A new Manhattan Institute survey analysis claims the future of the right lies with traditional Republicans, not the new forces brought forth by Donald Trump or the “Online Right.”
It shouldn’t count as a revelation that the average Republican isn’t a based social media poster. It’s obvious and it’s something your author has written about many times.
But the point being made by the Manhattan Institute is not simply that the offline right is very different from what we see on X. It’s that ordinary Republican voters want the old GOP back. The purpose of contrasting ordinary Republicans with the extremes of the online right is to subtly revive the lame conservatism Trump defeated in his primary battles.
The Manhattan Institute study identified two large blocs of GOP voters. One is the “Core Republicans,” which apparently make up 65 percent of the GOP electorate. The other is the “New Entrant Republicans,” a group comprising 29 percent of the coalition.
The Core Republicans are longstanding GOP voters who are “consistently conservative on economic, foreign policy, and social issues,” the report states. “They favor lower taxes, take a hawkish view of China, remain firmly pro-Israel, and are highly skeptical of progressive agendas on transgender and DEI issues.”
The New Entrants, as their name suggests, are recent GOP voters with more unorthodox views. “They are more likely, often substantially more likely, to hold progressive views across nearly every major policy domain,” the study finds. “They are more supportive of left-leaning economic policies, more favorable toward China, more critical of Israel, and more liberal on issues ranging from migration to DEI initiatives.”
But, strangely enough, it’s also the demographic where a “significant share also report openly racist or antisemitic views and express potential support for political violence.” At the same time, it’s more “racially diverse” and younger than Core Republicans.
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