Conservative pollster: DeSantis’ culture wars 'driving' GOP voters to Trump

01 August 2023

Conservative pollster Frank Luntz explained to CNN on Tuesday why Republican Party presidential primary voters are abandoning Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and coalescing behind former President Donald Trump despite his mass of legal entanglements. Luntz's findings are based on GOP focus groups that he conducted in Iowa.

"Let's look specifically about the former president and the support, before we get to the focus group that you did, the support that he has nationally has grown since February," anchor Dana Bash began.

"Twelve points since February," Bash continued. "And DeSantis, who was just right behind him at the time is now even further behind him. Who are these people who aren't part, maybe necessarily of like that Trump core, what we call the Fifth Avenue Republicans — who, you know, he famously says, 'I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and those people will support me' — but the people on top of that who were looking at everything that's going on, that happened on January 6th, and they're saying, 'Okay, I'll throw my support behind Donald Trump?'"

"The less educated you are, the more likely you are to support Donald Trump — lower-income; people who have been unemployed at some point in the last five years — it's a socioeconomic level that was once a Democratic voter, which is quite interesting, the people who have come over to the GOP," Luntz said. "They gave them the majority in 2016. A lot of them, maybe fifteen percent, have been voting Democrat in the past, and they were simply frustrated, fed up. They feel ignored, forgotten, even betrayed. And there's a level of anger there that brought them to Donald Trump because he represented and offered to be their voice and to speak for them. And that group has actually grown over time, and DeSantis from the opening of his campaign has simply not appealed to them."

Luntz found that although DeSantis has a "very strong record in Florida," his culture wars have soured the GOP base outside of the Sunshine State.

"The voters have looked at this and said, 'Why are you weaponizing government against companies you don't agree with? Why are you taking such an extreme position on abortion when you're selling yourself as a common-sense conservative?'" Luntz noted. "So there are issues that are driving voters away from DeSantis at the very moment that so many of these Iowa voters are looking for change."

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