Are the people close to you changing if/why they vote for Trump and Why?

Politics & Elections
1

A couple of related polls to set the stage:

Did anyone in your immediate family (one generation removed) vote for Trump to the best of your knowledge in 2016?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
If you answered Yes for the first question, did they also vote for Trump in 2020?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
If you answered yes to EITHER of the two above, do they intend to vote for Trump in 2024?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters
Does anyone in your immediate family (one generation removed) intend to vote for Trump in 2024 although they had NOT previously voted for him?
  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Sorry for the block of polls, but they should be short. I wanted to examine the mechanisms by which individuals are confirming or changing their reasoning on Trump’s candidacy, so please feel free to amplify, explain, and extrapolate beyond the above. I restricted the polls to ONE generation removed because I felt that we’re more likely to have the details on our immediate family than the more extended branches, but I’m not going to hold you to it if you want to share.

MY experience: I just got back a week ago from a longish visit with my father. He had always been something of Reagan era Republican while being strongly supporting of various social liberties. His biggest wedge issues that had him supporting Republicans were support of Israel (not rabid, but we have more of our extended family living there than in the US), and preservation of wealth (more to pass on to my brother and I and my niece and nephew in recent years).

In our talks, he admitted to voting for Trump in 2016 - because of the issues above, a personal dislike for Hilary (various reasons, some valid, many not), and a grudging admiration for the sheer chutzpah. :roll_eyes:

In 2020, he voted for Biden, with some hesitation and regret, because he found Trump an utter disaster at actually running the government, which was a priority. Shutdowns, drama, and other such failures trumped (heh) his concerns about Israel and taxes, and he found Biden to be more than sufficiently moderate as to not push him away.

So I asked him about 2024 - and he was honest enough (I think with me) to say that he intends to vote for Biden, he’s not motivated by Biden, but voting against Trump again. He thinks Trump is a crook, faaaar too cozy with Christian Nationals, and far more visibly senile than Biden. I do think he still has a sneaking admiration for Trump being able to get away with his crimes for as long as he did, being more in the “if you’re not trying every dodge, you’re not trying to win” but that’s not exactly uncommon, if not admirable.

Still, it beats people going in the other direction - didn’t vote or didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, but became a true believer due to misinformation or other wedge issues and now are converts to a new religion.

One of my cousins with dual citizenship (Israel and US) who lives in the US full time is frequently emailing the family about how a vote for Trump is a vote for Israel - apparently for them, that issue is the predominant factor for them, which, is ironic - if you’re living in the US full time, then why not consider his damage to this nation first, and Israel second, but :man_shrugging: . Their conversion began with the moving of the embassy, and has become ever more strident for 2024 with the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

How have the politics of those close to you changed on Trump and why?

2

I could only answer Yes to the final question, because my Trump-loving wife only became a citizen last year, and couldn’t vote previously. But I know for 100% certain that if she could have voted in 2016 and 2020, she would have voted for Trump.

3

Mother was fiercely opposed to Trump in 2016. Then she voted for him in 2020, and I expect she will do so again this year.

I don’t know how my father feels, but he’ll probably vote the way she does, or not at all.

Everyone else in my family, myself included, is anti-Trump.

4

I’ve spoken about this in other threads, but my mother was largely apolitical throughout my entire life and went full on MAGA back in 2015. She voted for him again in 2020, believes the elction was stolen, January 6th was a “Fedsurrection” complaining about the murder of Ashli Babbit, all the legal issues Trump is facing is a witch-hunt, and fully intends to vote for Trump this November. She fell down an online rabbit hole years ago and hasn’t found her way back to the surface.

5

Wow. If you feel like sharing any of her purported reasons why, we’d be most interested.

6

My in-laws and dad/step-mom previously voted for him, don’t know or care how they plan to vote this year. We simply don’t talk politics anymore.

7

I don’t quite fully understand, but it’s mostly about illegal immigrants, LGBT, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, etc.

In 2016, when Trump first appeared on scene, my mother was horrified at how immature and boorish he was, and would even lobby random strangers in supermarkets (especially Hispanic people) to vote against Trump. She voted for Hillary that year; I believe it’s the only time she’s ever voted for a Democrat.

Then some big change occurred in her. I don’t know what, but I think Covid triggered her innately paranoid tendencies. She went into survivalist mode, bought guns, got a freeze-drying machine and began mass-preparing freeze dried meals to prepare us for the famine or civil war she thought might be imminent. (Unfortunately, due to her lack of quality control and care in preparation, I suspect many of those meals have spoiled by now and would be wary of eating them.)

