In “More Americans think Trump should face charges in hush money scandal: poll,” Olafimihan Oshin writes at The Hill: “More Americans than not believe that former President Trump should face charges in the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into a hush money payment he made before the 2016 election, according to a new The Economist/YouGov poll….Forty-six percent of respondents to the survey said that Trump, who over the weekend had said he expected to be arrested on Tuesday in the probe, should be indicted for his actions, compared to 34 percent who said he shouldn’t. The remaining 20 percent were unsure….Only 14 percent of registered Republicans who responded said that Trump should face criminal charges over the payment to adult film performer Stormy Daniels, while 63 percent said he should not. By comparison, 77 percent of Democrat respondents said the former president should be charged, with 11 percent saying he shouldn’t….Charges also have the support of 44 percent of Independents, compared to 30 percent who said Trump should not charged….The Economist/YouGov poll was conducted from March 19 to 21 with a total of 1,500 respondents participating in the survey. The poll’s margin of error was 3.3 percentage points.”

From “Trump’s chief 2024 worry isn’t DeSantis; it’s his stunning success in dismantling abortion rights” by Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos: “From the moment he stepped off the plane in Iowa, Trump continually dodged questions about whether he would implement a federal national abortion ban. AP reporter Steve Peoples pressed him twice on the matter, but the most he could squeeze from Trump was a decidedly generic, “We’re looking at a lot of different things.”….despite his stellar record on upending a half-century of precedent on reproductive rights, Trump ducking the issue at every turn isn’t going to fly with the forced-birther fundies….“No one gets a pass,” said Majorie Dannenfelser, head of the right-wing anti-abortion organization Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “With Trump, this is his legacy. It’s something that I believe he will get right, but he’s clearly doing some soul searching right now.”….As 2024 gets underway, Dannenfelser’s group plans to ask all Republican candidates to sign a national 15-week abortion ban pledge…..“If any GOP primary candidate fails to summon the moral courage to endorse a 15-week gestational minimum standard, then they don’t deserve to be the president of the United States,” said Dannenfelser….the dogged push by forced birthers will continue throughout the cycle to the detriment of a Republican Party that is mounting simultaneous attacks on Black voting rights, transgender freedoms, parental rights, freedom of speech, and more….Eventually, a GOP nominee will emerge who will either be at odds with the fundies (causing serious internal GOP strife) or at odds with the broader electorate (sacrificing any chance of winning over suburban women)….Either eventuality will be a welcome development for Democrats.”

Andrew Roman o reports that “Signature DeSantis policies unpopular with Americans ahead of likely presidential run” at Yahoo News: “If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defeats former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he may have a harder time winning the general election than his supporters expect, according to the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll….The new survey shows that more Americans oppose than favor seven out of eight signature policies put forward by DeSantis in Florida, with support ranging from 36% (for requiring public school books to be reviewed for content “the government deems inappropriate”) to a low of 21% (for “granting political appointees the power to fire tenured faculty members at public colleges and universities at any time and for any reason”)….On foreign policy, meanwhile, DeSantis doesn’t fare much better….“While the U.S. has many vital national interests,” the Florida governor said in a statement last week, “becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.” Yet by a nearly 2-1 margin, Americans consider the conflict an “invasion of Ukraine by Russia” (56%) rather than a “territorial dispute” (30%) — and less than a third (32%) think “the conflict is none of America’s business….The poll of 1,582 U.S. adults, which was conducted from March 16 to 20, suggests a bumpy road ahead for DeSantis after he launches his widely expected presidential campaign later this spring. For now, he trails Trump 39% to 47% in a one-on-one primary matchup among registered voters who are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents, down from his 45% to 41% lead in early February. DeSantis (32%) lags even further behind Trump (47%) in a field that includes former Vice President Mike Pence (5%) and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley (6%).”

At Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Alan I. Abramowitz explores “The Transformation of the American Electorate,” and
writes that “the electorate that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 was very different from the electorate that voted for Ronald Reagan in 1980. Over these 40 years, the electorate has become both more racially diverse and more educated. The white share of the electorate has fallen from 84% in 1980 to 66% in 2020. At the same time, the share of the electorate without a college degree has fallen from 84% in 1980 to 63% in 2020….The combined impact of growing racial diversity and rising levels of education is that the share of the electorate made up of whites without a college degree has fallen drastically, from 69% in 1980 to 39% in 2020. In 40 years, non-college whites have gone from an overwhelming majority to a minority of the American electorate….At this rate of decline, the proportion of the electorate made up of non-college whites will fall to approximately 30% by 2032….the Democratic advantage in party identification has declined steadily since 2008, falling from 13.9 percentage points to only 4.1 percentage points over these 12 years. The 4.1 percentage point Democratic advantage in party identification in 2020 was the smallest recorded in ANES surveys in the past 40 years….the proportion of eligible voters with a college degree more than doubled between 1980 and 2020, going from 16% to 37%. The proportion of college graduates rose from 17% to 40% among whites and from 11% to 30% among nonwhites….To test the racial and cultural resentment hypothesis, I examined the relationship between the standard 4-item racial resentment scale and party identification among whites with and without college degrees….There is a very strong relationship between racial resentment and party identification among those with and without college degrees. Whites who scored low in racial resentment identified overwhelmingly with the Democratic Party while those who scored high in racial resentment identified overwhelmingly with the Republican Party. Moreover, once we control for racial resentment, the educational divide in partisanship disappears completely. In fact, at moderate to high levels of racial resentment, whites with college degrees were slightly more likely to identify as Republican than whites without college degrees….racial and cultural resentment rather than economic distress and insecurity has been driving non-college whites toward the Republican Party in recent years….Among white Democrats without a college degree, the proportion scoring either low or very low on the racial resentment scale increased from 26% in 2012 to 44% in 2016 to 63% in 2020. Among white Democrats with college degrees, the proportion scoring either low or very low on the racial resentment scale increased from 56% in 2012 to 75% in 2016 to 86% in 2020….In 2020, according to the ANES data, 96% of white Democrats reported voting for the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden. This was the highest level of loyalty among white Democrats in any presidential election in the entire ANES series, going back to 1952. As recently as 1988, only 80% of white Democrats reported voting for the Democratic nominee, Michael Dukakis….The sharp increase in party loyalty among white Democrats has largely offset the impact of declining Democratic identification among whites since the 1980s. The Democratic base today is somewhat smaller than it was 40 years ago but it is much more loyal in its voting behavior, as shown in Figure 7. That is a major reason why Democratic candidates have won the popular vote in 7 of the last 8 presidential elections.”