In a recent article, Washington Post reporter David Weigel argues that the critical stance of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) toward President Trump is harmful to Democrats. Weigel says:
Trump feeds off mainstream Republican opposition. … we should not stop remembering how he changed party politics. Trump smashed the mainstream consensus of political science that nominees need party elite support to succeed. Instead, he ran as a figure outside the normal party system, pulling in voters who did not consider themselves Republicans.
Weigel is certainly right that Trump won the nomination without GOP elite support while using anti-establishment rhetoric and taking some unorthodox stands. But there is little evidence that he won by mobilizing voters who “did not consider themselves Republicans.”
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There have been campaigns in both parties in which an “outsider” or underdog candidate won disproportionate support from independent voters in the primaries in a battle against an “establishment” favorite: Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton, John McCain vs. George W. Bush, Bill Bradley vs. Al Gore, Gary Hart vs. Walter Mondale. All of the outsiders/underdogs lost except Obama, who did have significant elite support, albeit less, initially, than Clinton.
Trump’s story is quite different. He won not chiefly by attracting new non-Republican voters but by appealing to existing GOP voters who received no clear signal as to who the best alternative was. Perhaps Trump would have won even if the Republican elite had coalesced around an alternative, but that was not what happened.
First, Trump did not win by luring independents into the primaries. The first chart below shows the proportions of the primary or caucus vote cast for Republicans in the 17 states that had exit polls in 2012 and 2016. (Source: exit polls archived on CNN’s Election Central.) Although turnout grew from 2012 to 2016, the independent share of the GOP primary vote did not greatly increase. In a majority of states, it was lower in 2016 than in 2012. This should not be surprising, because in 2016 there was a Democratic nomination contest to attract some independents, while in 2012 all of the action was on the Republican side.
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More important, as the second chart based on the 26 states with exit polls in 2016 shows, Trump won broadly similar levels of support from Republican and independent voters in GOP primaries.
In fact, in a majority of states in which exit polls were conducted, Trump won more support from Republican identifiers than independents. The GOP candidate who won disproportionate support from independents in 2016 was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, not Trump. (Many states lacking exit polls held caucuses in which Trump fared poorly.)
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Trump was not a party regular and didn’t run as one. Yet his message appealed to many traditional Republicans.
In the general election, he won a very narrow victory based on consolidating support from 90 percent of Republican voters, many of whom had not supported him in the primaries and had misgivings about him. That being the case, the claim that it is bad news for Democrats or those worried about Trump’s actions if McCain (or other prominent Republicans) are visible critics of the president is not supported.
David Karol is an associate professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland at College Park.