Voters Add to Election Turmoil by Threatening to Jump Party Lines
(snip)
Candidates aren’t the only ones doing the unexpected this election year. Voters are adding to the uncertainty by threatening to buck the parties they typically support. Republicans ill-disposed toward Mr. Trump are threatening to stay home or vote for Mrs. Clinton, while some Democrats who don’t like Mrs. Clinton or feel abandoned by their party are gravitating toward the presumptive GOP nominee.
The election is four months away, but early evidence suggests a larger-than-usual share of the electorate might switch sides this fall, with Republican women, in particular, more open to backing Mrs. Clinton, and white men who identify as Democrats rallying around Mr. Trump. The prospect of voters crossing party lines makes it more complicated for Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump and candidates down the ballot to turn out supporters on Election Day.
One factor: Mr. Trump’s opposition to free trade and illegal immigration has drawn white Democrats and independents who feel culturally isolated or economically distressed, while many higher-educated Republicans who don’t like Mr. Trump view Mrs. Clinton as the steadier commander in chief, polls show.
(snip)
To gauge the propensity of voters to jump party lines, Deep Root pollsters measured support for Mr. Trump against professed support for an unnamed Republican congressional candidate—a so-called generic GOP candidate. Mr. Trump runs 27 percentage points behind the generic candidate among white, college-educated Republican women, and 20 points behind among Republican women who didn’t graduate from college, according to the Deep Root data.
But he runs more than 10 percentage points ahead of that generic Republican among white men who identify either as Democrats or independents. He also runs stronger among white Democratic women and the least-partisan Democrats. Those findings are in line with Wall Street Journal/NBC polling data that show Mr. Trump runs far behind where 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney was among white women with college degrees, but performs much better than Mr. Romney did among white men who didn’t attend college.
(snip)
The possibility that this year will be different presents both an opportunity and dilemma for candidates at every level of the ballot.
Mrs. Clinton held a small event at a coffee shop in suburban Loudoun County, Va., in May to discuss education, health-care costs and equal pay, a ploy to court Republican women. Suburban women also were a key audience for her speech condemning Mr. Trump on foreign policy. And she twice appealed to Republicans in her speech accepting the Democratic nomination.
(snip)
Mr. Trump makes regular appeals to the Democrats who backed Mr. Sanders in the primary. “To all those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms,” Mr. Trump said on the final day of the Republican primary.
More..
http://www.wsj.com/articles/voters-add-to-election-turmoil-by-threatening-to-jump-party-lines-1468186219
= new reply since forum marked as read
