President Trump’s rationale for continuing to support Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for the Senate in the Alabama, was simple when he offered it on Tuesday.
Trump chose the former. He’s not alone: The RealClearPolitical average of polls shows that the race is about tied, after Moore enjoyed a healthy lead before the allegations emerged. This suggests that Trump’s choice is certainly a common one in the heavily Republican state.
It’s probably common elsewhere in the country, too.
Pew Research asked voters last year to evaluate a number of groups and people on a 0-to-100-degree scale. The warmer respondents felt about a person or group, the higher the temperature they were asked to give. Both Republicans and Democrats rated members of the military over 80 degrees, for example. Both gave very cold rankings to the opposing party’s presidential candidate.
Notice, though, how members of each party rated the other party, in total. Republicans don’t like atheists — but they like Democrats even less!
The American National Election Studies survey released after each election asks a similar question about the parties. Those data suggest that attitudes from members of one party toward the other began to tank about 15 years ago. In 1988, Republicans (and Republican-leaning independents) rated the Democratic Party at 45 degrees; Democrats (and leaners) rated the GOP at 46 degrees. Last year, those figures were 25 and 27, respectively.
Pew’s research has explored a number of ways in which this shift is manifested. More than half of partisans view members of the political opposition very unfavorably. What’s more, 4-in-10 members of each party last year identified members of the opposing party as a “threat to the nation’s well-being.”
In 2014, those feelings correlated to how partisan the respondent was. More liberal and more conservative voters — like many of those in Alabama — were more likely to view the other party as a threat to the nation.
We’ve raised this point before, dipping into the myriad other ways in which partisans have increasingly cast their opponents in starkly negative terms. The situation with Moore, though, makes this split starkly apparent.
Pew didn’t have the foresight to add “alleged sexual miscreant” to its thermometer rankings, but it’s not clear where on the Republican meter that temperature rating might have landed relative to the Democrat position.
When the question was asked, though, it would have been theoretical and Republicans would probably have rated such people very low. Now, it’s a reality, and Moore would be a key Republican vote in the Senate. Many Alabamians echo Trump’s additional rationale: Moore has denied the charges.
In October, 77 percent of Alabama Republicans viewed Moore favorably, to 17 percent who viewed him unfavorably, according to Fox News polling. After the allegations surfaced, those views slipped. Slightly. Now, 70 percent of registered Republicans view him favorably and 25 percent view him unfavorably.
Only 24 percent of registered Republicans view his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, favorably. About a third of registered Republicans said that Jones has a “strong moral character.” Six-in-10 Republicans said the same of Moore.
It brings to mind this other chart from Pew’s 2016 research.
Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
