Republican front-runner Donald Trump is not expanding the Republican Party by "millions and millions" of voters as he claims, new data released Sunday reveals.
GOP primary data thus far reveals that an increased voter turnout is from Republicans who traditionally skipped voter primaries and merely voted in general elections - but were, nonetheless, Republican voters, Politico reports. The news outlet used data from GOP officials and several independent analyses to present the findings.
In Virginia, for example, 1,025,452 voters participated in the primaries - three times the number in 2012, according to an Optimus poll. But 90.7% were either regular primaries voters (18.6%) or Republican voters who usually only voted in the general elections (72.1%); 3.6% were young voters or news residents of the state. As such, just 5.7% of voters - 58,450 people - appeared to have migrated from other parties.
In other cases, there is no evidence that Trump, specifically, spurred new voters.
60,000 new voters were counted in the Ohio Republican party primary, for instance - alongside 58,000 new voters in the Democratic primary.
And while there were some 115,000 people who switched to the Republican side in that state - evidence suggests the change was due to John Kasich, who had very high approval ratings in Ohio and won that primary with 46.8% of the vote.
Moreover, more than 50% of the first-time voters in the Ohio primary appear to have just come of voting age in the last election season.