Many Americans Exited the GOP in 2017

When I left the Republican Party a good many years ago - my extended family followed me soon there after - there were two motivations: (i) that I could not in good conscience remain in a party that ignored the separation of church and state and that was rapidly becoming the captive of right wing religious extremists and racists, and (ii) there was basically zero chance of reforming the GOP from within given the manner in which the party grassroots was being hijacked by  right wing religious extremists and racists.  The only plausible way, therefore, to "save the GOP" was to work to see it defeated in as many electoral contests as possible.  Ironically, now that the GOP holds the White House and both houses of Congress, more and more Republicans are coming to the realization that I came to a good 15 or more years before them: the only way to retain one's moral integrity and basic decency is to leave the party. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the exodus from the Republican Party in no small part thanks to Der  Trumpenführer (a post yesterday looked at the reasoning behind one evangelical Republican's decision to disassociate from both groups).  Here are article excerpts:

For much of 2017, President Trump’s poll numbers have been pretty consistent. In its most recent weekly average, Gallup has Trump at 36 percent approval . . . . Trump is where he is because, although Democrats hate him and independents generally view him negatively, he continues to enjoy high approval ratings from Republicans. Eighty-two percent of those in his own party approve of Trump, as of last week. That’s pretty good, but not good enough to keep Trump’s overall approval from being historically low for a modern president.

The problem for Trump may not just be that only Republicans like him, but that there are fewer Republicans than there were a year ago.

Last week, Gallup reported that the gap in partisan identity between Republicans and Democrats was 7 points — narrower than during the summer but still wider than it was at this point last year. In other words, the percentage of Americans who say that they are Democrats, or independents who tend to vote Democratic, is 7 percentage points higher than the percentage who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning.
 “Democrats’ edge has expanded this year mainly because of a decline in Republican affiliation,” Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones wrote. “A year ago, 44% of Americans identified as Democrats or leaned Democratic, the same percentage as now. However, Republican identification and leaning is five points lower than it was a year ago.” . . .  Women are 5 points less likely to identify as Republicans relative to last November. White women are 7 points less likely to.

This raises the question of why Americans were giving up on the party. Was it a function of the president?

Gallup found slips in Trump’s approval across the board since his inauguration, but polling from Marist conducted last December and in November of this year seems to reinforce the idea that some Republicans soured on Trump specifically. Asked whether they view Trump favorably — a different metric than approval — Trump’s numbers have dropped six percentage points over that 11-month period. 

You’ll notice that the Democrats have fairly consistently had an advantage in terms of party identification. Republicans are more reliable voters, generally speaking, since voting propensity correlates to age and income, which both also correlate to Republican Party membership.

If partisan identification shows a wide advantage for the Democrats in November of 2018, that suggests that the party could see an advantage in the polls.

If Republican leaders think Trump is to blame for that shift, deservedly or not, Washington politics could get very interesting very quickly.

Trump is hardly the only reason to exit the GOP, but he is a malignancy that shows no sign of going away voluntarily and albeit belatedly more and more Republicans seem to be realizing that the man is a liar, sexual predator, and possible traitor.  And that doesn't even begin to look at the GOP's  war on average Americans as embodied by the versions of the GOP tax bill or the growing effort to grant special rights to Christofascists to discriminate against others at will.