From TPM Reader JR …
I don’t have a statistical answer to Josh’s question regarding what percentage of GOP primary voters, whether for Trump or not, are “new” voters.
But I wanted to chime in to note that once state voter databases, and in turn major party voter files, are updated, then we will have a hard, exact data answering this question. Voting history is a searchable public record across the states, and we always know who voted in general elections and primaries.
Caucuses are different, there are no (or at least should be no) state-held records, but political parties would keep this data.
So whenever the tedious work of data entry is complete, we can examine who really has been voting in these contests, and identify if there are any first-time voters.
But I can tell you as a local Democratic Party official (in [REDACTED]) myself who keeps tabs as closely as possible on things, there is no sign of non-voters turning into voters.
What we are seeing is people who usually vote in general elections, and for Republicans, but otherwise are disconnected from the GOP apparatus, showing up for Trump. In other words, he’s dragging some usual suspects from November into the primaries who don’t usually vote in primaries. So far we don’t have hard data on this, but it’s what appears to be happening.
This is consistent with what GOPers are seeing, because they don’t really understand who these Trump voters are simply because these voters aren’t party regulars. But they’re not non-voters, either.
