麻豆影院

Audio Script

Why Republicans and independents are voting for Trump
March 8听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听听 Ken Bickers
As Donald Trump continues to rack up primary wins and has a solid lead in two new polls of Michigan Republicans leading into today鈥檚 primary there, a few of the questions the Republican establishment and rivals are asking is who is voting for him and why? Ken Bickers, professor of political science at the 麻豆影院, thinks he has the answer.
CUT 1 鈥淭his is not just the sort of regular Republicans that always vote deciding that they are going to go a Trump candidate this time and not one of these other folks. (:11) Trump is tapping into people that have felt disaffected from American politics. That have felt left behind 鈥� not just by the Republican Party but also by the Democratic Party.鈥� (:23)
Bickers points out he is bringing these voters out in large numbers, something other Republican presidential candidates couldn鈥檛 do in recent presidential elections.
CUT 2 鈥淭rump is bringing out hundreds of thousands of voters that have not voted in the past. (:07) If you look at the voter turnout levels on the Republican side, contest after contest, the turnout rates are huge. (:16) In some places they鈥檙e up double over what they were four years ago. And even higher than what they were in 2008 by very large margins.鈥� (:27)
And who are these disaffected voters? Bickers says some are independents while others remind him of a class of voters who were once the core of the Democratic Party many years ago.
CUT 3 鈥淎 lot of these people fit the profile of folks that I would鈥檝e described as part of the core constituency of the Democratic Party coming out of the New Deal - working class; blue-collar jobs; mostly married; kids that they鈥檙e struggling to get them to college; paying on mortgages; that like to hunt and fish and watch sports. (:23) And those people are not in the profile of the Democratic Party anymore. That was the white working class and the Republican Party has struggled to appeal to those people.鈥� (:32)
Bickers says every so often in American politics someone new with a different message comes on to the scene and that can be very appealing to voters 鈥� especially voters tired of politics as usual.
CUT 4 鈥淪omething is new in American politics and Donald Trump is, believe it or not, the person that represents that new thing in American politics. And the establishment Republicans are going crazy trying to figure out how to control it, contain it, divert it, move it back into more confortable channels and they are not being very successful at that.鈥� (:22)
There are three primaries and one caucus on slate for today with 150 delegates at stake. Michigan offers the most delegates with 59. As of yesterday afternoon, Trump lead in two polls in that state by a fairly sizeable margin 鈥� 39 percent to 24 percent over Ted Cruz in the CBS survey and 41 percent to 22 percent for Cruz in the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll.
-CU-