{"id":1111,"date":"2025-11-06T13:45:28","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T18:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/?p=1111"},"modified":"2025-11-06T13:45:28","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T18:45:28","slug":"tuesday-and-the-anti-trump-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/tuesday-and-the-anti-trump-republicans\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday and the anti-Trump Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/whitehouse\/54898234692\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"2048\" height=\"1365\" src=\"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/54898234692_b4a0a6005d_k.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1112\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/54898234692_b4a0a6005d_k.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/54898234692_b4a0a6005d_k-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/54898234692_b4a0a6005d_k-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/54898234692_b4a0a6005d_k-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/the-number-in-new-trump-polling-thats-most-worth-watching\/\">mentioned earlier this week<\/a>, the poll numbers I&#8217;m paying the closest attention to at the moment are those showing President Trump&#8217;s support softening among Republicans (as opposed to the idea that his support is &#8220;collapsing&#8221; or &#8220;cratering&#8221; or whatever other descriptor is most effective at getting people to click links on social media). After all, Trump&#8217;s power relies heavily on Republican legislators sticking with him, something they do in large part because they&#8217;re afraid of his supporters. But if his supporters start to become indifferent? The dynamics shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Thursday, the New York Times&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/11\/06\/upshot\/election-turnout-trump-hispanics.html\">Nate Cohn noted<\/a> a possible manifestation of that softening. In statewide races this week, exit polls showed that a chunk of people who said they voted for Trump last year decided this year to vote for the Democrat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That is true. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/election\/2025\/exit-polls\">Exit polls published by CNN<\/a> from California (where there was a statewide ballot proposition), New Jersey and Virginia (both of which had gubernatorial races) show defections among voters for both major-party candidates last year \u2014\u00a0but bigger shifts among Trump voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In California, 5 percent of Kamala Harris voters opposed Prop 50, a measure centered specifically on countering a Trump-backed Republican power grab. But 12 percent of 2024 Trump voters backed the measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"min-height:371px\" id=\"datawrapper-vis-absQH\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" defer src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/absQH\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" data-target=\"#datawrapper-vis-absQH\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/absQH\/full.png\" alt=\"How often voters shifted from their 2024 support (Grouped Bars)\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In New Jersey and Virginia, a small number of Harris voters cast ballots for the Republican candidates for governor. But in each state, 7 percent of Trump voters supported the Democrat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These aren&#8217;t huge numbers and are subject to margins of error. But that 7 percent jumped out at me because of another number that I spotted in another poll. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asked by CNN whether their next congressional vote was intended as a referendum on Trump or not, a plurality of Americans said it was \u2014\u00a0to express opposition to the president. Among Republicans, you won&#8217;t be surprised to hear, most indicated that their vote would be an expression of support for what he&#8217;s doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A number of Republicans, though, said their congressional vote would be an expression of opposition to Trump. Specifically, <strong>7 percent did<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"min-height:590px\" id=\"datawrapper-vis-zAd0S\"><script type=\"text\/javascript\" defer src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/zAd0S\/embed.js\" charset=\"utf-8\" data-target=\"#datawrapper-vis-zAd0S\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/datawrapper.dwcdn.net\/zAd0S\/full.png\" alt=\"If you were voting for Congress today, would you think of your vote as being to: (Bar Chart)\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>What&#8217;s particularly striking about those results is the ratio between the responses. Most Democrats say their vote will be an expression of their views on Trump; by a 79 to 1 margin, that expression will be negative. Most Republicans <em>also<\/em> say their vote will express their feelings about the president. But only about 8 times as many Republicans say their vote will express support as say it will express opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Again \u2014\u00a0as with the exit polls and as with the polling I looked at earlier this week \u2014\u00a0Trump still has strong support from most Republicans. But this is a country where the Senate and House are about evenly divided. In 2024, 19 House seats were won by Republicans whose margins of victory were 7 points or less. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that&#8217;s not even accounting for the <em>flip<\/em>. Take 7 percent from Republican House totals last year and give those votes to their Democratic opponents? The House goes from a five-seat Republican majority to a more-than-30-seat Democratic one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This isn&#8217;t how politics works, of course. It is, however, an example of what I&#8217;m talking about. If there are 30 Republican members of the House who are suddenly worried that their voters want them to take a harder line on Trump? Trump&#8217;s ability to strongarm his way through Washington gets much more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photo: Trump descends. (White House\/Flickr)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned earlier this week, the poll numbers I&#8217;m paying the closest attention to at the moment are those showing President Trump&#8217;s support softening among Republicans (as opposed to the idea that his support is &#8220;collapsing&#8221; or &#8220;cratering&#8221; or whatever other descriptor is most effective at getting people to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1114,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111\/revisions\/1114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pbump.net\/o\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}