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The Diploma Divide & DOGE: Inside America’s Political Pulse | 3.2.25
00:15:59
Cygnal Pollster Brent Buchanan lays out the growing “Diploma Divide” and how Americans feels about Donald Trump’s presidency thus far. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
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- [00:03]
A
Just over a month into his presidency, Donald Trump is getting high marks from American voters. He's gaining ground with non white males and those without a college degree. Meanwhile, Democrats are struggling to hone in on a message.
- [00:16]
B
In this episode, we speak to Signal pollster Brent Buchanan about how Americans are responding so far to the Trump presidency. I'm Daily Wire editor in chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, March 2nd, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Joining us now is founder of Signal Polling Group, Brent Buchanan. Brent, thank you so much for joining us.
- [00:38]
A
Yeah, great to be back.
- [00:40]
B
So, first of all, you released your new national vote trend poll this month. What were some of the trends that stood out to you?
- [00:47]
A
Well, there were a few, and I'd say the biggest is this finding that non white men continue to move towards Donald Trump. And it's a really fascinating thing because if you go back and look at the exit polling, white voters as a whole basically gave Trump the exact same margin in the 24 election as they did in the 20 election. And that was two factors, one being that non college educated whites continue to move to the right, college educated whites and higher continue to move to the left. And that trend on the educational attainment, we call it the diploma divide, hadn't really made its way into non white communities in the same veracity that it had white communities from between 16 and 20 and 24. And you just continue to see that, like you've got 30% of black men who are favorable of Donald Trump. I mean, that's a stat that if you'd ask his favorability in 2017, my guess would have been around 11%.
- [01:47]
B
Yeah. So a very dramatic difference there. So you're seeing that continued support that we saw from the election to this point. What are some of the things you found in terms of specific reasons that Trump's maintaining this support?
- [02:00]
A
Well, if you look at why people, especially those without a college degree, are moving to the right, it's because they don't trust the system at all. They believe that government works against them and not for them and that it is an impediment to their ability to succeed, to take care of their family, to educate their children. They look at the lunacy of the left, how they're focusing so much on, like, let's ensure there's 10 transgender bathrooms in the school as being a more important priority than like, can my kid do math at his or her grade level? And they just see tons of like, luxury issue views being touted by the left when they're trying to make ends meet and they're trying to help their kid and family be successful or even just get by in many cases. And so that's why on issues like Doge, I mean, I'm here in the Washington D.C. area and everybody's hair is absolutely on fire over the downsizing and the cutting of contracts and the layoffs and all these things that in corporate America are very normal. And you don't see entire news segments being done on corporate layoffs, but they're flipping out about these smaller government layoffs. But, but people outside of this bubble in normal America, especially these non white communities, are cheering what's going on here? You know, we looked at one factor in our February survey where if somebody did not vote in 2020, but they did vote for Donald Trump in 24, or they selected a different candidate in 2020 but voted for Donald Trump in 24, that audience is like 62% favorable of what Trump and Musk are doing with Doge right now. I mean, that's just a wild factor of these folks that Donald Trump got engaged and pulled into the electorate or pulled his way are who is shaping the narrative moving forward.
- [03:50]
B
Now, you've talked about the record support for Trump, more support than he's ever had before. What about the other side of the aisle though? We've seen reports of Democrats feeling rudderless, suffering, record low support for them. What have you found?
- [04:04]
A
They are in the doldrums to say the least, and it's all their own doing because as I was mentioning, like they would rather focus on sexuality than they would the economy and have really radical views on it. And so they have earned this first off for themselves. But when you look at some of these, I always like to look at data against some other pointed data. So how are the Democrats viewed versus how are the Republicans viewed? Not just how are the Democrats viewed? Men are 2 to 1 unfavorable of Democrats. So Democrats are essentially buoyed by feminine females. And when you dig further, they're buoyed by college educated females. So they're becoming less diverse as a party of who makes up their base and becoming more the party of the coastal elites and the big city elites. And those people don't look at all like the rest of America, like the majority of America. And so when you go look at the inverse on, on the Republican side of their image, like obviously females aren't as supportive of Republicans as males are, but it's not nearly the drastic difference between the two genders. And it's not as bad among females for Republicans, that is among males for Democrats. You know, you can get 17% of Democrats who have an unfavorable opinion of their own party and only 12% of Republicans who have an unfavorable opinion of their own party. So if we're playing this forward 3, 612 months going into the midterm, then there are more people disaffected with the Democratic Party who might move over to the Republican Party than vice versa.
