North Star — Page 5

Jon McHenry, October 8

October 9, 2023 by North Star

Jon McHenry’s comments to The Daily Caller regarding recent polling showing Donald Trump edging ahead of Joe Biden:

A Republican nominee like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley would have a better chance than Trump against Biden, according to Jon McHenry, a GOP polling analyst and vice president at North Star Opinion Research. Despite this, McHenry told the DCNF that Trump could beat Biden on the basis of the economy, though he acknowledged it’s still too close to call.

“We have such a unique situation right now with both party’s leading candidates in negative territory on their favorable to unfavorable ratings — and the current and previous officeholder. Reelection campaigns are typically a two-step process as a referendum on the incumbent: first, does he or she deserve reelection, and second, would the other candidate do better? I think right now President Biden is losing the referendum, with voters disapproving of his job overall, and especially on the economy and immigration,” said McHenry. “But if the choice is between two candidates with 35 to 40 percent favorables, voters are likely to choose the one who had the better economy.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, Jobs and the Economy, Joe Biden, News Clips, Political Climate, Presidential Contest, Trump

Dan Judy, October 3

October 6, 2023 by North Star

Dan Judy’s comments to The Hill regarding the threat of government shutdowns:

“Most voters don’t really pay attention to the Machiavellian ins-and-outs of this stuff,” GOP strategist Dan Judy told this column. “But what voters do see is continued utter dysfunction in Washington. That is what hurts the Republican brand more than the details of any specific situation.”

Judy cautioned that any political advantage for Democrats was likely to be slight, even as he expressed dismay at the recent goings-on.

“Republicans do tend to take more blame historically for shutdowns,” he said. “But this sort of brinkmanship has become so common that I think the idea of blame is sort of irrelevant in the minds of most voters. So, do Republicans take more blame? Probably. But it dirties everybody up so much.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, Government Spending, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Political Climate, Republicans

Whit Ayres, October 5

October 6, 2023 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments on the PBS survey and keys to the presidential election:

Voters who dislike both Trump and Biden — “the double haters,” Republican strategist Whit Ayers says — “become a swing voter group” that both parties will spend significant time and money trying to win over.

…

“This is a politics of negative polarization where people feel greater animosity against the other side than they feel support for their own,” said Ayres, who has previously consulted for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio.

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, Independent Voters, Joe Biden, News Clips, Presidential Contest, Trump

Dan Judy, October 3

October 3, 2023 by North Star

Dan Judy’s comments to The Hill regarding shutdown brinksmanship:

“Most voters don’t really pay attention to the Machiavellian ins-and-outs of this stuff,” GOP strategist Dan Judy told this column. “But what voters do see is continued utter dysfunction in Washington. That is what hurts the Republican brand more than the details of any specific situation.”

Judy cautioned that any political advantage for Democrats was likely to be slight, even as he expressed dismay at the recent goings-on.

“Republicans do tend to take more blame historically for shutdowns,” he said. “But this sort of brinkmanship has become so common that I think the idea of blame is sort of irrelevant in the minds of most voters. So, do Republicans take more blame? Probably. But it dirties everybody up so much.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Deficits and Debt, Featured, Government Spending, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Political Climate, Republicans

Whit Ayres’ Conversation with Bill Kristol

August 28, 2023 by North Star

Whit Ayres joined Bill Kristol for a conversation about the State of the Republican party nomination:

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, Indictment(s), News Clips, Perspectives, Presidential Primaries, Republicans, Trump, Vlog

Whit Ayres, August 23

August 23, 2023 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments to CNN regarding continued Republican support for former President Donald Trump:

Veteran GOP pollster Whit Ayres points to another, more personal, reason so many GOP voters have discounted the charges against Trump. “Many of them had conflict with siblings, with parents, sometimes with children, sometimes even with spouses about their support for Donald Trump,” Ayres says. “And they are very defensive about it. That makes them instinctively rally to Donald Trump’s defense because if they suggest in any way that he is not fit for office then that casts aspersions on their own past support for him.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Republicans, Trump

“They’re not going to settle for second-best Trump.”

August 23, 2023 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments in The New York Times regarding Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign strategy:

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, argued in an email that DeSantis has adopted an approach to the nomination fight that was bound to fail:

“DeSantis’s strategy, and that of any candidate not named Trump, should be to consolidate the Maybe Trump voters. But DeSantis has seemed like he was going after the Always Trump voters with his aggressive language (“slitting throats”), his comment that Ukraine was just a “territorial dispute,” his suggestion that vaccine conspiracy theorist RFK Jr. would be a good candidate to head the Centers for Disease Control, and his doubling down on whether slavery might have been beneficial to some enslaved people.”

