Tuesday, February 21, 2023

ON THE RIGHT
GOP Primary Voters Want Presidential Candidates to Embrace Culture War Issues, Poll Finds
Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaks during a rally in Hialeah, Fla., November 7, 2022. 
(Marco Bello/Reuters)

By ARI BLAFF
National Review

A new poll of Republican primary voters found that the vast majority want the party’s presidential candidates to lean into culture war issues, especially when it comes to education and health care.

The survey, commissioned by the conservative, pro-family American Principles Project, found that 93 percent of the 1,000 Republican primary voters surveyed want presidential candidates to prioritize parental rights and school curriculum transparency.

There was also significant GOP voter enthusiasm for candidates who back federal laws banning permanent sex-changing medical procedures for minors (76 percent), prohibiting biological males from competing in girls’ sports (69 percent), and requiring age-verification measures for pornographic websites to protect kids (86 percent), according to the poll conducted by OnMessage Inc. between January 30 and February 5.

“GOP leaders and candidates should take from this poll one important lesson: voters expect them to fight wokeness,” Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project, said in a prepared statement released with the poll.

“Support for policies protecting families from gender ideology is off the charts, with the majority of the base showing a strong preference for tackling these issues,” he said. “Meanwhile, approval of Republican establishment priorities was much more muted, with most of those surveyed even agreeing that GOP elected officials have given up too much ground in the culture war.”

The poll shows the enthusiasm Republican primary voters have for many culture-war issues. It also found that those voters expressed less interest in more “establishment-preferred issues” like reforming Social Security and Medicare (64 percent), passing a pathway to citizenship for illegal migrants (59 percent), and providing funding and military aid to Ukraine (47 percent).

According to the poll, a majority of voters who consider themselves somewhat or very conservative said they would prefer a presidential candidate who prioritizes combatting the Left’s social agenda, whereas 61 percent of moderates said they would prefer a candidate who prioritizes the more establishment issues.

In the poll, Florida governor Ron DeSantis edged out former president Donald Trump by 15 percentage points (53 percent to 38 percent) in a hypothetical head-to-head Republican showdown. But in a hypothetical field of 14 candidates, Trump led with 34 percent support, while DeSantis was just behind with 33.5 percent.

No comments:

Post a Comment