Some recent comments from conservatives about Trump’s impending GOP nomination, the future of the Republican Party and, in some cases their intention to vote for some other candidate:

Rep. Scott Rigell [R-VA]: “My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party, and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nation’s commander-in-chief. Accordingly, if left with no alternative, I will not support Trump in the general election should he become our Republican nominee.”
Former Romney staffer Garrett Jackson: “Sorry Mr. Chairman, not happening. I have to put country over party. I cannot support a dangerous phony.”
Former top Romney strategist Stuart Stevens: “I think Donald Trump has proven to be unbalanced and uniquely unqualified to be president. I won’t support him… Everyone has to make their own choice. I think Trump is despicable and will prove to be a disaster for the party. I’d urge everyone to continue to oppose him.'”
Rep. Carlos Curbelo [R-FL]: “I have already said I will not support Mr. Trump, that is not a political decision that is a moral decision.'”
Sen. Ben Sasse [R-NE]: “Mr. Trump’s relentless focus is on dividing Americans, and on tearing down rather than building back up this glorious nation. … I can’t support Donald Trump.”
Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes: “This is what political division looks like. Trump’s claim to be a unifier is not just specious, it’s absurd. This casual dishonesty is a feature of his campaign. And it’s one of many reasons so many Republicans and conservatives oppose Trump and will never support his candidacy. I’m one of them.”
Former McCain adviser Mark Salter: “The GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it’s on the level. I’m with her.”
RedState editor Ben Howe: “#ImWithHer”
MA Gov. Charlie Baker: “I’m not going to vote for [Donald Trump] in November.”
Former RNC Chairman Mel Martinez: “I would not vote for Trump, clearly.”
Former VA Senate candidate, Ken Cuccinelli on Trump: “When you’ve got a guy favorably quoting Mussolini, I don’t care what party you’re in, I’m not voting for that guy.”
Former RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman: “Leaders don’t need to do research to reject Klan support. #NeverTrump”
Former Bush spokesman Tony Fratto: “For the thick-headed: #NeverTrump means never ever ever ever ever under any circumstances as long as I have breath never Trump. Get it?”
Former Eric Cantor communications director, Rory Cooper: “#NeverTrump means…never. The mission of distinguishing him from Republican positions and conservative values remains critical.”
Conservative blogger Erick Erickson: “Reporters writing about the “Stop Trump” effort get it wrong. It’s ‘Never Trump’ as in come hell or high water we will never vote for Trump”
Fox News’ Steve Deace: “Apparently @secupp has a #NeverTrump list to see who keeps their word to the end. You can sign my name in blood.”
Republican strategist Patrick Ruffini: “I will never vote for @realDonaldTrump. Join me and add your name athttp://NeverTrump.com . #NeverTrump”
America Rising co-founder and former Jeb Bush communications director Tim Miller: “Never ever ever Trump. Simple as that.”
Former Rep. J.C. Watts [R-OK] said he’d write-in someone before voting for Mr. Trump in November.
Former Director Of NV and MS GOP Cory Adair: “You’ll come around,” say supporters who just got done saying their candidate doesn’t need me. Nah. I won’t. #NeverTrump
Townhall editor Guy Benson: “Much to my deep chagrin (& astonishment ~8 months ago), for the 1st time in my life, I will not support the GOP nominee for president.”
DailyWire editor Ben Shapiro: “Really? #Nevertrump. Pretty easy.”
Wisconsin conservative radio host Charles Sykes: “I suppose I should clarify: #NeverTrump means I will nevereverunderanycircusmtances vote for @realDonaldTrump”
Editor at RedState, Dan McLaughlin: “For the first time since turning 18, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President.”
Conservative columnist George Will: “If Trump is nominated, Republicans working to purge him and his manner from public life will reap the considerable satisfaction of preserving the identity of their 162-year-old party while working to see that they forgo only four years of the enjoyment of executive power.”
Redstate contributor Leon Wolf: “I will never vote for Donald Trump. I will not vote for him in the general election against Hillary, and I would not vote for him in a race for dogcatcher. Heck, I would not even vote for him on a reality television show.”
Former Romney adviser Kevin Madden: “I’m prepared to write somebody in so that I have a clear conscience.”
Pete Wehner, former speechwriter for George W. Bush: “I will not vote for Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination.”
Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard: “Donald Trump should not be president of the United States. The Wall Street Journal cannot bring itself to say that. We can say it, we do say it, and we are proud to act accordingly.”
Undersecretary of State under George W. Bush, Eliot Cohen: “I will oppose Trump as nominee. Won’t support & won’t work for him for more reasons than a Tweet can bear.”
Former Jeb Bush digital director Elliott Schwartz: “In case there is confusion about #NeverTrump.”
Doug Heye, Former RNC communications director: “I cannot support Donald Trump were he to win the Republican nomination.”
Former IL GOP Chairman Pat Brady said he’d back a third-party candidate or “just stay home” if Mr. Trump is the nominee.
Washington Examiner’s Phillip Klein: “I have officially de-registered as a Republican.”
Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson: “I registered Republican when I was 18 because I thought free markets and liberty were important. Not sure what “Republican” means today.”

