Monday, May 20, 2024
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Mayra Santos-Febres
Mayra Santos-Febres is a Puerto Rican journalist renowned for her incisive reporting and captivating storytelling. With a keen eye for detail, she illuminates societal issues through her insightful journalism, captivating audiences with her compelling narratives.
Based on the momentum from this month’s presidential contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, Joe Biden and Donald Trump appear poised to give the nation a sequel to the 2020 election — but even strong victories this week for both men revealed weak spots for each.
conducted in Iowa and New Hampshire show that Trump, the former president, has nurtured a fervent loyalty among the Republican base. But that loyalty exacts a price: He has so far not gained traction with the college graduates and suburbanites who could be decisive in November’s general election.
Biden, the current president, has enjoyed the benefit of a broad and diverse Democratic coalition. Yet the breadth also gives his coalition a brittleness, with differences over the conflict in the Middle East and immigration possibly splitting the voter bloc.
At stake is not just control of the presidency, but how the world’s wealthiest and most militarily powerful nation sees itself. The divides in the population have set a course for an uncertain future, one in which a group of voters worn down by the pandemic and political dysfunction may well need to choose between greatly diverging paths – again.
AP VoteCast is a survey of 1,989 New Hampshire voters who took part in the Republican primary and 915 Democratic primary voters. The survey was conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Many Republicans who once idolized Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan are now stepping in sync with the 77-year-old Trump, who has recast the party in his own image.
States like New Hampshire and Iowa are full of voters from small towns and rural communities. The majority don’t have college degrees. Nearly all are white. In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 43% of all voters nationwide in the general election were white and without a college degree. Trump won a resounding 62% of this group four years ago, a base that makes him formidable within the GOP and beyond.
The polling shows these voters like his messages on restricting immigration, erecting a wall along the Mexican border and pumping out more oil and natural gas within the United States.
But those policy stances also stir controversy with voters who see immigration as a positive, border walls as ineffective if not evil and fossil fuels as worsening the damage from climate change.