New Republican voters are much less MAGA. That will hurt the party in 2026.
Your weekly political data roundup for December 7, 2025
Dear readers,
This is my weekly roundup of new political data published over the last week. While the obvious news story this week is about the special election in TN-07, I am trying to use this Sunday column to highlight interesting or otherwise under-covered data.
The lead story slot for this issue is about a new poll exploring the attitudinal differences between core MAGA voters and the new Republican voters who powered Donald Trump’s victory in 2024. This new data also explains Republicans’ poor position heading into 2026.
On deck here at Strength In Numbers: On Tuesday, I will write about the results of a new survey into the way cable news disproportionately covers right-leaning issues. On Wednesday or Thursday, I may have a short piece up on an interesting crosstab of data from my November Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll. And on Friday, readers will get the usual Chart of the Week reacting to the news of the next 5 days.
1. New Republicans are more left-leaning, younger, and anti-system
Last week, the Manhattan Institute, a conservative right-leaning think tank, put out the first of several reports on a poll they conducted that divided the Republican Party into two groups: Core Republicans (65%) and “New Entrant” Republicans (29%). The survey revealed these new Republicans are more progressive and anti-system than Core Republicans, and recently voted for Democrats at a very high rate.
Jesse Arm and Matthew Knee, pollsters for the Manhattan Institute, report:
a sizeable minority—new entrants to the GOP coalition over the past two presidential cycles—look markedly different. Younger, more racially diverse, and more likely to have voted for Democratic candidates in the recent past, this group diverges sharply from the party’s core. They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain. They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives.
The first report is mostly about the “Core Republicans” group, so there is sadly a lack of information about the political beliefs of the (in my opinion, more interesting) New Republicans group. Hopefully, we will get more information about that group in the next report.
But the general finding here is interesting. This is a group that deserves a lot more attention.
While many post-election surveys have focused on the “how” of Trump’s victory in 2024 — the types of groups that swung to Trump from 2020 to 2024 in demographic terms — few have addressed the “why.” The view of this newsletter is that Trump won in 2024 largely because of a general shift away from the Democrats, fueled by anti-incumbent bias and concerns about affordability. That means there are a lot of “soft” Trump voters floating around in the electorate — voters who could vote for Democrats (again) in 2026 and 2028.
You don’t have to take my word for it. The authors write their own take about the implications of this tenuous support for the MAGA agenda among the New Republicans:
Looking ahead to 2026, 2028, and beyond, the durability of the expanded Republican coalition is uncertain—especially when it comes to its newest members. When asked how they would vote if a congressional election were held today, only 56% of New Entrant Republicans said they would definitely vote Republican again, and 28% said they probably would. Under-50 Republicans show similar softness: just 59% say they would definitely vote GOP in a House race, and one in ten say they would vote for a Democrat.
This looks like a great, rich dataset, and I’m looking forward to learning more from it over the authors’ next few reports.
2. What you missed at Strength In Numbers last week
Here’s everything published in this newsletter over the last week:
Eight charts that explain why "affordability" is suddenly everywhere
Everyone is suddenly talking about “affordability.” That includes Zohran Mamdani, Donald Trump, and seemingly the entire Democratic party messaging apparatus — even GOP Senators are writing strategy op-eds now.
What the special election in Tennessee says about the 2026 midterms
Voters in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District voted on Tuesday, Dec. 2, to fill a vacancy left by Republican representative Mark Green, who resigned from Congress in July 2025. The election for this rural seat went for Republican candidate Matt Van Epps over Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn, with Van Epps having a 9-point margin in the vote as of
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3. Even more numbers!
Here are some other political data stories I came across last week that I though were interesting or notable:
Philip Bump: “How severe is the political pessimism of young Americans?”
Here is a great newsletter from CNN on the pendulum dynamic of recent US elections. Lots of great viz and free to read. “Every election is a change election now”
Pew has new data out on feelings about and trust in the federal government.
A penny for your thoughts? YouGov has new data on voters’ feelings about the end of America’s most annoying coin.
Listen to The Downballot’s David Nir on Trump’s terrible messaging on affordability.
America’s political donations dramatically tilt toward the top 0.1%
I liked this great visual exploration of Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York this November, and what it tells us about the boomerang in the city’s politics since 2024.
Stephanie Pedron and Kevin Collins at Survey 160 show voters view the Republican Party as more corrupt, and report on a survey experiment exploring how malleable opinion about corruption is when you give voters information about Trump’s recent actions (such as pardoning the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, who allowed money laundering on his platform).
Gallup says: Economic confidence drops to 17-month low
The Economist has a new House of Commons forecasting model based on current party polling and constituency voting behavior across Britain, which shows the dangers for Labour resulting from its low polling numbers and fracturing of the electoral system.
Finally, here’s an article I read last week about the political biases of certain LLMs. I think the article did some things well, but unfortunately fell into the familiar trap of only analyzing politics through the point of view of policy preferences.
Got any political data stories of your own to share? Drop them in the comments below!
4. Polling update
The Strength In Numbers polling averages have moved to a new webpage at fiftyplusone.news, a website purely for poll-tracking that I’ve set up with my friends. Some averages, like my average of Trump’s approval rating on individual issues, remain on the data portal but will be moved to the new site soon.
That’s it for your major political data stories this week.
Got more for next week? Email your links or add to the comments below!
Have a nice week,
Elliott
Interesting essay. As a resident of a red state, I’m more used to the assumption Republicans live in a right-wing media world and would never consider voting for a Democrat. I’d like to learn more about these “new” Republicans.
I’m curious about the reports of republicans who have “soft” support for the party. Where I live, for example, there’s a decent number (maybe it’s insignificant) of people who are registered republicans because they view that party as the ruling party and they think their vote has more impact. As state legislatures (for the most part?) seem to be more conservative these days, do you think that’s contributing to the rise of these “soft republicans.” And, secondly, is there any data on how much public sentiment swings in the month (or so?) before an election? I guess I’m asking because we get a lot of polling data for years?/several months leading up to an election but it seems like it can all change rapidly in the 3-4 weeks prior to the actual elections? I guess that’s human nature, but just wondering if there are any studies along those lines?