Switchers: Who changed their vote in 2018?

By John Ray, Alissa Stollwerk and Sean McElwee

After 2016, media outlets feverishly raided donut shops and diners in the Midwest to explain the phenomenon of the Obama-Trump voter, missing possibly the revolt against the GOP in suburban districts that would in 2018 cost Republicans the House. Here, we use a unique survey dataset to explore the attitudes of these swing vote switchers in 2018. These voters were responsible for surprises like Trump winning states Democrats had considered a Blue Wall, which then all gave Democrats large victories again in 2018.

Some of the differences between how these voters behaved in 2016 and in 2018 will be accounted for by turnout, but some can be explained by voters moving between the two parties. Who are these voters, and what can help us understand their vote choices?

To analyze these groups, we broke down voters into several types:

Those who voted for President Obama in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and their House Democratic candidate in 2018 (“Dem-Dem-Dem voters,” or “loyal Democrats”)

Those who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and a Democratic candidate in 2018 (“Rep-Dem-Dem”)

Those who voted for President Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and a Democratic candidate in 2018 (“Dem-Rep-Dem”)

Those who voted for Romney in 2012, Trump in 2016, and a Democratic candidate in 2018 (“Rep-Rep-Dem”)

Those who voted for President Obama in 2012, Trump in 2016, and a Republican candidate in 2018 (“Dem-Rep-Rep”)

Those who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump in 2016, and a Republican candidate in 2018 (“Rep-Rep-Rep,” or “loyal Republicans”)

These combinations do not cover every possible set of vote choice behavior between 2012, 2016, and 2018. For example, a voter may have chosen Mitt Romney in 2012, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and a House Republican candidate in 2018. As is generally true of a losing candidate, Romney likely did not attract many Democrats who then swung back to their party in 2016, nor did Clinton attract many Republicans who then went home in 2018. Our sample bears this out: Including survey weights, just ten of the 3,215 respondents in this portion of the survey would identify as “Rep-Dem-Rep” voters. For 2012 and 2016 vote, we pulled respondent data from the YouGov panel.

An important feature of most of these groups, aside from the loyal Democrats and loyal Republicans, is that these groups are very small. Most voters are consistent partisans, and switchers are rare, something that is not surprising given the increased polarization that has dominated national politics for the past half-century. The survey includes 1,152 loyal Democrats, 1,017 loyal Republicans, 35 Rep-Dem-Dem voters, 30 Dem-Rep-Dem voters, 44 Rep-Rep-Dem voters, and 70 Dem-Rep-Rep voters.

We acknowledge that these are very small sample sizes. As we caution throughout, these results should only be viewed as exploratory. What we offer is a set of suggestive patterns about this electorate that should be useful for future research and for setting the stage for the conversations progressives and Democrats will need to have about their positioning in future elections.

In this post, we begin by offering some insights into how these different groups of voters look along certain demographic measures, and we provide a preliminary look at some of their self-reported political beliefs and policy preferences.

Demographic Characteristics

Because we are limiting our analysis to those with past vote history in recent elections, it isn’t surprising that they’re older than the average American. For each of the voting categories we study here the average age was between 52 and 55 except for loyal Republicans and Rep-Rep-Dem voters, whose average ages were each about 61. The following figure plots the share of each category voter by the share of that category under the age of fifty. Perhaps not surprisingly, more loyal Democrats were typically generally younger.