The way things are going, don’t be surprised if this list doubles every couple of days. More on the great conservative Exodus, right here.

Nate Silver offers some interesting data and analysis of Donald Trump’ “base” in his latest post, “The Mythology Of Trump’s ‘Working Class’ Support: His voters are better off economically compared with most Americans,” at FiveThirtyEight.com. An excerpt:

…The definition of “working class” and similar terms is fuzzy, and narratives like these risk obscuring an important and perhaps counterintuitive fact about Trump’s voters: As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data. That’s lower than the $91,000 median for Kasich voters. But it’s well above the national median household income of about $56,000. It’s also higher than the median income for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders supporters, which is around $61,000 for both.

Silver explains his methodology, which draws on exit polls, and adds that “Trump voters’ median income exceeded the overall statewide median in all 23 states, sometimes narrowly (as in New Hampshire or Missouri) but sometimes substantially. In Florida, for instance, the median household income for Trump voters was about $70,000, compared with $48,000 for the state as a whole.” Further, says Silver,

…There’s no sign of a particularly heavy turnout among “working-class” or lower-income Republicans. On average in states where exit polls were conducted both this year and in the Republican campaign four years ago, 29 percent of GOP voters have had household incomes below $50,000 this year, compared with 31 percent in 2012.

When you factor in race, to focus on white working-class voters, says Silver, “The median household income for non-Hispanic whites is about $62,000, still a fair bit lower than the $72,000 median for Trump voters.” In addition, “although about 44 percent of Trump supporters have college degrees, according to exit polls — lower than the 50 percent for Cruz supporters or 64 percent for Kasich supporters — that’s still higher than the 33 percent of non-Hispanic white adults, or the 29 percent of American adults overall, who have at least a bachelor’s degree.”
Trump voters do display a hgh level of discontent about the economy, concludes Silver. “But that anxiety doesn’t necessarily reflect their personal economic circumstances, which for many Trump voters, at least in a relative sense, are reasonably good.”
Clearly, plenty of white working-class voters are still quite leery of Trump, though many agree with his views on trade. There is a solid argument that Democrats can get a larger share of this demographic group with well-targeted policies and outreach.

In his Talking Points Memo post, “The Most Important Poll You Didn’t See,” Josh Marshall calls attention to an interesting poll that has been underreported by the usual suspects. Marshall reports that.”the Harvard Institute of Politics just released a detailed poll on the opinions of millennial voters, particularly voters between 18 and 29 years of age. The results are a very, very big deal.”

First, millennials map, in a more exaggerated form, the views of the general public on the top candidates. They have very favorable impressions of Bernie Sanders (54/31); fairly unfavorable impressions of Hillary Clinton (37/53) and extremely unfavorable impressions of Donald Trump (17/74.)
So what about Clinton’s problem with millennials? Well, in a race against Donald Trump it basically disappears. Among 18 to 29 year olds, Clinton beats Trump 61% to 25% to 14% undecided/”don’t know”.. .

