Obama-Trump voters are still Trump voters

Yet they are not monolithic

When people malign the existence of swing voters, I usually scream at them until they give up or block my phone number forever. Whatever. Such is life when you’re trying to convince people that unicorns actually exist.

Swing voters are indeed real. Let’s talk today about one variant of them: the Obama-Trump voter. Though swingy in 2016, they’re more Trump voter than Obama voter. Like someone who’s just gone through a bitter divorce, maybe we should drop the hyphen?

Consider the evidence.

A New York Times/Siena College poll from last November found that “All the leading Democratic candidates trail in the precincts or counties that voted for Barack Obama and then flipped to Mr. Trump.” Non-College whites were about as pro-Trump then as they were in 2016, according to their data:

Nate Cohn wrote:

In the last presidential election, millions of voters flipped from Barack Obama to Donald Trump or from Mitt Romney to Hillary Clinton. In the Midwestern battlegrounds, the flood of white, working-class defections to Mr. Trump overwhelmed the smaller stream of white, college-educated voters who defected from the Republicans.

There are places like Howard County, Iowa, population 9,000, where Mr. Trump improved over Mr. Romney by nearly 1,000 votes, while Republican turnout increased by only 22 votes and turnout among unaffiliated voters increased by 50 votes.

One might assume that places like Howard County will again be at the center of the contest. But there is no outsize mass of white working-class or rural voters who voted for Mr. Trump among the undecided in the Times/Siena polls.

Instead, the Times/Siena polling suggests that the electorate remains deeply divided along the lines of the 2016 election, with many groups contributing a sliver of undecided voters to the broader pool.

There was also a poll from the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group released last May that showed Trump slipping among Obama-Trump voters, but that he still very favorable among the group:

And now take a look at another Voter Study Group report out today that shows Trump much more popular among Obama-Trump voters than the 2020 Democratic candidates:

Interesting fact? Trump is more popular among Obama-Trump voters than the 2020 Democrats are among Romney-Clinton voters.

Okay, so what?

My point is two-fold. First, Obama-Trump voters are still loyal to the president. They switched to him, after all, because of his anti-black, anti-immigrant rhetoric and promises to upend the status quo of elite-driven politics. The 2018 CCES makes clear that Obama-Trump voters are much closer to Republicans on the politics of race and immigration than they are to the Democrats:

Since no other Democrats are promising similar racial conservatism, it’s natural that the group is still inclined toward Trump.

But second, I want to say that the group is not monolithic, and may indeed still be a bit swingy. Obama-Trump voters are the “Republicans” who are friendliest toward Democrats. That still makes them the most likely Democratic targets for persuasion campaigns this year.

Obama-Trump voters are more loyal to the president than any other group. We should make that clearer when talking about them.

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—Elliott