Facts about "Reagan Democrats"

[IceSpear]

From what I've read part of what the first two posters wrote is both true.

In regards to the second poster, he is correct that Bill Clinton won some of these former Reagan Democrats back in 1992 or 1996.  However, many of the seemed to favor George W Bush over Al Gore in 2000, and contrary to what the second poster wrote, there is very little evidence that hardly any of these voters or, as the second poster wrote, these type of voters, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 or 2012.

Most of this 'working class' demographic had become fully Republican at the Presidential and Congressional level by 2000 over social issues.

The first poster is correct in that Politico recently took a look at these supposedly new voters that Trump brought into the primary process, and concluded that nearly all of them had regularly voted previously, just not in primaries.  They also concluded that nearly all of them were long time Republican voters, though I'm not sure how they figured that out.

This. SOME of the "Reagan Democrats" came back for Bill in the 90s, though even then many supported Bush/Dole and Perot. It was in 2000 when Democrats lost this mythical demographic, and they haven't come back.

Anyway, it won't matter. The LBJ Republicans will come home to Hilldawg, deliver her Utah, and make this all a moot point.

[IceSpear]

It kinda seems like right wing posters on this forum use the term "Reagan Democrats" in a manner that suggest it's like a video game power up...

"You acquired Reagan Democrats!!  +15% white vote to your score!"

And that's why they talk about this made up group, because it's easy to make outlandish predictions when you can just justify with a deus ex machina of some mythical voting bloc swinging to your candidate en masse.

If someone says "Trump can win New Jersey if he wins over blue collar swing voters", then that's easy to challenge. People will ask how many blue collar swing voters live in NJ and if they're even a particularly Trump-friendly group to begin with. But "Trump can win New Jersey if he wins over Reagan Democrats" isn't as easy to shoot down, because it's not a clearly defined group and it's a "group" the media basically defines as being willing to swing to Republicans, and likes to pretend always do en masse.

Haha, you're on a roll here. The media really likes to invent stuff out of thin air.

Remember in 2012? "Muh white male blue collar auto workers will deliver Obama an easy win in Ohio because he saved GM and Romney is a vulture capitalist who wanted Detroit to go bankrupt!"

White men in the exit poll: Romney +26 (18 point swing from 2008!)

lol

Turns out he only won Ohio because white women only swung 2 points to Romney and black turnout went up.