That’s great news. But digging a little deeper, Marshall illuminates even better prospects for the future of the Democratic Party:

In Spring of 2015, this age group wanted the Democratic party to win the next presidential election by 15 points (55% to 40%). Now, a year later, that spread has increased to 28 points (61% to 32%). Notably, this is irrespective of candidates. It’s Democrat versus Republican. Also for the first time in 5 years the number of self-identified Democrats is higher than self-identified independents. Dem 40%; Indy 36%, GOP 22%.
Take all that together and you come away with pretty clear evidence that over the course of the Democratic primary young voters have become more attached to progressive politics and the Democratic party. One read of this is that the primary process itself – as divisive as it has sometimes seemed – has deepened young voters’ identification with the Democratic party.

None of this means that Democrats can kick back and expect a decent youth turnout. That’s always a dicey proposition. But it does suggest that, with sustained encouragement, this constituency could help secure Democratic control of the white house and congress well into the future.

At The Daily Beast Jonathan Alter has a fine idea for Hillary Clinton: “Free College Now! Why Hillary Clinton Needs to Run With Bernie Sanders’s Best Idea: To earn the love of young Democrats, Clinton needs to embrace their guy’s best big idea.” Alter makes a very compelling argument that merits the attention of every Democratic candidate from state legislators on up. Sure, this would be popular with college-age youth. But the big swing constituency here is modest-income parents of middle and high school students. These parents are now looking at reverse mortgages, home equity loans and obliterating their retirement assets to educate their kids. Political leaders who will fight hard to help them avoid economic ruin will win most of their votes.
Pollsters must be relieved about the results of the New York primary. As HuffPo’s senior polling editor Natalie Jackson writes, “The average error is under 5 percentage points for the eight pollsters who polled both the Democratic and Republican races in the last week before the primaries. Two of those polls — the NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll and the Emerson College Polling Society poll — averaged about 2.6 percentage points of error across both Republican and Democratic primaries.”
Also at The Beast, Michael Tomasky has a post, “Hillary’s Army of Women Conquers New York, Occupies the Democratic Party: The obvious is important here: Most Democratic voters are women, and Clinton is winning among them by double digits in most states,” which should make GOP strategists more than a little apprehensive. In one graph Tomasky notes of the New York primary, “…The results tell us a little something about how a general election might play out against Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. It should be pointed out that Trump crushed it among women in New York on the Republican side, since after all as we know he cherishes women and will be the best president for women in history, forget about it. He got 57 percent to John Kasich’s 28 percent and Cruz’s 15 percent. But there, women were only 44 percent of the vote. And in terms of raw vote totals, Clinton hauled in almost exactly twice the number of votes Trump did–1.037 million to 518,000. That means about 665,000 women voted for Clinton, while just 215,000 voted for Trump.”
Here’s an interesting request, from 75 conservative leaders no less, urging Ryan and McConnell to reject the idea of a “lame duck” session to deal with the Merrick Garland Supreme Court nomination after the election. Tricky politics indeed.
Via “Democrats are winning the Supreme Court fight over Merrick Garland. Big time” by Chirs Cillizza at The Fix (graphic from Democratic pollster Peter Hart):

