by Jonathan Movroydis
In this interview, senior fellows David Brady and Douglas Rivers discuss Vital Signs: A Poll on the State of the Nation from the Hoover Institution. Brady and Rivers surveyed voters’ attitudes in August prior to the 2020 presidential election. They explain shifts in Republican positions during the Trump era and voter divisions on issues including public health policy responses to COVID-19. The Hoover political scientists also shed light on why Democrats and Republicans have populist wings that both distrust governing elites and establishment institutions. Finally, they argue that if the Democratic Party embraces far-left policies, it will be a challenge to maintain support from suburban swing voters, who helped elect President Biden.
What did you hope to attain from this poll?
Douglas Rivers: The Republican Party has gone from being a mostly affluent party to one that has significant blue-collar and rural support. After Trump, we wanted to explore current attitudes that shape the GOP.
David Brady: We also wanted to know what will happen to the Republican Party after Trump, as well as the attitudes of Democratic and independent voters.
What did you find?
Douglas Rivers: What we found is that the Republican Party has become the Trump party. Whatever Donald Trump believes is enthusiastically supported by most Republicans. There were also indications that Republicans are becoming less small-government conservatives than they had previously been.
For example, you wrote in this report that attitudes about taxation of the wealthy have increasingly shifted. Many Republicans now believe that the tax system is unfairly rigged in favor of wealthy Americans. Is Donald Trump responsible for these changes in attitude?
Douglas Rivers: Certainly, Trump spoke as a populist and we are seeing his influence with Republican voters. Trump supporters in particular have expressed greater antipathy towards mainstream elite institutions, such as universities, than Republicans did a generation ago.
Your poll talks about attitudes regarding COVID-19 shelter-in-place orders in various states. How are COVID-19 policies dividing Democrats and Republicans?
Douglas Rivers: COVID-19 has become a very partisan issue. Mask mandates and lockdowns were opposed by a variety of conservatives and populists. Conservatives saw these measures as an intrusion by big government. Populists believed that the Democrats were using the issue to amass more power for themselves and to control people.
Trump lost because of his handling of COVID-19. Most Republicans supported Trump’s pandemic policy, but not overwhelmingly.
One of the surprising insights in the poll was how Republicans and Democrats share general populist views. In what ways have both sides become more populist?
David Brady: Doug and I conducted a poll in Europe that showed that people are deeply distrustful of government. They don’t think that the government has their best interest at heart. The worst of this is a belief that an elite sector is actually working against the people. You also see elements of these attitudes in both Democratic and Republican parties. People don’t trust the government, and they don’t think the economic system is fair.
Douglas Rivers: Although populists on both sides distrust institutions, there are issues, such as immigration, on which they disagree. The Republican base since 2000 has been very anti-immigration, but Republican politicians, until Donald Trump, have largely been dismissive of such sentiments within the GOP.
David Brady: In Europe, we also found that immigration was the most salient issue.
Douglas Rivers: We found even the right-wing parties in Europe were perceived by their supporters as being too pro-immigration.
As you have said, there is a general distrust of the elite establishment, but it appears from your polling that right-wing and left-wing populists have different beliefs about who represents the establishment.
Douglas Rivers: Whom people consider elites and whom they distrust varies a bit, but the traditional elite institutions, which include religious organizations, corporations, the government, universities, and the media, are distrusted more by Republicans in general than by Democrats.
The military is the one organization that has universally high ratings and is not negatively perceived by either side. I think the police became an issue with Black Lives Matter on the left, and supporting the police on the right is viewed as patriotic.
David Brady: Still, the poll shows that a large number of Democrats do not support “defunding the police.”
Is there a set of populist issues that garner support from both sides of the political aisle?
Douglas Rivers: Minimum wages and raising taxes on the rich have wide public support. You have to distinguish between political leaders of the parties and their voters. We live in a polarized world where political leaders agree on next to nothing. The bases of the parties don’t agree on much, but there are a few issues where they agree more than their political leadership does.
David Brady: Most Americans still say they would rather live in the United States than anywhere else in the world. Secondly, a majority of Republicans said that they prefer a representative who compromises rather than one who remains an ideological purist. There is a case to be made that there could be less polarization if both parties support representatives who are willing to compromise.
You talked earlier about how the Trump presidency has impacted Republican voters. How has he affected the attitudes of Democratic voters?
David Brady: He united Democrats across the board.
Douglas Rivers: Trump did not expand the Republican base among either independents or Democrats. He played four years of a base strategy, and it yielded unbelievable levels of loyalty among Republicans. However, this strategy left Republicans in the low 40 percent range of all voters and limited the GOP’s ability to broaden its appeal in the 2020 election.
Does President Biden have an opportunity to gain ground among Republican voters?
David Brady: The question is, is President Biden going to move the middle? A big test is the COVID-19 stimulus bill. If he makes some compromises with the Republicans, I think he can maintain support from suburban women and educated White voters who abandoned Trump in 2020 after supporting him in 2016. We have a strange situation in which the Democratic Party has the support of the majority of people with college educations and higher income levels, and the Republicans, in a total role reversal, now get the majority of votes of White people without college degrees.
Douglas Rivers: I believe that a great challenge for the Democrats will be holding on to these suburban and college-educated voters.
David Brady: Especially if they want to raise taxes.
Douglas Rivers: The policies that the Democratic base and officials in Congress want to pursue are less popular with suburban and college-educated voters. They’re the swing voters when Trump is not on the ballot. As far as getting the Trump base, there’s not a chance in the world Biden can pick up their support.
