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Whit Ayres’ WSJ Opinion Piece, November 18

November 18, 2019 by

From Whit Ayres’ op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on November 18:

As the nation tumbles toward the 2020 presidential elections, it seems also on course for its second presidential impeachment in a little more than two decades. It all looks like so much chaos, but our likely path forward is illuminated by polls about the Bill Clinton impeachment in the 1990s and predictions from one of America’s most prolific Founding Fathers.

While the Clinton and Trump impeachment efforts differ dramatically on the politics and allegations involved, one similarity offers tantalizing parallels that could predict how the public reacts to the current investigation. Unlike the Nixon impeachment inquiry in 1973-74, the Clinton and Trump impeachment drives evoked an overwhelmingly strong partisan reaction. In both instances, stalwart party members on either side defended behavior they would roundly condemn in a president of the other party.

To read the full column, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, Impeachment, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Political Climate, Presidential Contest

Whit Ayres, November 14

November 14, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’ comments in The New York Times regarding potential handling of the Supreme Court ruling on DACA:

“Presumably, there will be discretion about how aggressively various laws are enforced,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, “but it does create a political challenge because, consistently, 80 percent of Americans have supported allowing the DACA kids to stay.”

…

“What’s so frustrating is that 80 percent of Americans also support a secure border, and Congress has thus far seemed unable to put those two 80 percent issues together in a very limited immigration bill,” Mr. Ayres said.

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, Immigration and Border Security, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Political Climate

Whit Ayres, November 8

November 8, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’ comments in The Hill regarding Republican Senate reelection prospects:

Republican pollster Whit Ayres told The Hill that the results from Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania show suburban voters are trending further away from GOP candidates.

“It’s a continuation of the pattern we saw in 2017 in Virginia’s gubernatorial election and the 2018 midterms. Blue states are getting bluer, red states are staying red and states in the middle are still competitive. But it’s hard to reelect with a job approval of 34 percent,” Ayres said, referring to Bevin’s ratings.

“The suburbs continue to trend toward the Democrats where the Republicans have had a stranglehold for years,” he added.

Ayres said statewide Republican candidates can win in swing states such as Maine and Colorado next year but will have to outperform Trump on top of the ticket.

“The senators running in swing states will need to run well-ahead of the president in the suburbs to win reelection,” he said.

“And that’s possible,” Ayres said, noting how Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) outperformed Trump in their home states in 2016.

To read the full article, please click here.

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

Dan Judy, Oct 28

November 6, 2019 by

Dan Judy’s comments in The Hill regarding the political impact of U.S. troops successes against ISIS:

Another Republican strategist, Dan Judy, said that it was important to acknowledge the importance of al-Baghdadi’s demise — but also to keep its likely impact at home in perspective.

“Strategically, it is a huge deal, it is a huge win, and I think people recognize that,” he said. “But most people would not have recognized al-Baghdadi, whereas Osama bin Laden held a singular place in the American psyche.” …

To be sure, some Republicans argue that even if the al-Baghdadi operation does not change Trump’s overall approval ratings, it could at least give him some breathing room from GOP elected officials who have been openly critical of the Syria pull-out.

“Many Republicans, especially on Capitol Hill, were very unhappy about that,” said Judy. “This could take a bit of heat off [Trump] for that decision.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, National Security, News Clips, Political Climate, Trump

Whit Ayres, October 15

October 15, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’ comments in The New York Times regarding public opinion on impeachment:

Still, there are signs that the outlook for Mr. Trump is not improving. Support for impeaching the president has been growing among Americans who were once against it. Before the Ukraine revelations, said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, about 15 percent of Americans who disapproved of Trump’s job performance still opposed his impeachment and removal. 

“The Ukraine revelations are reducing that number,” he said, to 12 percent in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. “The progression of this story will likely make the impeachment inquiry numbers look much like Trump’s job approval numbers, with 40 to 45 percent opposing it and 55 to 60 percent supporting it,” Mr. Ayres added.

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, Impeachment, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Political Climate, Trump

Whit Ayres, September 28

September 30, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’ comments in The Atlantic on President Trump’s statements regarding California:

“It’s a freebie for Trump” that energizes his base, says the veteran Republican pollster Whit Ayres. “It’s not like California’s going to turn around and vote Republican anytime in the future. This is part of the messaging that Republicans have used for years to send a signal to the rest of the country that I’m on your side, not on their side.”

To read the full article, please click here.

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

Whit Ayres, August 19

August 19, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’ comments to the Associated Press on Republican office holders and gun control laws:

“Republicans’ backs are already against the wall among suburban voters, particularly college-educated women,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican consultant. “And the inability of our political system to pass what most Americans see as commonsense reforms related to gun violence only makes the matter worse.”

To read the full article, please click here.

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

Whit Ayres, August 13

August 14, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’s comments to CNBC regarding the future diversity of the Republican party:

Whit Ayres, founder and president of North Star Opinion Research, says a diverse Republican Party lies ahead, despite its current state. Ayres worked for Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016.

“We had a rally in the South Carolina primary in Charleston, and Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Trey Gowdy were on the stage,” Ayres said. “They presented a different face to the American electorate. I took a picture of that rally and said, ‘This is the face of a successful Republican Party.’”

To read the full article, please click here.

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

Whit Ayres, July 15

July 17, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’s comments in The Atlantic regarding Donald Trump’s appeal to the coalition that elected him in 2016:

A verity of American politics is that the game is about addition. A successful candidate preserves his core support and builds out. Yet more than a year before the 2020 election, Trump has shown no appetite for enlarging his coalition. He seems content to win or lose with the ones who got him this far. “The president has, since the day he was elected, focused his attention on stimulating and energizing the people who were already for him—often at the expense of people who are not,” Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told me. “He’s made no effort at all to expand his base of support.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Political Climate, Presidential Contest, Republicans, Trump

Whit Ayres, July 3

July 3, 2019 by

Whit Ayres’ comments in The Washington Post on the gap between President Trump’s approval rating and views of the economy:

Yet the president hasn’t enjoyed a similar lift in his numbers. It’s evidence, Republican pollster Whit Ayres says, that voters are “evaluating Trump’s job approval based on his conduct and behavior in office rather than the state of the economy.”

“Donald Trump is a nontraditional president, and he has severed the traditional relationship between economic well being and presidential job approval,” Ayres says. “A more traditional president in this economy would have job approval in the upper 50s, maybe even 60 percent or above.”

To read the full article, please click here.

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