In his Slate.com post, “How the GOP Is Losing Its Grip on Working-Class Republicans,” Jacob Weisberg explains, “this is a revolt by Republican voters who no longer believe that their party supports their basic economic interests. While the leader of this rebellion is one of the rankest opportunists ever to appear on the American political scene, the white working class’s feeling that it has been seduced and abandoned by the GOP is perfectly justified.”
“We are clearly out of practice,” argues Jelani Cobb in his New Yorker article, “Working-Class Heroes: The 2016 election shows that, when talking about class, Americans and their candidates are both out of practice” Cobb continues “The current language of “income inequality” is a low-carb version of the Old Left’s ‘class exploitation.’ The new phrase lacks rhetorical zing; it’s hard to envision workers on a picket line singing rousing anthems about “income inequality.” The term lacks a verb, too, so it’s possible to think of the condition under discussion as a random social outcome, rather than as the product of deliberate actions taken by specific people. Bernie Sanders has tended to frame his position as a defense of an imperilled middle class, but he has also called out the “greedy billionaires” and “Wall Street”–a synecdoche for exploitation in general.”
Toss-up in NH Senate Race. You could check out Democratic senate candidate and Governor Maggie Hassan’s ActBlue contributions page right here.
CBS Poll: National Support For Marijuana Legalization Reaches All-Time High. “According to a new CBS News poll, 56 percent of Americans support the legalization of the drug, up three points from 53 percent. More Americans admit to have tried marijuana too — with 51 percent saying they have tried the drug — up from 43 percent last year.” Time to free the captives, Democratic Governors?

At The New York Times Alexander Burns sums up Hillary Clinton’s victory in the New York primary thusly:

Mrs. Clinton defeated Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont by crushing him in New York City and its suburbs, easily winning black and Hispanic voters and holding down his margins in friendlier upstate areas. Her political coalition simply looks more like the national Democratic base than his does. In a big state like New York that is more closely reflective of national demographics, that is a decisive advantage.
Even in upstate cities where Mr. Sanders might have been a more natural fit, like Syracuse and Buffalo, Mrs. Clinton won or fought him to an effective tie.

Hillary Clinton received 1,037,344 votes in the New York primary, while 752,739 New Yorkers voted for Sanders and Donald Trump got 518,601. That’s a pretty strong indication that, if nominated by the GOP, Trump will lose his home state in the general election.
Looking at the delegate horse race, AP’s Julie Pace writes that “of the 247 Democratic delegates at stake in New York, Clinton picked up about 135, compared to 104 for Sanders.” Further,

Among Democrats, Clinton now has 1,893 delegates to Sanders’ 1,180. Those totals include both pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses and superdelegates, the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their state votes. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination.

Put another way, Clinton now has about 79.4 percent of the delegates needed to clinch the Democratic Party’s nomination for President, while Sanders has 49.5 percent of the qualifying total.
Clinton also took New York City proper with an impressive 63.4 percent to 36.6 for Sanders. Matthew Bloch and Wilson Andrews have a fun map at the Times, “How Every New York City Neighborhood Voted in the Democratic Primary,” which includes “find your neighborhood” and “enter address” search widgets. They also have maps showing breakdowns by precincts forcusing on race and income.
Pace notes that exit poll surveys conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks “suggested Democrats were ready to rally around whomever the party nominates. Nearly 7 in 10 Sanders supporters in New York said that they would definitely or probably vote for Clinton if she is the party’s pick.” It’s hard to imagine Clinton’s share of Sanders voters not increasing when they address the question, “Do I really want to risk turning control of America’s military defenses over to Donald Trump?”

From Steven Shepard’s Politico post “How New York Will Be Won“:

In the Democratic presidential primary, about half the vote will come from New York City’s Five Boroughs — a percentage that increases to nearly three-quarters of the vote when the entire New York media market is included.
By contrast, the city accounted for only 13 percent of the votes in the 2012 Republican primary. And of the 34 counties across the state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats (out of 62), only one — Putnam County — is located near New York City.

