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Tennessee was formerly a centrist -oriented state, a state where in election after election voters cast ballots for moderate politicians of the same political drawings – Howard Baker, Fred Thompson, Zach Wamp, Ned McWherter, Bill Frist, Al Gore, Phil Bredesen, Lamar Alexander and Bill Haslam to name a few.
But that was over. Tennessee Republicans are no longer centrists and moderates. They are now leaning hard, hard right – and straight to the edge of a flat ground.
Judging from a recent survey at Vanderbilt University of 1,000 registered voters, it wasn’t just former president Donald Trump who was mistaken in insisting that the election was stolen from him.
It’s also 71% of Tennessee Republican voters who last month told Vandy pollsters they agreed with the statement: “Joe Biden stole the 2020 presidential election.”
And why not? As frustrating as it is, it shouldn’t be entirely surprising. Tennessee’s new hard-hitting politicians sound the drum every day on social media and Fox News, which Tennesseans flock to with constant reference to Trump and his ever-increasing false claims.
Don’t worry that the “big lie” of a rigged or rigged election has been strongly denied by state officials, courts, the Electoral College, Trump’s own administration and eventually Congress – who acted to verify the results amidst a violation of the Capitol by a violent group of people Trump supporters.
You already know how Republicans answered that question posed in a statewide survey by Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Nashville. But of all those 1,000 voters, only 40% agreed with the big lie; among independents, 30% agreed and among Democrats, only 5% agreed.
“It’s a striking number – that most one political party feels that the other party is not legal, despite the lack of any evidence,” Drs. Josh Clinton, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt and co-director of Vanderbilt’s Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions.
Partisan separation doesn’t stop there:
* 37% of Republicans and 30% of Independents said they did not plan to get the COVID-19 vaccine (60% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats said they have or plan to be vaccinated).
* 90% of Democrats but only 29% of Republicans said they agree that the legacy of slavery affects the position of Black people in America today by too much deal or a fair amount.
* 57% of Republicans and 8% of Democrats approved of making it legal for those 21 and older to carry a handgun without a permit. (Overall, only 39% of Tennesseans approve.)
Trying to split the partisan, pollsters ran a small experiment, asking about voters ’support for infrastructure upgraded two different ways.
When respondents were asked if they approved Biden’s American Jobs Plan that will use $ 2.3 trillion to upgrade the nation’s infrastructure over the next 10 years, including improving roads and bridges, electric grid, drinking water and broadband internet access, only 29% of Republicans approved while 96% of Democrats approved. But when the question was not raised without naming the plan or President Biden, Republican approval for the infrastructure doubled – to 59%, while the same 96% of Democrats approved.
Apparently the anti-Biden, anti-Democrats Fox News talking points are coming to an end.
Professor Clinton is more tactful: “The fact that there is widespread support for economic issues when partisan indicators are removed shows that the political context can affect people’s reactions to important policy issues, depending on how issues are framed. “
Of course, Vandy’s survey isn’t alone in noticing the tough slide of the right nail in Tennessee. History also tells. Trump won the state in 2020 by 23 percentage points, and the Republican victory margin has continued to widen with every presidential election since 1996 – the last time the state went to a Democrat.
Former Tennessee Governor Haslam discussed that slide in a Q&A published last week in The Atlantic about his new book, “Faithful Presence.”
Haslam, a moderate and an evangelical Christian who says he loves being a mayor and loves being governor, faces a problem with Tennessee’s new lean right wing. This is an area where he finds it difficult to identify with his own evangelical beliefs and the current direction of his party.
“One of the reasons I wrote the book was to repair people’s personal views about Christianity to personal political views. It was to me a sign of how far the track the Church has gone. There was a damage to the Church’s identity for this political reason [Trumpism]. “
Haslam told The Atlantic that he had no idea if he would run for office again, and the magazine said it was also not clear that he could win in today’s political environment.
Speaking to Tennessee voters, Haslam said that unlike in Georgia where novices helped flip Peach State blue in 2020, “people moving here are actually more conservative than people here to begin. “
Haslam added that Republicans have done a great job in the last election of reaching more rural voters, even attracting many people who have not been heavy voters in the past. But at the same time, the GOP has lost many suburban voters – women specifically.
“As a party, we are exchanging high -propensity voters for low -status voters,” he said. “That’s a concern for the Republican Party in Tennessee, and everywhere for that matter.”
Perhaps here lies another clue as to why 71% of Tennessee Republican voters believe the “big lie.”
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