Whit Ayres, March 15

Whit Ayres’ comments to fivethirtyeight.com regarding education and Republican candidates:

These data points might be one reason why Republicans appear confident that DeSantis’s focus on race in education can attract socially conservative voters in a GOP primary. During a phone call with me, Republican pollster Whit Ayres pointed to Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial race — after he stressed “parental rights” in the classroom — as proof for GOP candidates and strategists that certain issues surrounding education have appeal.

“Savvy Republican presidential candidates have historically made good use of education issues,” Ayres said. “Good Republican candidates have seen the potential in education issues for many years.”

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Whit Ayres, February 14

Whit Ayres’ comments to CNN on the structure of the Republican primary electorate:

That allowed Trump in 2016 to neutralize Cruz’ expected edge among evangelicals because those without degrees voted more like other blue-collar Republicans than they did like the white-collar evangelicals. Among Republican voters, said Ayres, the GOP pollster, “the education divide” has been “a better predictor of Donald Trump’s strength than the evangelical/non-evangelical divide.”

Early indications are that education will remain a critical fault line in the 2024 GOP race, including among evangelical voters. Ayres said that in the recent 2024 polling he conducted for The Bulwark, Trump ran about even with DeSantis among non-college evangelicals when the two were matched with a large field of potential contenders, while DeSantis led the former president fairly comfortably among both college-educated evangelicals and non-evangelicals with and without a degree.

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Jon McHenry, October 19

Jon McHenry’s comments in The Boston Globe about school choice and parental rights:

School choice and parental rights, especially after the last two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, are often a reliable way for Republicans running in statewide races to talk about issues that are typically favorable to their campaigns, according to GOP pollster Jon McHenry.

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