CNN’s senior data reporter Harry Enten explained Wednesday how the electorate has reshaped to the benefit of President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in recent years.
Democrats in 2017 held a five-point advantage over Republicans in the electorate and that gap widened to six points when President Joe Biden entered office in 2021, Enten noted.
But that trend has now reversed with Republicans currently outnumbering Democrats by two points, he said.
Trump and Republicans “have remade the electorate” by turning “some people over from being Democrats or independents to become Republicans” and “new folks have entered the electorate who are more Republican-leaning,” said Enten.
“When you combine that with the fact that Republicans are really, really behind Donald Trump, all of a sudden you get a winning recipe whereby you break the normal rules of politics and give Donald Trump that positive net approval rating when he had pretty much a consistently negative one in term No. 1,” he added.
Trump currently has a 3-point net approval rating thanks to his base’s consolidation behind him, which they didn’t necessarily do during his first time in the White House, said Enten.
