Avalanche of Democratic voter defections fueling Republican gains as Election Day nears
Republicans are heading into the presidential campaign with the wind at their backs, and it’s not because of Joe Biden’s mental incapacity or even Donald Trump’s courageous, fist-pumping response to a would-be assassin.
Voters are switching allegiance out of disgust with the Democratic Party’s pro-inflation, pro-criminal, open border, identity-obsessed policies.
For the first time in seven years, more voters today identify as Republicans or say they lean Republican than identify or lean Democratic.
The GOP now holds a 47% to 46% edge over Democrats, per the latest data from Pew Research, collected long before Biden’s disastrous June 28 debate and before Saturday’s assassination attempt.
The Republican brand is leading over the Democratic brand, and the left-wing media are apoplectic.
New York Times columnist Frank Bruni scorned GOP convention-goers as “a gathering of villagers with torches” — his version of Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables.”
Bruni claimed that Republicans are pulling ahead only because Democrats are in disarray over Biden’s fumbling, stumbling and mumbling.
Wrong: The shift toward the GOP has been four years in the making, long before the voting public got a first-hand look at Biden’s incapacity.
Consider the exodus of Gen Z — voters aged 18 to 29 — from the Democratic Party.
For years, young voters reliably voted Democrat. Biden won them by more than 20 percentage points in 2020.
Now just 24% of Gen Z approve of the job Biden is doing, found an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll released May 30.
“They’re worried about the cost of living” as they “envision moving into adulthood” without being able to take major steps like buying a house, explained pollster Lee Miringoff.
Latino voters are also reconsidering their Democratic loyalties.
In 2020 Trump won 32% of Hispanic votes, while Biden took 65%.
Four years later, only 45% of Hispanic voters prefer Biden, according to a May YouGov poll — just 6 points ahead of Trump’s 39%.
This despite the GOP’s unequivocal opposition to illegal immigration.
The GOP platform pledges to “deport the millions of illegal migrants who Joe Biden has deliberately encouraged to invade our country . . . prioritizing the most dangerous criminals.”
New York Times columnist Michelle Cottle slammed that proposition as “serious fear mongering” and “catnip for Trump folks.”
CNN invoked “Mein Kampf” and the “great replacement theory” bugaboo — though not one word in the GOP platform targets or criticizes any racial or ethnic group.
Democrats and their media allies ignore how a migrant shelter turns a neighborhood into a disaster zone, plagued by crime, panhandling, prostitution and swarms of recklessly operated motorized bikes used to rob and terrorize pedestrians.
But ordinary voters, including many here in deep-blue New York, are noticing.
For the first time in nearly two decades, a majority of Americans — 55% of US adults — want immigration levels cut, according to the latest Gallup poll released July 12.
To do so, the GOP platform proposes reinstating Remain in Mexico, halting the release of illegal migrants into the country, and withholding federal funding from “sanctuary” cities that refuse to hand over criminals to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The party favors merit-based immigration, welcoming legal immigrants with the skills to be self-supporting, and an end to chain migration.
Among its populist economic messages, the party promises to end taxes on tips — music to the ears of millions of low-wage American workers of every ethnicity.
While Democrats would rather hike the minimum wage, those hikes force employers to lay workers off and even go out of business. Better to take the money out of Uncle Sam’s pocket than your employer’s.
The liberal media label the GOP platform “darkly messianic.”
In truth it’s defiantly optimistic, vowing that “when America is united, confident, and committed to our principles, it will never fail.”
Team Biden can see that Trump’s platform is a winner.
That’s why Biden and his supporters are pulling a bait and switch, trying to tie Trump to the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page conservative manifesto, Project 2025.
On Monday when Trump announced J.D. Vance as his running mate, the Times’ Cottle bashed Trump for choosing a white man rather than “reaching beyond his base” to “woo, say, suburban women or Latinos or young black men.”
What garbage.
The Pew poll shows that the Democratic Party’s taken-for-granted voters, including Gen Z and minorities, are realizing identity politics is a ruse.
They want real improvements. Hallelujah.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.