A profile of the GOP primary electorate
Next week, Republican voters will begin the process of selecting their party’s 2016 presidential nominee. One of the major questions will be which GOP voters turn out, and which stay home.
A person’s past voting history can be a powerful predictor of future turnout. A new analysis of the Republican electorate in 2012, using the national voter file, reveals substantial attitudinal and demographic differences between verified GOP primary voters and Republicans who voted in the general election, but not the primaries.
The study confirms the conventional wisdom that, in many ways, GOP primary voters were more conservative than those Republicans who did not participate in that year’s primaries but would eventually vote in the general election, both in their self-identification and in their political values.
GOP primary voters in 2012 were more skeptical of environmental protection, more supportive of the use of “overwhelming” force against terrorism and more likely to oppose societal acceptance of homosexuality.
At the same time, the analysis shows there also was common ground between GOP voters who voted in the primaries and those who did not in opinions about the government and the social safety net.
This analysis is based on 1,575 Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters who are part of Pew Research Center’s nationally-representative American Trends Panel, and who could be matched to the national voter file. 1
The GOP primary electorate represented a relatively small share of those who went on to vote in the general election. Of Republicans who were verified to have voted in the general election, only 25% are verified as having voted in Republican primaries or caucuses in 2012; while 75% do not have a record of having voted in the primaries or caucuses that year.
The attitudes and demographics of Republican primary and general election voters were drawn from Pew Research Center’s 2014 study of partisan polarization. This study is unique in that it is able to, at the individual level, pair rich public opinion data with voting history.Past research has compared the opinions of likely voters (who are identified based on self-reported data) to non-voters, but this report is a rare opportunity to link these views to actual voter turnout.
This analysis cannot provide state-level data on GOP primary voters, but the national differences between GOP primary voters and general election only voters are seen both in states that held early primaries in 2012 (Super Tuesday and earlier) and in states with later primaries. In addition, there is no analogous study of Democratic primary voters in 2012, when Barack Obama was unchallenged as his party’s nominee.
GOP primary voters were significantly more likely than GOP voters who only voted in the general election to say the country’s environmental protection efforts have “gone too far” (63% of GOP primary voters vs. 47% of general election only voters).
And while 69% of primary voters said military force was the best way to defeat terrorism around the world, that compared with a narrower majority (53%) of general election only GOP voters.
There were also substantial gaps in views of business: 74% of GOP primary voters thought corporations made a “fair and reasonable amount of profit,” while just 56% of Republicans who only voted in the general election said the same.
And GOP primary voters also were more likely to take socially conservative positions on two measures: While 53% of GOP primary voters said homosexuality “should be discouraged,” 43% of GOP general election only voters said this. Similarly, though 73% of primary voters said “society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority,” a narrower majority of GOP general election only voters said the same (64%).
However, Republican primary voters and non-primary general election voters did not differ substantially in their views of government and the social safety net. Large majorities of both groups said government was wasteful and inefficient (primary 84%; general only 82%) and viewed government aid to the poor as doing more harm than good (76% vs. 74%).
On the issue of immigration there is also little difference between the groups; about half of both primary (52%) and general election only (47%) viewed immigrants as a burden on the country.