Ford Fessenden and Sarah Almukhtar note in their New York Times article, “The Battle for New York’s Key Voting Blocs in the Primaries“:

Whites with money on the Upper West Side, in Chelsea and in brownstone Brooklyn are the Democrats’ liberal base. They have opened their wallets for Hillary Clinton — she has a 10-to-1 advantage over Bernie Sanders in contributions — and they turn out reliably.
The voting center of Democratic New York in high-turnout elections is farther east, in black neighborhoods in places like central Brooklyn and southeast Queens. Mrs. Clinton has done well here in the past, even in 2008 against Barack Obama.
“If Hillary Clinton were running against someone other than Barack Obama in 2008, she likely would have swept the city,” said Steven Romalewski, mapping director at the CUNY Graduate Center.
The most liberal Democrats in New York could be the gentrifiers in hipster Brooklyn, but there aren’t many of them…Mr. Sanders raised more money than Mrs. Clinton in Williamsburg, Greenpoint and Bushwick, Brooklyn, but this territory is split among three congressional districts, making it difficult to translate votes into delegates.
Despite Mrs. Clinton’s success throughout New York in 2008, Mr. Skurnik says Mr. Sanders has a shot in rural upstate districts, where “despite popular belief, Democrats are not farmers, but are instead teachers and government workers.”

Pre-election polls have not exactly had a great year in the primary season. But it is significant that Clinton leads Sanders by double digits among eligible New York Democratic voters in key polls. As Jonathan Easley writes at The Hill that “Surveys in the state have consistently shown Clinton holding a lead of somewhere between 10 and 17 points in the state. Sanders has yet to climb to within single digits of Clinton in any poll of New York so far this cycle.” Fivethirtyeight.com’s NY Democratic primary forecast has a weighted polling average of 21 polls show a 53.2 percent average for Clinton, vs. 39.7 percent average for Sanders.
But Sanders, notes Jose A. Delreal in the Washongton Post, “has drawn tens of thousands of supporters at rallies in recent days.” Barring an upset, it will be the size of Clinton’s margin of victory that pundits will be watching to assess the Sanders and Clinton campaigns’ momentum going forward.
All other factors being in a predictable range, what may prove to be the most interesting statistics coming out of the New York primary are the raw vote tallies of Clinton and Trump

Paul Waldman has an interesting post up at The American Prospect, “Why Hillary Clinton Could Be the Kind of President Bernie Sanders Supporters Will Love.” As Waldman frames his argument:

It’s frustrating to be a Bernie Sanders supporter right now. Your candidate has plenty of impressive wins behind him, Hillary Clinton is still far from having the nomination wrapped up, and yet everyone is talking as if the race is over. First they didn’t take your guy seriously, and now they want to push him out of the race. With the expectedly raucous New York primary coming up Tuesday, it’s no wonder that there’s no small amount of animosity coming from Sanders fans toward Clinton. In fact, in a recent McClatchy/Marist poll, 25 percent of Sanders supporters say they won’t vote for Clinton if she’s the party’s nominee.
They may not want to hear it yet, but those who support Sanders might start thinking about how they could exert influence over Clinton’s presidency. Because some of what they don’t like about Clinton–her caution, her propensity for difference-splitting, her inclination to seek the path of least resistance–is exactly what will enable liberals to pull her to the left once she’s in the White House.

Waldman notes that Clinton’s earlier “centrism” was partly anchored to the prevailing trend of her party in the 1990s. “Who she was then,” says Waldman, “was a combination of her natural inclinations and a keen eye for the political risks and possibilities of the moment. On that basic level, she hasn’t changed, but the environment has.”
But now, adds Waldman,

The Democratic Party has moved to the left on many issues, from gay rights to immigration. At a time when the parties and their voters are polarized, and Democrats have significant demographic advantages at the national level, there’s little to be gained by moving to the center. So Hillary Clinton is a much more liberal politician than she was twenty years ago.

It is a mistake for progressive Democrats to assume that Clinton is an ideological centrist. One can make a case that she was always a notch or two to the left of her husband, but those instincts were reigned in, rightly or wrongly, by pragmatic caution.
However, says Waldman, “If liberals can move the country’s debate and the Democratic Party’s fulcrum to the left, then Clinton will move with them.” For Sanders campaign supporters, “that means that when the Sanders campaign is over, their work will just be starting. As president, Hillary Clinton will be as liberal as liberals force her to be. If they do their job, that could be quite liberal indeed.”