Enthusiasm is not people. Despite screaming headlines about record turnouts, despite Trump’s incessant bragging that he’s swelling the Republican ranks, despite a thousand hang-wringing stories trolling the idea that Trump has found the secret hiding place of the mythical Reagan Democrat, the truth is Donald Trump is not bringing new voters to the GOP.
Donald Trump likes to say he has created a political movement that has drawn “millions and millions” of new voters into the Republican Party. “It’s the biggest thing happening in politics,” Trump has said. “All over the world, they’re talking about it,” he's bragged.
But a Politico analysis of the early 2016 voting data show that, so far, it’s just not true.
While Trump’s insurgent candidacy has spurred record-setting Republican primary turnout in state after state, the early statistics show that the vast majority of those voters aren’t actually new to voting or to the Republican Party, but rather they are reliable past voters in general elections. They are only casting ballots in a Republican primary for the first time.
Trump voters aren’t new voters. Trump voters aren’t new Republicans. Trump’s “biggest thing happening in politics” is simply that he’s getting some fraction of Republicans who turn out in general elections to show up on primary day. That’s it. It’s a grand achievement that might represent little more than the fact that this cycle brought in 17 candidates, and a genuinely competitive and surprising set of primaries. Closely fought contests tend to be better attended than blow-outs.
It’s also likely that Trump’s damn-the-dogwhistle, full racism, sexism, what-have-you-ism ahead! approach stoked enthusiasm among his highly bigoted supporters.
The people showing up to vote for Trump are not just already Republicans, they’re Republicans who were very likely to show up in November—Trump or no Trump. Based on this analysis, Trump’s wave of voters won’t even generate a visible ripple.