This is completely false. I personally know lifelong Republican voters who abandoned the party in 2016. They didn’t just leave the party, they voted D.

that's an anecdote. there's lots, but there are not enough such anecdotes to change national election results.

We don't have the numbers to assert that one way or the other, since the ballot is secret.

In Virginia, more people voted for Biden in 2020 than Clinton in 2016, and for Trump in 2020 than Trump in 2016. Clearly higher turnout mattered, but whether the individual votes were switch-voters, new voters, voters who sat out 2016 showing up in 2020, voters who sat out in 2016 (but had a past history of voting one way) showing up for the other party's candidate in 2020 is much harder to assert.

I think I'd have to see numbers on that (and those numbers are hard to build out without falling prey to a "No True Scotsman" fallacy).

Virginia currently has a Democrat legislature for the first time in two decades, and it's paired with a Democrat governor for the first time I can remember. Either there was a massive demographic churn or someone switched sides. (Anecdotally: I have family in Virginia, and a lot of lifelong GOP voters in my family looked at the party's double- and triple-down support of Trump and went "Whatever this party is, it's not my GOP").

well we can start that virginia turnout was 3 points higher in 2020 than 2016: https://www.elections.virginia.gov/resultsreports/registrati... about 400000 more votes than 2016. How many points did D legislators win by compared to 2016? if they moved only three points to win, then it was likely mostly turnout related, not party switching. Also you need to accommodate for the GOP voter that says "not my party" is very likely to simply not vote, or vote third party, likely moreso than to vote for a Democrat. This would indicate "alienation" of such voters is a good strategy in fact. It's certainly the strategy that the GOP uses against Democrats in order to get us not to turn out.

put another way, I have a lot of republicans in my family. There is zero chance of any of them ever changing. It's absurd that we all would need to be concerned about speaking the truth of the GOP party for fear of "alienating" these people. This is a silencing tactic, plain and simple. The GOP takes no such steps to avoid losing potential D switchers.