The Republican race for the White House is treading uncharted territory, and local political experts say they are seeing an exodus of Republican voters away from their party’s candidate, Donald Trump.
In most cases, voters in a general election are comfortable with supporting the top of the ticket of their party.
This year, people seem to be dramatically shifting their habits.
“Everyone is going out of their way to say they don’t support Donald Trump, or they don’t know what they’re going to do this year, which is just not the thing that you would expect to happen, because political parties by their very essence a means of organizing around collective principals," said Andrew Keatts, reporter with the Voice of San Diego, NBC 7's media partner.
This election year, San Diegans’ opinions of Democrat or Republican office holders are different, depending on whether you are talk about them on a national and local level, said Ron Nehring, former California campaign chairman for Ted Cruz.
According to a poll by local consulting group Revolvis, when it comes to Republican office holders in particular, local Republican politicians fare better on the local level compared to the national level.
“The last thing you want to do if you’re running for that local office is inject yourself or tie yourself to what’s happening at the national scene," said Nehring. "And so therefore it’s not a surprise to me that you find candidates that would say you know what -- I want to be evaluated based on my own record for my own issues."
Local
The national election is happening across the country, he said, and local candidates want to define themselves more distinctly.
"(The election) is happening in other states and it’s not something which if you’re a local candidate you want that influencing and defining the dynamic for your own local race,” Nehring said.
It may be time to rethink what it means to be a "conservative" Republican for some millennial voters. A recent SDSU study shows that the number of millennials registering as independents is at an all-time high.
Many people think millennials are a monolithic group of voters, said Political Consultant Ryan Clumpner. But that isn't the case.
"There’s just a study out of SDSU pointing out the fact that you have more 18-year-olds today identifying as conservatives than in any previous generations," Clumpner said. "29 percent today. And in 1976, it was 21 percent, so there is actually a shift to the right side of the spectrum among younger voters as compared to their predecessors. Yet the Republican party is not capturing that at all because of a cultural split.”
