A new poll of likely general-election voters in six Senate battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — from the American Principles Project (APP), a social-conservative group, adds to the growing body of evidence that today’s culture-war issues present a major political opportunity for Republicans. Some key results from APP’s press release:
- Women’s Sports: Fifty-six percent supported (33 percent opposed) laws to protect women’s sports at the K–12 and collegiate levels.
- Sex Changes for Minors: Fifty-six percent supported (31 percent opposed) laws banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and physical sex-change surgeries for children.
- Sexual Topics in Schools: Sixty percent supported (34 percent opposed) laws banning instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.
- Parental Notification: Fifty-nine percent supported (30 percent opposed) laws requiring schools to notify parents if their child identifies in class as transgender.
- Age Verification for Porn: Seventy-seven percent supported (15 percent opposed) laws requiring age verification for accessing online pornography.
- Reining in Big Tech: Fifty percent supported (36 percent opposed) laws preventing censorship of political speech by Big Tech.
Notably, support for these initiatives crossed racial lines. The poll, which surveyed 1,200 likely general-election voters from May 2–6, found that both Hispanics and African Americans supported “laws that prohibit biological males who identify as transgender women from participating in girls’ sports programs both in K-12 and at the collegiate level.” On the issue of “banning puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and physical sex-change surgeries for children under the age of 18 who identify as transgender,” Hispanic support sat at a margin of nine, and African-American support at a margin of 15. When asked about Florida’s hotly debated Parental Rights in Education Bill, respondents overall supported the initiative by a margin of 26 points — whites by 29, Hispanics by eleven, and African Americans by four. On age-verification for porn, both Hispanic and African-American support was a whopping 56 points.
Among other things, these numbers are yet another rebuke of the conventional wisdom championed by the RNC’s famous post-2012 election “autopsy,” which argued for a softening of the GOP’s stance on cultural issues — and a recommitment to its Reaganite economic message — as a way to make inroads with nonwhite voters. Donald Trump’s 2016 victory, and the numerous subsequent political and cultural developments since, blow the rationale for that strategy out of the water. As I wrote back in December, Trump’s path to the White House “was won by channeling the very cultural passions that the Republican consultant class had wanted to leave behind,” and while the former president’s “razor-thin margin of victory was primarily delivered by the white working class, whose shrinking share of the electorate may well not be enough for a winning coalition in the future . . . the GOP’s more recent inroads with Hispanics — a cohort that is on track to be the largest share of nonwhite voters in the country — points toward the possibility of a genuinely competitive national coalition.”
In other words, the conditions that are pushing Hispanic voters toward the GOP are the exact inverse of the strategy laid out by the RNC autopsy. The autopsy [championed] a focus on free-market economics and opportunity — i.e., the traditional Reaganite economic message — repackaged with more emphasis on “diversity” and “inclusion.” But Republicans in the Trump era have leaned in to the culture war, and new cultural issues such as transgenderism and critical race theory have proved to be potent political mobilizers — not least among relatively socially conservative demographics like Latinos. And while there is still a lack of reliable polling on Latino views on these issues, the demographic’s relative social conservatism would suggest that those issues played a role in their swing toward Republicans in races such as Virginia, where gender ideology and CRT featured prominently.
A Reaganite economic message, adapted to contemporary realities, could still prove useful. But this polling shows that cultural concerns should come first. Indeed, it reaffirms what many of us have been saying for years now: The GOP should embrace the culture war — not run from it.