The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol hasn't been good for the Republican Party brand. In the weeks after the insurrection, The New York Times reviewed the voter registration numbers in 25 states showing that 140,000 people had left the Republican Party.
Reporting in Slate.com, Molly Olmstead cited an analysis from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel claiming that for those leaving the GOP in their area, the anger was really just short-lived. They claimed that some of the people who left the GOP were uncomfortable with the extremism but others left because they felt Republicans abandoned Trump supporters after the riot.
Melissa Ensell from western New York had been all about Donald Trump and part of the Republican Party since she was in college 20 years ago. She was put off by Trump's response to COVID-19. She also didn't think that there was any election fraud. By the time Trump's supporters started assaulting Capitol Police officers, she said she was "just so completely disgusted."
One year later, she has no doubts about leaving the GOP.
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Nicole was a 48-year-old Republican healthcare worker who was angry that the GOP didn't stand up for Trump in Pennsylvania. She was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and left the party because she thinks the Republicans are part of the Deep State. She also has no regrets.
Ethan Demme has been involved in politics since he was a teenager. He was the youngest Republican Party chair in Lancaster County history when he was elected. While serving on the East Lampeter Township Board of Supervisors he left the GOP after Jan. 6 saying that for him it was "the final straw."
"If anything, the actions and activities of a lot of Republicans that I know made me double down," he told Slate. "A lot of folks now see a path forward that says we can ignore what happened, that we don’t have to actually address or change anything about the way the Republican Party operates. I would say I probably have reprioritized which [issues] I value more. Jan. 6, to me, showed that our institutions and systems were under direct attack. I became much more aware of how close we were to actually having those institutions fail. It could have been a very dark day. So I’ve started to look for candidates who are prioritizing sort of the basic tenets of democracy."
