our data suggests that Trumpism may continue to hurt them in the future. It has flown under the radar a bit, masked perhaps by the switch of millions of Barack Obama’s voters into Mr. Trump’s column, but in 2016 Mr. Trump did not receive support from a large

5-"segment of voters who pulled the lever for Mitt Romney in 2012. In fact, our data shows that 5 percent of Romney 2012 voters stayed home in 2016, while another 5 percent voted for Mrs. Clinton. These voters tended to be female, nonwhite, younger and more highly educated —

6-"the very voters Republicans feared would be alienated by a Trump victory when he was seeking the party’s nomination. Most strikingly, one-third of 2012 Romney voters who were under 40 in 2016 did not vote for Mr. Trump, but rather stayed home, voted for Mrs. Clinton or voted

7-"for a third-party candidate. Among the under-40 Romney voters who supported Mr. Trump in 2016, 16 percent appear to have defected from the party to vote for a Democratic House candidate in 2018. Of course, we don’t know how they will vote in 2020, but what this means is that

8-"in the past two elections Republicans may have lost more than 40 percent of Romney voters born after 1976. Republican House candidates performed worse among 18- to 39-year-olds than they have in decades. The voters Mr. Trump and his party lost in 2016 and 2018 represent the

9-"future of American politics. If the Republican Party becomes the party of the past — that is, of aging white men with less education — it could make winning elections increasingly difficult. G.O.P. Generation Gap: The younger the voter, the more likely they were to defect from

10-"the Republican Party. To explore the characteristics and attitudes of these voters, we used data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a large survey with a sample of more than 64,000 adults. We focus on three groups in this essay: Romney-to-Trump voters,

11-"Romney-to-Clinton voters and Romney-to-nonvoters. (We used validated voter turnout data rather than self-reported turnout, which tends to overstate actual voter participation.) Four primary characteristics distinguished deserters from the 2012 Romney coalition: gender, race,

12-" level of education and age. Defectors were disproportionately women; 63 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters were female compared with 46 percent of Romney-to-Trump voters. Romney-to-nonvoters were 54 percent female. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, Mr.

13-"Trump shed a large share of 2012 Romney voters of color — precisely the type of voters that Republicans have been struggling to attract for some time. Among Romney-to-Trump voters, 91 percent were white (the breakdown for Romney-to-nonvoters was very similar, with 89 percent

14-" white). However, among Romney-to-Clinton voters, the nonwhite share was twice as large, 20 percent. Mr. Trump also lost support from Romney-supporting college-educated voters. While only one in four Romney-to-Trump voters had a college degree, 39 percent of Romney-to-Clinton

15-"voters did, and 31 percent of Romney-to-nonvoters were college-educated. Crucially, the Trump campaign alienated a lot of younger-to-middle-aged voters who had turned out for Mr. Romney in 2012. Four percent of Romney-to-Trump voters were under 30 years old in 2016.

16-"In contrast, 18 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters were under 30, as were 21 percent of Romney-to-nonvoters. Each of these patterns should raise red flags for Republicans, even more so after 18- to 29-year-olds went from supporting Mrs. Clinton by a 25-point margin in 2016

17-" to supporting House Democrats by a 44-point margin in 2018, according to the voter file firm Catalist. But it is the graying of the Republican coalition that is arguably the biggest threat to the party’s prospects. It is true that on average, older people are more reliable

18-"voters than younger people. But the partisan identities and voting behaviors that people adopt early in the life cycle tend to stick, becoming routines that people carry on for the remainder of their lives. In addition, according to Data for Progress research, 30 percent of

19-"millennial Republicans prefer the Republican Party over Mr. Trump “somewhat” or “strongly,” while 65 percent prefer Mr. Trump “somewhat” or “strongly” (compared with 80 percent of boomer Republicans and 81 percent of so-called silent Republicans). Can Republicans solve their

20-" demographic problem? A look at issue preferences indicates wooing back defectors will be difficult. On crucial issues facing the country, Romney-to-Clinton voters, Romney-to-nonvoters and Americans over all hold positions that are relatively far from Romney-to-Trump voters.

21-"Take two issues that have become central to Mr. Trump’s presidency: immigration and trade. Seventy-four percent of Romney-to-Trump voters support deporting undocumented immigrants, but only 35 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters (and 62 percent of Romney-to-nonvoters) do.

22-"The average citizen is in between Romney-to-Clinton voters and Romney-to-nonvoters, with 44 percent supporting deportation. Similarly, while 27 percent of Romney-to-Trump voters supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, 63 percent of Romney-to-Clinton voters (and 53 percent of

23-"Romney-to-nonvoters) did. In short, the 2012 Romney voters who did not vote for Mr. Trump have views that are pretty distant from the emerging Republican consensus that drove Mr. Trump’s victory and has been a central component of his presidency. Mr. Trump may have won the

24-"White House with a thin margin built on winning over just enough Obama voters in the right places. But this victory may ultimately have come at the expense of the Republican Party’s long-term electoral prospects. To win some of the Romney coalition back, Republicans would

25-"need to moderate their stances on some key issues, like immigration and trade, and, of course, exactly the opposite is happening. Republican strategists will continue to work to expand on Mr. Trump’s success,

26-"but their task will get harder and harder if Mr. Trump continues to move the party away from public opinion." ~Sean McElwee, Brian F. Schaffner, Jesse H. Rhodes & Bernard L. Fraga, NYT Opinion, 2/17/19