Political operatives in New Hampshire don't know anyone supporting Trump despite his 20 point lead

Byron York:
...
In one of my first conversations at the Radisson, with two Republican activists, I asked a simple what's-up question about Trump. Both immediately responded in exactly the same way: "I don't know anybody who supports him." They're politically active and aware, but they said they have no contact in their daily lives with even a single person who supports their party's front-runner.

After that conversation, I began to ask everyone I met: Do you know anyone who supports Donald Trump? In more cases than not — actually, in nearly all the cases — the answer was no. I asked one woman Friday night, and she said she hadn't thought about it. I ran into her the next morning at breakfast, and she said, "That was a good question you asked me last night, and I've given it some thought." And no, she didn't know any Trump supporters.

Given Trump's big lead in the polls, if so many politically active Republicans don't know even one Trump supporter, either the polls are wrong or there is some serious GOP Pauline Kaelism at work in the nation's first primary state.

An exception: I talked to two party officials, one county and one regional, who said they knew a lot of Trump supporters. "They're not Republicans," one told me, explaining at length that the Trump fans she knows are inexplicably devoted to him — unfazed by Trump's lack of policy specifics or any of his controversial statements. The two officials described having conversations and asking which candidate a voter supports, whereupon the voter quickly glanced left and right, to see if it was OK to talk, and then said, "Trump." That happens a lot, they told me.

Most of the politicos in Nashua didn't deny that the polls are what they are. They just explained that they haven't personally encountered evidence that the Trump-dominated polls are accurate.

"I don't see it," said one very well-connected state Republican. "I don't feel it. I don't hear it, and I spend part of every day with Republican voters."
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So the Republican political professionals are at a loss to explain the polls in New Hampshire.  If the polls have any validity, I suspect that most of those voters supporting Trump in New Hampshire are Democrats.

Comments

  1. Tregonsee7:12 AM

    There is a possibly apocryphal story about a MSM reported who blurted out after Reagan (or maybe Nixon) was elected: "I don't know how he won. Nobody I know voted for him." This sounds a lot like that, though we won't know until the votes are actually cast.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Prariepundit7:52 AM

    Pauline Kaelism was the New York woman who was surprised at the Nixon landslide election.

    ReplyDelete

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