HUFFPOLLSTER: Trump Supporters Are More Likely Than Other Republicans To Dislike Minorities

New analysis shows how white identity affects Trump supporters’ views. Nearly half of Republicans say the GOP leadership’s refusal to support Trump makes them more likely to vote for him. And millennials have the potential to be the largest generational voting bloc in November -- if they turn out. This is HuffPollster for Tuesday, May 17, 2016.

TRUMP SUPPORTERS LESS ACCEPTING OF OTHERS THAN REPUBLICANS OVERALL - Jason McDaniel and Sean McElwee: "[C]ompared to supporters of other Republican candidates in the primary, Trump supporters really dislike many groups in America. For these voters, Trump’s blend of casual racism and muscular nativism is the core of his appeal. To explore the attitudes of Trump supporters, we examined the American National Election Studies 2016 pilot study. The dataset includes a series of feeling thermometer questions, which ask respondents to place various groups and political figures on a scale from 100 (Very warm or favorable feeling) to 0 (Very cold or unfavorable feeling)….Trump supporters are more likely than supporters of other Republican candidates to have negative feelings towards feminists, Muslims, Latinos, Gays and Lesbians, and Transgender people. In contrast, Trump supporters have far warmer feelings towards whites than supporters of other candidates.” [WPSA]

Racial identity seems to explain the difference between Trump supporters and other Republicans - More from McDaniel and McElwee: “One possible explanation for the results presented above is that attitudes about race and racial identity are stronger motivations for Trump supporters compared to supporters of other candidates…. [A]s racial identity becomes increasingly important for a white Trump supporter, they express significantly more negative feelings towards both Muslims and Latinos. However, racial identity does not play the same role for supporters of other Republican candidates...This is strong evidence that white racial identity plays a more important role in how Trump supporters evaluate people of color compared to those who support other candidates.” [WPSA]

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GOP LEADERS' REFUSAL TO ENDORSE TRUMP MAY BE BACKFIRING - Eli Yokley and Fawn Johnson: "Nearly six out of 10 voters (58 percent) think their representatives in Congress should attend their party’s national conventions, even if they oppose the party’s nominees...Only about one-fourth of registered voters (23 percent) think their congressional representatives need not attend the national convention. Meanwhile, the internal strife within the Republican Party about Trump appears to be making him more popular among self-identified GOP voters. Almost half of Republican registered voters (47 percent) say the refusal by other prominent GOP politicians to endorse Trump makes them more likely to support the real estate mogul in the 2016 general election. Another 32 percent say the GOP conflict over Trump won’t impact their vote either way. Only 13 percent of Republican voters say the party members’ refusal to endorse Trump will make them less likely to vote for the front-runner in November." [Morning Consult]

DONALD TRUMP HIRES A POLLSTER - Marc Caputo: "After calling pollsters a waste of money, Donald Trump’s presidential campaign reversed course and signed up veteran political strategist and pollster Tony Fabrizio, sources tell POLITICO. Fabrizio has worked on numerous presidential elections. He is also a top strategist for the Florida U.S. Senate campaign of Rep. Ron DeSantis, masterminded Gov. Rick Scott’s improbable Florida win in 2010 and was pollster for Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin in his 2015 win. Scott and Bevin share a common bond with Trump: They were both outsider businessmen who bucked the establishment….Like Trump, Fabrizio knows how to leverage controversy by playing rough. He was one of the masterminds behind the infamous Willie Horton ad that portrayed Democrat Michael Dukakis as soft on crime in the 1988 presidential election against George H. W. Bush." [Politico]

NEW GOP PRIMARY VOTERS WERE ALREADY GENERAL ELECTION VOTERS - Shane Goldmacher: “Donald Trump likes to say he has created a political movement that has drawn ‘millions and millions’ of new voters into the Republican Party. ‘It’s the biggest thing happening in politics,’ Trump has said. ‘All over the world, they’re talking about it,’ he's bragged. But a Politico analysis of the early 2016 voting data show that, so far, it’s just not true. While Trump’s insurgent candidacy has spurred record-setting Republican primary turnout in state after state, the early statistics show that the vast majority of those voters aren’t actually new to voting or to the Republican Party, but rather they are reliable past voters in general elections. They are only casting ballots in a Republican primary for the first time. It is a distinction with profound consequences for the fall campaign.” [Politico]

MILLENNIALS COULD BE THE BIGGEST VOTING BLOC… IF THEY VOTE - Richard Fry: "As of April 2016, an estimated 69.2 million Millennials (adults ages 18-35 in 2016) were voting-age U.S. citizens – a number almost equal to the 69.7 million Baby Boomers (ages 52-70) in the nation’s electorate, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. Both generations comprise roughly 31% of the voting-eligible population. Last month, Generation X (ages 36-51) and members of the Silent and Greatest generations (ages 71 and older) comprised about 25% and 12% of the electorate, respectively….While the growth in the number of Millennials who are eligible to vote underscores the potential electoral clout of today’s young adults, Millennials remain far from the largest generational bloc of actual voters. It is one thing to be eligible to vote and another entirely to cast a ballot…. Millennials have punched below their electoral weight in recent presidential elections. For a host of reasons, young adults are less likely to vote than their older counterparts, and Millennials are no exception." [Pew]

TUESDAY'S 'OUTLIERS' - Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-Seth Masket explains the factors that make this election tricky  to forecast. [Pacific Standard]

-Frank Newport writes that most Americans support a federally-funded health care system. [Gallup]

-Tom Clark finds a severe mode effect in surveys of the British European Union referendum. [The Guardian]

-Cory Brown warns campaign strategists not to rely on Facebook for gauging public opinion. [Campaigns and Elections]

-Vicki Krueger provides guidance for reporting on opinion polls. [Poynter]