How college-educated Republicans learned to love Trump again

Working-class voters delivered the Republican Party to Donald J. Trump. College-educated conservatives can ensure he complies.

Often overlooked in an increasingly blue-collar party, voters with college degrees remain at the center of the ongoing Republican cold war over abortion, foreign policy and cultural issues.

These voters, long more skeptical of Trump, have quietly fueled his remarkable political recovery within the party — a turnaround in the past year that has notably coincided with a string of 91 felony charges in four criminal cases.

Even as Trump dominates the Republican primaries ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday, it was just a year ago that he trailed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in some surveys — a deficit largely due to the former president's weakness among highly educated voters. . Mr. DeSantis' advisers saw the party's education divide as a potential starting point for overtaking Mr. Trump for the nomination.

Then came Trump's resurgence, uniting all corners of the party, including the white working class. But few cross-sections of Republicans rebounded as strongly as college-educated conservatives, a review of state and national polls from the past fourteen months shows.

This phenomenon is at odds with years of wariness of Trump by college-educated Republicans, unnerved by his 2020 election lies and his seemingly endless desire for controversy.

Their surge toward the former president appears to stem largely from a reaction to the current political climate rather than a sudden call to join the red-hooded citizens of the MAGA nation, according to interviews with nearly two dozen college-educated Republicans voters.

Many expressed disbelief at what they described as excessive and unfair legal investigations against the former president. Others said they were unimpressed by Mr. DeSantis and that Mr. Trump was more likely to win than former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina. Many saw Mr. Trump as a more palatable option because they wanted to prioritize domestic issues over foreign relations and were frustrated by high interest rates.

“These are Fox News viewers coming back to him,” said David Kochel, a Republican operative in Iowa with three decades of experience in campaign politics. “These voters are smart enough to see the writing on the wall that Trump is going to win, and essentially want to put an end to this and send him into the fight against Biden.”

As presidential candidate season begins, college-educated Republicans face a major decision. Whether they stick with Mr. Trump, turn to Mr. DeSantis or rally behind Ms. Haley, it will help determine the party's direction heading into November and beyond.

'Now I prefer Trump'

Mr. Trump is the odds-on favorite to become his party's nominee, which would make him the first Republican to win three presidential nominations. But a year ago there was little sense of inevitability.

He had failed to deliver the red wave of victories he had promised his supporters in the 2022 midterm elections. In the weeks that followed, he proposed ending the Constitution and faced sharp criticism for hosting a dinner with Nick Fuentes, a notorious white supremacist and Holocaust denier, and the rapper Kanye West, who was widely accused of making anti-Semitic comments.

The response from Republican voters was immediate.

In a Suffolk University/USA Today poll at the time, 61 percent of the party's voters said they still supported Trump's policies but wanted “another Republican candidate for president.” A wonderful 76 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed.

This month, the same pollster showed Trump had support from 62 percent of Republican voters, inclusive 60 percent of those with a university degree.

Other studies have revealed similar trends.

Trump's support among white, college-educated Republicans doubled 60 percent according to Fox News polling over the course of last year.

Trump's ability to maintain support from both sides of the party's education divide could be crucial to his political future outside the Republican primary race.

In the 2020 presidential election, he received support from 9 percent of Republicans who voted for another candidate. an AP VoteCast poll of more than 110,000 voters. Some campaign advisers have said this defection cost him a second term, especially considering that Joseph R. Biden Jr. only 4 percent of Democrats lost.

According to a New York Times analysis of the data, college-educated voters were responsible for 56 percent of Trump's defections.

Ruth Ann Cherny, 65, a retired nurse from Urbandale, Iowa, said she turned to Mr. Trump after considering whether the party had “a younger, dynamic guy.”

She thought about Mr. DeSantis, but decided she couldn't support him because “damn, his campaign is such a mess.” She wanted to support Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and political newcomer, but concluded he was too inexperienced and could not win.

“Trump has been to the White House once, and maybe this time he has a better understanding of the country and knows who is who and what is what,” Ms. Cherny said.

Yolanda Gutierrez, 94, a retired real estate agent from Lakewood, California, whose state votes during the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5 expressed similar views.

“I know Trump has a lot of baggage,” she said. “But a lot of it is fabrication.”

Ms. Gutierrez, who studied education in college, said she voted for Mr. Trump twice but focused more on Mr. DeSantis because she liked his record as governor of Florida and felt the party had a younger leader needed.

“But now I prefer Trump because the Democrats are trying to find any way they can to jail him,” she said.

'Like a teenager who rebels'

The shift in Republican support for Mr. Trump can almost be pinpointed to the moment last year when a Manhattan grand jury indicted him on March 30, 2023, for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, making him the first former president of the country became. president faces criminal charges.

At the time, Trump's primary bid received support from less than half of voters in most polls, an ominous position he had been hovering in for months.

But just four days after the Manhattan indictment, Trump crossed the 50 percent mark, and he says he's been on an upward trend since then. a national average of polls maintained by FiveThirtyEight. On Saturday, Trump received support from about 60 percent of the party.

Lisa Keathly, 54, owner of two flooring companies near Dallas, said she still wanted to support Mr. DeSantis, whom she sees as more polished and less rude. But she added that it was increasingly likely that she would support Trump in her state's Super Tuesday primaries.

She pointed to a Colorado Supreme Court ruling last month to bar the former president from the primary vote, which the U.S. Supreme Court is now considering, as a moment that could have sealed her support for Mr. Trump.

“It's a bit like a teenager rebelling – part of me says maybe I should go for Trump because everyone says I shouldn't,” Ms Keathly said. “Part of my thing is, why are they so scared?”

She added, “Because they can't control him.”

Concerns about 'wasted vote'

Some highly educated Republicans said they had returned to Mr. Trump as they grew increasingly concerned about foreign conflicts.

Unlike Ms. Haley, who now appears to be Trump's biggest challenger, they opposed sending more aid to help Ukraine against the Russian invasion. And they were happy with Trump's tough statements about China.

“I love Nikki Haley, and I would probably vote for her if I thought she could beat him,” said Linda Farrar, a 72-year-old Republican from Missouri who is holding his March 2 presidential caucuses. , national security is the most important thing.”

Ms Farrar said she wanted to send a message to the world by nominating a presidential candidate who would project strength abroad.

“I'm just scared of China and what's happening at the border and who's coming in,” she said. “It scares me enormously. China is really taking over – they are infiltrating from within.”

Others cited growing concerns about the economy and a desire for the kind of market gains that colored Trump's first three years in office.

Many, like Chip Shaw, a 46-year-old information technology specialist in Rome, Georgia, said they were unimpressed with Mr. DeSantis' campaign, and that they viewed support for a candidate other than Mr. Trump as considered “a wasted vote”.

“If we deviate from the way the polls are now, that's my feeling. My vote would go into nowhere,” Mr Shaw said. “The country really ran smoothly under him. I think the economy was a lot better; we didn't pay $6 a carton for eggs.”

Yet support for Trump has become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The urgency among Republicans to impeach Biden has been a key factor in determining which candidate to support, a finding that Trump aides said emerged in their internal survey of primary voters.

The Trump campaign has focused much of its ad budget on attacking Mr. Biden, appearing to be an early pivot in the likely general election matchup — and addressing one of Republican voters' biggest concerns.

“Trump is good,” said Hari Goyal, 73, a doctor in Sacramento who endorsed Mr. DeSantis last year but has since changed his mind. “Look at Biden and what he has done to this country. Trump can beat him, and he can fix this country.”

Ruth Igielnik And Alyce McFadden reporting contributed.