- [05:39]
B
One of the only talking points Democrats seem to be coalescing around is an anti billionaire message, particularly focusing on Musk as sort of the boogeyman. Do you think that will play for the party? Will that work?
- [05:52]
A
It's class warfare, which has historically played well for the Democrats. The challenge is that the number of people now within their constituency that that class warfare message worked with has dwindled because those folks as we were talking about, you know, you've got the non white, non college educated voters, especially males, moving to the Republican Party. They're not going to be voting for a Democrat. So their available pool of people to play this class warfare game with has shrunk. Now, does it help turn out some of their voters? Maybe, like, maybe this is a turnout play, but it is not something that I think is going to work and pull persuadable people their way.
- [06:36]
B
There's some concern that a lot of the action that's taken so far by Trump is via executive order. It's unilateral. It comes only from the executive branch. Do you feel that we have a window that's closing for congressional action here? What's the sense of urgency for Republicans in the House and Senate to really get their agenda passed?
- [06:54]
A
Well, the first thing is we have to realize that most voters aren't watching the news constantly. So when they hear something or see something, they don't differentiate between the fact that Congress passed a law and Trump signed it, or Trump signed an executive order, or Trump just said something on truth, social or randomly at a press conference. They do not delineate between any of those things. So maybe this is the argument for more civics education in school, to have more people coming out of the public education system than know how government actually functions and works. But if we're talking about the reality that we live in today, people don't know the difference. They just see massive action occurring, which is why it's freaking out some folks and elating others.
- [07:39]
B
From your polling, do you see any headwinds for the Trump administration? Any issues that they should be Paying attention to that might be troubling in the future. Any issues gaining momentum that could work against them.
- [07:51]
A
I think the discussions around the cuts to Medicaid and this kind of in my mind goes to all the communication about DOGE in general. We've got to remember that this is dealing with people still. And so to come at it cold hearted or to appear cold hearted and how we're going about this cuts against our ability to do more of it. And so yes, do entitlements need to be curbed 100%? They do. But we can't just walk out there and let the narrative be Republicans are going to cut Medicaid, Republicans are going to cut Social Security because that's going to freak grandma and grandpa out. What we need to do instead on the conversation is explain here is the massive fraud, waste and abuse. We're not just using those three words. Here's a contract for this. Here is where a doctor billed 100,000 MRI scans when the average doctor bills 100 as an example and say those are the things we're cutting and when we cut these, we can protect the program and protect your benefits. And that's the part that's totally missing right now in the Republican messaging on doge, but also on the budget discussions.
- [09:01]
B
I want to drill down on a couple of key themes for the administration and just see what you found in terms of the polling. How do people feel about the efforts to root out DEI and replace it with a fully merit based system?
- [09:14]
A
Well, if you ask, do you support or oppose diversity, equity and inclusion, which is what DEI stands for? It has very high levels of support because who's going to say they're against any of those three things? I don't want equitable government. I don't want a diverse. Like nobody's going to come out and say that. But when you put it in terms of implementing DEI as a policy as opposed to a value system means that instead of hiring people based on merit and based on their experience, we're going to say that your racial and gender or some other immutable characteristic is more important than what you have accomplished or what you're capable of doing when matched up with somebody else who could do the job. And so when we put it in that construct, we found that only 3% of people said prioritize racial and gender identity in hiring. And we've on 64% of people that said merit in experience. And again, good. Everything about communication comes back to anchoring and giving somebody an understanding of something they can grasp and the whole DEI conversation has to be anchored against when we choose that, we're saying merit and experience don't matter.
- [10:27]
B
And now what about the crackdown on illegal immigration from the Trump administration? That's been a major focus for them and they've done a lot of messaging on that. How's the public responding to that?