The problem with this approach, Ayres continued, is that “the Always Trump voters are ‘Always Trump’ for a reason — they are not going to settle for the second-best Trump if they can get the real thing.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, DeSantis, Featured, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Presidential Primaries, Republicans, Trump

Voters Trust American Free Enterprise

August 23, 2023 by North Star

Our June 17-22, 2023 survey for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was highlighted in Politico Influence:

FIRST IN PI — CHAMBER POLLING: BUTT OUT OF BUSINESS: As (most of) the Republican presidential hopefuls gear up for tomorrow night’s first primary debate, a new memo based on polling from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and shared exclusively with PI looks to discourage the use of corporate America as a political punching bag, arguing to candidates on both sides of the aisle that voters are not interested in political “micromanagement” of business decisions.

— “As we head into election season, the message is clear: Whether you are courting Republican, Democratic, or independent voters, candidates will be well served to run as pro-business candidates focused on solutions that support jobs and America’s free enterprise system,” Ashlee Rich Stephenson, the Chamber’s senior political strategist, writes in the memo.

— In a matchup between three hypothetical candidates — one who favors more disclosure of companies’ ESG efforts; one who favors government intervention to rescue companies from large “woke” investors; and one who “says that whether it comes from the right or the left, government micromanaging of business is a bad idea” — the last of those candidates received a plurality of 40 percent support, according to the Chamber’s memo. That included support from 53 percent of Republicans, 43 percent of independents and a little over a quarter of Democrats, which the memo says tracks with other recent polls of GOP voters.

— North Star Opinion Research polled 1,327 registered voters between June 17-22 for the Chamber. Among the survey’s other findings were that voters across the ideological spectrum agreed that businesses are a force for good. The poll found that Republican and independent voters trust even large companies more than the federal government, with Democrats rating the federal government only slightly more trustworthy. More than three quarters of Republicans polled and nearly 6 in 10 independents polled favored less government intervention in the economy.

To read the full column, please click here.

To read the Chamber’s memo highlighting the survey results, please click here.

Filed Under: Business, Featured, Jobs and the Economy, Republicans

Whit Ayres, August 18

August 21, 2023 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments to the Associated Press regarding the Republican primary electorate:

Whit Ayres, a national pollster based in Virginia, handicapped the GOP electorate as 10% to 15% “Never Trumpers” — those who might gravitate to Christie for his attacks on Trump — and 35% or so “die-hard MAGA Trump supporters,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

The rest, half or a slim majority of the party, “have doubts about his electability” in a general election but are still “reliable Republicans who voted for him twice,” Ayres said. Trump’s rivals cannot win over that remaining faction by “going after him frontally,” the pollster argued.

As a Republican, “you can’t call him unfit for office,” Ayres said. “That’s basically requiring half the party to admit they screwed up and put someone unfit for office into the Oval Office. That’s just a psychological step too far for most people.”

To read the full article on the PBS website, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Presidential Primaries, Republicans, Trump

Jon McHenry, August 14

August 15, 2023 by North Star

Jon McHenry’s comments to The Boston Globe regarding the economy as an issue in the Republican primary and general election:

Letting the White House dominate the conversation isn’t good for Republicans with polls consistently showing that voters rank the economy as the most important issue, said Jon McHenry, a GOP pollster not affiliated with any of the campaigns.

“It makes a lot of sense to be out there … talking about what you’re going to do to fix the economy,” McHenry said of the candidates in the GOP primary campaign. “Republicans are better served being involved on the issue and laying the groundwork on it rather than ceding the issue to Joe Biden for the next 12 months or so.”

…

McHenry said Pence was smart to frame his economic plan, which goes beyond inflation, as still primarily focused on that problem.

“It’s a good shorthand on the economy,” he said. “Just talking about inflation is a pretty good way to make sure people are on the same page with you.”

…

For now, Biden is doing more talking in detail about the economy than his Republican opponents, making Bidenomics a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

“I don’t know if it’s the dumbest or gutsiest move I’ve seen politically in the last 20 years,” McHenry said.

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, Jobs and the Economy, Joe Biden, News Clips, Presidential Contest, Presidential Primaries, Republicans