Opinion Research and Strategic Guidance for Political, Corporate, and Nonprofit Clients Nationwide
Whit Ayres’ comments in The New York Times regarding Donald Trump’s approach to immigration:
“He finally figured out that you can’t win a national election with just white voters,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster who worked for Mr. Rubio’s campaign.
To read the full article, please click here.
Whit Ayres’ comments to Fox News Latino regarding Hispanic support for Republicans nationally:
Veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres said that while Latinos have traditionally preferred the Democratic Party, the Fox News Latino poll highlights a worrisome downward trend for Republicans.
“Party identification [for Latinos] is fully consistent with what we have seen since the demise of the George W. Bush immigration reform proposal in 2007, when Hispanic voter identification went from 49 percent Democrat to 65 percent Democrat,” said Ayres, who wrote a book titled: “2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America,” which says the GOP must get more minorities on its side if it is to remain viable and win back the Oval Office.
“After the 2007 demise of the immigration proposal, Republican Party ID [among Latinos] went from 28 percent, to 26 percent, then 25 percent to 22 percent and in 2014 went to 27 percent. This would mean that Republican ID is at its lowest point” going back more than a decade, Ayres said.
To read the full article, please click here.
Whit Ayres’ comments in US News and World Report on Donald Trump’s effect on downballot races and the future of the Republican party:
For the moment that’s raising the prospect of resurgence in a fading voting pattern: “Just because people haven’t split their tickets in recent elections doesn’t mean they can’t spit their tickets,” says Whit Ayres, a veteran GOP pollster who also wrote a book, “2016 and Beyond” on how the GOP can regain the White House. “We are starting to see hints of the greatest amounts of ticket splitting we have seen since the 1980s.” Ayres pointed to a poll his firm conducted for Rep. Robert Dold, an Illinois Republican in a swing district; it had Clinton leading by 16 points and Dold ahead by 7 percentage points. “So there’s a 23 point difference in those numbers … which is a dramatic level of ticket splitting,” Ayres says.
…
Nominating Trump only throws accelerant on what had been a smoldering fire for the Republican Party. Because you know who Donald Trump specifically does not appeal to? Women (the gender gap is trending toward record-setting this year), nonwhite voters and young voters.“That’s a serious danger,” says GOP pollster Ayres. “People tend stick the participation identification they adopted when they came of political age.” If Democrats can lock in voting groups whose power is only going to grow, like Latinos and millenials, “it will be exceedingly difficult for Republicans to put together a majority in future elections.”
To read the full article, please click here.
Whit Ayres’ comments in The Atlantic regarding Donald Trump’s racially-charged appeals:
“Racially divisive politics ramp up the importance of the changing demographics because it makes it harder to perform credibly among non-white voters, and it also makes it harder for Trump to run up the white numbers he needs because of resistance to that sort of appeal among white college graduates and white women,” said the longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/trump-gop-demographics/486320/
Jon McHenry’s comments in Politico on the challenges Donald Trump faces in winning a general election:
“I don’t see how he all of a sudden becomes this magnanimous unifier,” said Republican pollster Jon McHenry, whose firm, North Star Opinion Research, polled for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. “Does he get a bump? Probably. But he’s starting from such a low position that this small bump he gets from being the presumptive nominee I don’t think is enough to overcome the demographic challenges or the character challenges that Trump faces.”
…McHenry outlined some back-of-the-envelope math, starting with a number of assumptions, to outline Trump’s uphill path. First, he assumed three-in-10 voters this fall are non-white – a modest increase from 28 percent in 2012, according to exit polls. He then gave Trump a vote share of 10 percentage points greater than his average favorable rating for a number of demographic groups.
If Trump’s vote share among white women was 50 percent, McHenry said – which would be down from Romney’s 56 percent four years ago – that would mean Trump would have to win about 85 percent of white men to win, an astounding percentage and dramatically better than Romney’s 62-percent share.
To read the full article, please click here.
Whit Ayres’ comments to ABC News regarding the challenges a Trump candidacy faces in the fall:
Some Republicans acknowledge the steep curve for Trump, who edged closer to clinching the nomination after winning Indiana on Tuesday.
“The guy is hated and detested by an extraordinary amount of the American electorate,” said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster who worked on Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.
“It’s not just one group that detests him,” Ayres said, alluding to Trump’s rhetoric on immigration and his incendiary comments about women. “He has been on a concerted effort to make enemies of millions of Americans.”
To read the full article, please click here.
Whit Ayres’ book 2016 and Beyond was featured in Jason Riley’s Wall Street Journal column:
In his book, “2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres notes that when Mr. Romney won 59% of non-Hispanic white voters in 2012, it was the “highest percentage of the white vote of any Republican candidate challenging an incumbent president in the history of exit polling, surpassing even Ronald Reagan’s percentage among whites in his 1980 victory over Jimmy Carter.”
To read the full article, please click here.
David Brooks cited Whit Ayres’ book 2016 and Beyond in his New York Times column:
It’s not exactly breaking news that this is ruinous to the long-term political prospects of the party. In his book “2016 and Beyond,” the veteran pollster Whit Ayres, now working for Marco Rubio, points out that given the composition of the electorate, if the G.O.P. candidate won the same 59 percent share of the white vote that Mitt Romney won in 2012, he would have to win 30 percent of the nonwhite vote to get a majority. That’s a daunting number, given that, as Dan Balz of The Washington Post points out, Romney only won 17 percent of that vote.
To read the full column, please click here.
To read more about the book, please click here. To buy the book on Amazon, please click here.
Whit Ayres’ book 2016 and Beyond was cited in a Wall Street Journal column by Fred Barnes:
Any harsh criticism of immigrants who have come here illegally gets their attention. “The idea that Republicans can rip into illegal immigrants without antagonizing Hispanic voters is delusional,” GOP pollster Whit Ayres noted in his book “2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America.” He has surveyed Hispanic voters extensively.
Mr. Ayres says an intemperate attack on illegal immigrants by a Republican will be exploited by Democrats and amplified by the media, particularly Spanish-language talk show hosts. This is why Republicans were worried about Donald Trump’s denunciation of immigrants from Mexico. Indeed, his attack became a national story.
…
At my request, Mr. Ayres calculated how Mr. Romney would have done in Florida if he had matched President Bush’s performance in 2004. Republicans probably can’t win the presidency without Florida. It has a large Hispanic population, of which Mr. Bush won 56%. Hispanics were 15% of the Florida electorate.
In 2012 Mr. Romney got 39% of Florida Hispanics, who had grown to 17% of the total vote. Doing as well as Mr. Bush would have given Mr. Romney an additional three percentage points overall, Mr. Ayres suggests, and he would have captured Florida by “the same margin as Bush in 2004.” In other words, Mr. Romney would have won the state 52% to 47%, instead of losing it 49% to 50%.
To read the full column, please click here.
Whit Ayres has argued in his book 2016 and Beyond that the next Republican nominee will need to earn more than 40 percent of the Hispanic vote to be competitive, and that point was referenced in articles in the LA Times and Fiscal Times.
For the LA Times article, please click here.
For the Fiscal Times article, please click here.
Dr. Whit Ayres, president of North Star Opinion Research, co-founded Resurgent Republic with former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie. Read More...
Copyright © 2024 · Associate Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in