Suburban Voters

Whit Ayres, November 4

November 4, 2021 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments in The Atlantic regarding the nationalization of state and local elections:

“We’ve had increasing nationalization of our politics in an almost straight line for the past 25 years,” Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster based in Virginia, told me. “You used to say all politics is local. That seems like an anachronistic statement today. The polarization and the partisanship is driven down the ballot in a way that you never saw in the 1980s and 1990s. Now you have state legislative races that are being nationalized.”

To read the full article, please click here (paywall, but with some free articles each month).

Filed Under: Blog, Featured, In the News Sidebar, Joe Biden, Midterm Elections, News Clips, Political Climate, Suburban Voters, Virginia

Whit Ayres, May 13

May 13, 2021 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments in The Wall Street Journal regarding House Republicans voting to remove Liz Cheney from party leadership:

Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster based in Alexandria, Va., argued that if the GOP wants to rally a majority of the electorate behind its agenda, the party can’t afford for its base to contract.
“The GOP has lost tens of thousands of suburban voters over the last two election cycles, many of them college-educated women,” Mr. Ayres said. “Those suburban women left the party for a reason, and this move [against Ms. Cheney] reminds them of the reason why.”

To read the full article, please click here.

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

Whit Ayres, May 10

May 13, 2021 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments to NBC News regarding the efforts to remove Liz Cheney from House Republican leadership:

“Removing Liz Cheney from leadership will give a boatload of ammunition to the GOP’s critics,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
Republicans plan to remove Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference, the No. 3 position in House GOP leadership, in a move to demote the highest-ranking Republican who voted to impeach Trump early this year. She has vocally criticized Trump’s”big lie” that the election last year was stolen.
Ayers warned that efforts to exile Cheney — the highest-ranking Republican woman in Washington and the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney — could further antagonize suburban voters, particularly college-educated women, who ditched the party because of their opposition to Trump.
“They will also say there’s no room in today’s Republican Party for anyone willing to be honest about the 2020 election and the events of Jan. 6,” Ayres said. “That does not strike me as the best way to get back the suburban voters who’ve left the party in the last few years.”

To read the full article, please click here.

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

Whit Ayres, April 20

April 20, 2021 by North Star

Whit Ayres’ comments in Politico regarding election results in the Atlanta suburbs:

“It’s a mistake to assume that suburban voters are somehow locked into the Democratic column,” said Whit Ayres, the longtime Republican pollster. “They are very much up for grabs not just in Georgia, but around the country.”
Still, Ayers said, the focus of party activists on exacting a measure of payback on the party’s own statewide elected officials is “doing the exact opposite of what’s necessary to revive the Republican Party in the suburbs.”
“Picking a fight with your own party’s governor and lieutenant governor and secretary of state,” he said, “doesn’t strike me as the wisest of political moves.”

To read the full article, please click here.

Filed Under: Blog, Georgia, In the News Sidebar, News Clips, Republicans, Suburban Voters