Q&A of the Day – The Potential for Political Realignment After Trump’s Presidential Address
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Brian, I totally agree with your view that Trump’s address presented the clearest choice in political directions yet. I have two questions for you. First, do you think enough people tuned in, other than just mostly Trump’s supporters, to make a meaningful difference? Second, how many people are still persuadable politically?
Bottom Line: In answer to your first question... Yes, there was significant tune in beyond Trump supporters that would be sufficient to make a significant difference politically in this country. Second, 27.2% of the country, or in other words perhaps more than you may think. I’ll explain.
In addressing your first question it appears as though over 36.6 million people tuned in to watch President Trump’s address on TV with 20+ million digitally – a number that’s still growing. With tens of millions of people tuning in to his address it certainly represents an opportunity for people to be persuaded. And based on the early returns that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen.
To your point, based on early survey work, Republicans were the most likely to tune in to watch the address and therefore the context of the audience is key in attempting to infer the potential political impact of the president’s speech. In the CBS/YouGov poll of about the president’s address they found that viewers who watched it live broke along these lines politically:
- 51% Republicans
- 27% Independents
- 20% Democrats
Similarly, CNN’s polling found more Republicans viewing than Democrats but by a closer margin – with only 14% more Republicans watching than Democrats. So, if trying to infer whether the speech really moved the political needle in this country, it’s easy to read too much into the speech. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do so reasonably. I’ll come back to this in a minute but first want to throw three numbers at you.
- 46.1% 46.9% 49.8%
Do you know what those numbers represent? That’s the percentage of the popular vote that President Trump won in each of his successive elections. People generally know that Trump won the first election, lost the second one and won the third more convincingly than the first. But what most people don’t know is that Trump won over more support, as in a higher percentage of Americans in each of his successive elections. That’s the first point. Here’s the next one. What percentage of voters do you think changed their political affiliation within the four years preceding the 2016 presidential election? The answer is 13%. Now, what percentage of voters do you think changed their political affiliation preceding the 2024 election? The answer is 18%. And the point here is twofold.
First, while as a population we may generally seem as though we’re stuck in our political ways, there’s probably more political movement than most people think. Consider that for voters who voted in the 2012 presidential election, 31% of them had changed their political affiliation by the 2024 presidential election. Almost a third! So, my point is this. There are always potentially lots of people who are politically in play – especially those who consider themselves to be independents. Second, what we’ve seen is that people have been even more likely to change their political identity more recently which only increases the liklihood that persuadable people are in play during big moments like Tuesday’s address and the early days of the Trump presidency. So, let’s go back to that to tie today’s story together.
Based on the composition of the audience for Tuesday night’s speech. Let’s say for a moment that every Republican who watched it approved of Trump’s speech and every Democrat who watched it disapproved of it. Even if that were the case it would mean all but 2% of Independents who watched the speech approved of it. Now, I probably don’t need to tell you how big of a deal politically it would be if Trump could win over all but 2% of independents politically. That’s the view of the possible. And based on the number of people who’ve viewed the speech here’s what I can tell you. Well over 10 million people who were not Republicans were supportive of Trump’s speech. And on that note, I’ve got one more number that’s worth considering...
CNN directly sampled questions of speech viewers that when put together effectively answers this question. 5% more voters who watched the speech live thought Donald Trump’s policies “would move the country in the right direction” than did prior to the speech. That type of read has the potential to be a major political catalyst. 5% may not sound like a lot but consider that Trump’s 2.9% improvement with voters from 2020 to 2024 was the difference in losing the election and winning by the largest margin of any Republican in 36 years. With Republicans already in control of congress in addition to having Trump as president, the window of time and this political moment could prove to be generally pivotal.
In my view the reason the numbers, and thus the political opportunity for Trump and Republicans generally are as significant as they are coming out of Tuesday night’s address, isn’t just about President Trump’s presentation of his policies. It’s also about what the alternative currently appears to be. A bunch of joyless, hapless, deranged Democrats who lack vision and whose policies are most commonly radically outside of the mainstream. That aspect of Tuesday night’s speech I don’t think can be understated. I actually think that Democrats would have been better off not even attending the speech, leaving empty seats, then they were for attending and presenting themselves as they did.
I have been saying since 2021 that the opportunity for generational change politically exists in comparing the Reagan revolution to Trump’s MAGA movement. I’m only becoming more confident that history is in the process of repeating itself.