We don’t know yet whether President Donald Trump will drive more people to the polls in 2018, but it’s clear he’s driving them to protests. According to a new poll conducted by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation and released Friday, one in five Americans have protested in the streets or participated in a political rally since the start of 2016; and of those, 19 percent had never done so before.
Poll: More Americans are hitting the streets to protest in the era of Trump
And the poll was conducted before the March for Our Lives.
Emily Stewart covered business and economics for Vox and wrote the newsletter The Big Squeeze, examining the ways ordinary people are being squeezed under capitalism. Before joining Vox, she worked for TheStreet.
The poll was conducted during the first two months of 2018 — before the March for Our Lives protest that advocated for gun control in March. It found that more rallygoers are Democrats and independents — 40 percent and 36 percent, respectively — than Republicans, who make up 20 percent of attendees. Rallygoers report attending events to express their views on a wide range of issues, including but not limited to Trump. Of those who went to an event over the past two years, 19 percent did so in support of Trump, compared to 32 percent who protested against him.
Women’s rights, however, was the issue that drew the most new protesters, with 46 percent of rallygoers saying they had attended an event in support of them. That’s not particularly surprising, given the size and scope of the Women’s March: The 2017 demonstration saw 4.2 million people march across the United States the day after Trump’s inauguration. And in the event’s 2018 follow-up, somewhere between 1.6 million and 2.5 million people marched in America. Thirty-two percent of respondents said they had attended rallies to express their views on the environment and energy; 30 percent went because of immigration; and 28 percent each protested in support of LGBT issues and Obamacare.
While the rallies people are attending may not always be Trump-specific, they are certainly Trump-related. Trump quit the Paris climate agreement and has rolled back various environmental regulations. His administration has moved aggressively to cut down on both legal and illegal immigration, banned transgender people from serving in the military, and made multiple attacks on Obamacare.
“This confirms there is a resistance and that a lot of people want to be associated with it,” said Michael Kazin, a history professor at Georgetown University and editor of Dissent magazine, told the Washington Post.
Republicans perceive recent protests as more violent and divisive than protests of the 1960s, even though recent demonstrations have been peaceful. Compared to the protests in the 1960s, where violent clashes between protesters and police were the norm, today’s events are sedate affairs. Even so, 69 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats said today’s rally attendees are “more violent” than those from 50 years ago, and 71 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats said activists are “more extreme in their views.”
The question now is whether all this enthusiasm will translate to votes
The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll shows that Americans are enthusiastic about politics: More than one in four respondents sad they had volunteered for a campaign, joined a boycott, or donated money.
But whether new protesters will go to the polls for the November midterm elections remains to be seen. Eighty-three percent of rallygoers said they plan to vote in the 2018 midterms, compared to 62 percent of respondents overall.
There is mounting evidence that turnout, specifically from Democrats, is on the rise: Recent elections in Texas, Wisconsin, and Illinois have demonstrated significant upticks in liberal-leaning voters heading to the polls. A RealClearPolitics average of polls has Democrats leading Republicans on a generic Congressional ballot by 7.5 percent.
“It’s unlike any wave I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I believe it’s not going away,” Jennifer Palmieri, a top communications aide for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, told Vox’s Ella Nilsen this week. “You shouldn’t take it for granted, but my experience in the past 18 months is that there is energy and focus and commitment at the grassroots level that stems from a concern about Trump. I don’t see any evidence that it’s going away.”
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