- [10:37]
A
So far, it is the item that gets the highest scoring on any poll that you see when voters are asked, do you approve or disapprove of the job that Trump is doing on. And then they lay out the individual aspects as opposed to just job approval in general. And you start to get well above his job approval numbers when you ask about illegal immigration, because that was front and center of his entire campaign. It was constant news clips. If you remember back to 24 of these people storming over the border, you're actually starting to see it decrease as a top issue because it's not in the news as much because it's actually being addressed. There's so few people coming across the border now compared to four months ago under the Biden administration.
- [11:24]
B
Obviously, a massive issue for people is the economy, their own personal finances. It's a pretty complicated question because there's lots of factors here, including tariffs and things like that. In general, what are you seeing in terms of public response to Trump's various economic policies?
- [11:40]
A
What we're seeing in our data and others is that it's not getting enough conversational attention. So voters are wanting it to be addressed or at least be spoken about. Tell us how things aren't going to cost as much or how my wages are going to be able to go up so I can make up for the gap difference between my wage and what things cost to just live now. And that is an area that it doesn't get nearly as high marks because it's not being talked about as much by the Trump administration. It's a real area of opportunity because Donald Trump and the Republican Congress have good ideas for this. But it's also such a massive topic like, I don't know how to fix the economy. I don't know if economists know how to fix the economy because it's just such a huge thing. But it is something that voters are telling us and telling other pollsters, please focus on this more. And then when you look at the segment of voters that we coined as the ticked off, young, diverse, working class folks and did some projects with y'all last year on was this group still exists and they're a little bit less ticked off about the direction of the country now, but demographically they're exact same and they're telling us that inflation and economy is the number one issue and followed by health care at 17%, interestingly enough.
- [12:56]
B
I know this is impossible to totally predict, but I'm curious about your feelings about this. How long will people give this new administration to bring down inflation to start really impacting their bottom line? Do they have a year to work with? 6 months? When does the pressure start mounting to see substantive changes on this front?
- [13:15]
A
Voters are a lot smarter than the media and sometimes politicians give them credit for, and they really just want to know that you're thinking about them and that you're trying to do something, even if the solution is not a quick fix. And so it's more about telling them what you're doing as opposed to the doing resulting in lower cost or higher wages, because they know that it took five years to get to this place. We're not going to be able to fix it in five months. And that's why I was mentioning it's going to be talked about more regularly, like as in a multiple times a day basis. That's how much it needs to be talked about. Because I think voters are willing to give grace if they see you working on it.
- [13:57]
B
Is there any issue that's not being highlighted enough by media outlets or even by the administration that you find coming into your polling that needs to be addressed or discussed more?
- [14:07]
A
Our debt. It is probably the number one threat, more than any country is currently to us, even enemies like China. Our debt is a greater threat, a more imminent threat to us, and nobody's talking about it. We spent more on interest than we did our entire national defense. And we have the largest national defense budget by multiples of the second closest country on what they do in defense spending in a year. So things like Doge are necessary. Things like entitlement reform are absolutely necessary, but they're really hard to do without the threat of the debt being discussed.
- [14:42]
B
Any last thoughts here?
- [14:44]
A
You know, when you look at independent voters, which are the most fickle of all, you know, these folks are pretty dour on both. So independents, their view of Democrats in Congress are 36% favorable, 55% unfavorable. And then Republicans, it's a bit worse, 31% favorable, 62% unfavorable of independence of Republicans in Congress. And we actually asked a question this week of when somebody told us they were an independent, we asked them, which way do you lean in partisan races? Is it mostly Republicans or some Democrats, but more Republicans and Democrats than the rest of the way down the scale. And those who lean left of independents are 54% compared to 47% of independents leaning to the right. So it's a group that Republicans need to be focused on because you don't want to alienate that group and make sure all the left leaning independents get really ticked off and show up to vote. But we're not giving anything to the right leaning independents to make sure they come out to vote also.
- [15:44]
B
Yeah, independence always a factor to be considered. Brent, thank you so much for talking with us.
- [15:50]
A
Hey, great to be with y'all.
- [15:51]
B
That was Signal Group's Brent Buchanan. And this has been a weekend edition of MORNING wire.