http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/08/inside_the_mind_of_the_trump_supporter.htmlTrump may be 'impossible to take down,' top Republican pollster says
By Claude Brodesser-Akner | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
August 25, 2015 at 6:00 AM, updated August 25, 2015 at 10:09 AM
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A new focus group commissioned by GOP pollster Frank Luntz shows Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is virtually invulnerable to attack by rival 2016 candidates and the media, leading Luntz to say that it is now "totally conceivable" that Trump will become the Republican Party's nominee for president.
"The Republican leadership needs to wake up and see that the grass roots has abandoned them," said Luntz, the head of Luntz Global, a top GOP polling and messaging consultancy.
"This is a different cat," Luntz added. "It's not like Ross Perot in 1992, where people were simply unhappy with the two major parties; they're choosing Trump affirmatively. Honestly, my legs are shaking looking at these numbers. All those people who think he's going to implode are wrong. He's not going away."
Assembled in a room behind mirrored glass in an Alexandria, Va. office building, 29 current and former Trump supporters held forth on what they like and dislike about the controversial real estate tycoon, who owns three New Jersey golf courses and once owned three Atlantic City casinos.
Most notably, the intensity of the group's support for Trump was matched only by their dislike of establishment GOP candidates and politics as usual. At one point, a woman named Rhiannon explained her support of Trump by lamenting that "it appears that there's only one party." A whopping 25 of 29 participants in the focus group immediately and heartily agreed with her.
"Nobody is listening to us," echoed another supporter identified only as 'Suzanne.' "(But) he's listening to us, he knows what we think and he's successful just like we want to be."
Normally, such a small group of voters might not be worthy of much attention 441 days ahead of the general election, but Luntz's polling acumen dates back more than 20 years: He correctly predicted that Perot's entry into the 1992 presidential race would deliver the White House to Bill Clinton. His research also initially dismissed Trump, leading the mogul to all but accuse him of trying to shake him down.
"I watch this guy do a really negative report on me, and the only reason he did it, in my opinion, is because I didn't want to hire him commercially," Trump said of Luntz in an interview with Business Insider shortly after the August 7th Fox News debate. "I think it's disgusting ... I think he uses his power at Fox to maybe — to get work."
On Monday night, the group of mostly college-educated Trump supporters — 17 women, 12 men — was largely Republican, but also featured some Democrats and independents. What united them was a willingness to trust Trump whether or not they fully agreed with his policies, or in some cases, regardless of whether he even had articulated any. Twenty-three of the 29 participants said that they were more persuaded by his persona, while just six said it was Trump's policies that sold them on him.
"I want to vote for a person," emphasized one participant, a middle-aged man identified as 'David.' "I believe in his ability to make decisions. I trust him to make decisions more than I trust Obama or George W. (Bush)."
The group was similarly unfazed by Trump's reversals of opinion or lack of ideological purity that so often defines primary election contests.
Luntz said this shows "nothing disqualifies Trump" in the eyes of his supporters: "If you wanted to take him down, I would not know how to do it."
For example, the single biggest reason Trump supporters gave for backing him was his branding of Obamacare as a catastrophe that the GOP must repeal and replace with "something much better." But moments later in the same session, participants in the Trump focus group noted that the thing that made them least likely to vote for Trump was his prior support for a "single payer" or entirely government-funded healthcare system.
The same is true of Trump's flip-flopping over who is best qualified to manage the U.S. economy. Eighteen of the 29 pointed to Trump's promise to restore balance to the nation's trade deficit with Japan and China as a reason they would be most likely to vote for him. However, moments later nearly half of the 29 said that what made them least likely to vote for Trump were his past statements that the U.S. economy does better under Democratic rather than Republican leadership.
By a large measure, the Trump supporters in Luntz's focus group were very pessimistic about the future of the U.S.: Twenty-one of 29 said that they believed the nation's best days were in the past. Nineteen of the 29 said they believed their kids would have a lower quality of life than they enjoyed unless an outsider intervened.
"They're 'mad as hell and not going to take it anymore,'" Luntz said. "And (Trump) personifies it: Each sees in him what they want for the country. They want him to fix what makes them mad, and they believe he will."
It is Trump's ability to reflect back to voters their most fervent wishes for the nation, Luntz said, that makes the political outsider so dangerous to the rest of the 16 other GOP 2016 hopefuls. The main reason for this, Luntz found, was what he termed a willingness of Trump supporters to live in "an alternative universe" in which any attempt by the media to point out inconsistencies in Trump's record or position was seen as a politically motivated conspiracy.
"When the media challenges the veracity of his statements, you take his side," Luntz asked of his focus group. Only one person sat quietly, her hands in her lap, as 28 other arms shot up in agreement.