She is diehard Christian, and she seems to have bought into the propaganda about Biden and the Democrats. She told me shortly before the November 2020 election that “if Biden wins, you can forget about (being able to) going to church again.” She even worried that terrorists might attack her church (a tiny church of <100 people in Texas.) She is immediately triggered or activated by anything in reference to Christians being persecuted. She subscribes to Voice of the Martyrs and other such publications. She also believed a theory that some Covid vaccines turn your body into a magnet for metal objects, and has become very anti-vaxx, and then also started hoarding lots of gold and silver. She believes all kinds of dubious Christian prophets/figures like Sadhu Selvaraj, Kevin Zadai, etc.

I could write a 3,000-word post about her (there are other paranoid things she thinks) but I’ll just keep it succinct here.

So yeah, I think it’s because Trump, Fox News and Republicans fear the same things she fears, and she actually derives some sort of subconscious pleasure from seeing danger around her (I don’t think she herself even realizes this, but reading about the “insane things that Biden and the Democrats do” tickles some pleasure center in her brain.) She still doesn’t like Trump, but she considers his boorishness and juvenile behavior to be an unavoidable-but-acceptable side price to pay.

And she is certainly not uneducated; she is extremely smart, went to an elite university, majored in biology and computer engineering, etc.

8

Very shortly after learning that a few of my family members were MAGA types (not RINO’s, not independents who voted against Biden, but … True Trump Supporters), I abandoned any possibility of rationally talking politics with them.

At. All.

We do not start from a shared set of facts.

I presume that – had they left the flock – I’d have heard. I have not heard.

9

@Velocity Fascinating — thank you!
The COVID experience being a possible inflection point — very intriguing.

10

I’ve just been trying to parse the intersections of less-enlightened self interest vs cult-like slavishness in followers of Trump. The family members I mentioned are more the former, but even they have disturbing elements of the latter.

But I see here (in the thread, and in general) so many where the first leads into the second, and wonder if it’s the emotional element of belonging (suggested in many ways by @Velocity’s mother actions) that is a huge factor. Not exactly a new observation, it’s shown up in a half dozen (or more) Trump threads.

But it makes me both optimistic and worried. Optimistic, because if the MAGA group splinters after Trump’s inevitable death, then I’d expect that each splinter will self-identify and infight, but worried - because I don’t think those people are ever coming back to rationality, even IF (and it’s a big IF) Republicans as a whole pivot closer to center.

11

This is pretty much where my family situation is at also. I did try to talk to Mom for a while, but couldn’t get far before being told she hasn’t had time lately for the news, or she was too tired to talk about it, or that she was a pro-life Christian. I suspect the major reason is that she liked watching Trump on The Apprentice.
I spent some time with my family a couple years ago and though I always knew they were the mean, petty, racist, homophobic kind of Christians (they raised me!), it was brought home to me how absolutely entrenched it is. My relationship with my brother was irreparably damaged. We’ll all get together this weekend and be loving and cordial, but we won’t talk politics unless someone wants to fight.

12

Yes Yes No No because my mom died last year.
Considering how old Biden & Trump are, is it really more about the VP?

13

I also noticed some changes in my own mother. She bought an AR-15 a few years back despite having never fired a weapon since the Reagan administration. When I asked her why she bought the rifle she just kept repeating, “Becaue I can” or “I wanted it” but wouldn’t elaborate further. I think she expected me to take her to the range but I haven’t and don’t intend to. The rifle can just sit unused in her house until one of us kids inherits it.

What’s I’ve found particularly disturbing is her endorsement of Trump’s behavior. When he attacked Judge Kaplan’s law clerk, making up lies that she was in a sexual relationship with a Democratic politician, my mother wasn’t the least bit perturbed considering such behavior to be fair game. I told her how disappointed I was that the woman who taught me to treat people resectfully and fairly has abandoned those values.

The long and the short of it is that I think she’s both scared and angry. Of what, I’m not quite sure. Illegal immigration, fake climate change, leftist communist antifa Nazis…I don’t know.

14

I have no people close to me. :slightly_frowning_face:

But I got Dachshunds!

15

Dachshunds are Democrats. All dogs are.

And I won’t vote for Trump.

16

Moderating
Please keep dumb off-topic jokes out of P&E.

Please don’t respond with off-topic replies to dumb off-topic jokes.

17

What I’ve observed in most Trump supporters is that 20% of their grievances are legit and 80% are not. Unfortunately, when people or media around them act as if 0 percent of their grievances are legit, that drives the Trumpers into the arms of malicious folks like Tucker Carlson, Faux News, QAnon, and then the problem becomes much worse.

What I generally try to do with Trumpers is acknowledge the 20% while still firmly rebutting the 80%. Everyone craves validation but you can’t validate their wrong beliefs, nor squelch their correct beliefs. Doing either is a recipe for radicalization.

The best way to make someone become an extremist diehard is to make them feel as if they’re being gaslit, as if the emperor is naked but they feel compelled to pretend he’s wearing clothes.

18

Oops. Sorry.

Thought it was a poll thread.

19

I have a slightly different take on the same basic issue.

Ever hear of the Free Concert at Altamont (1969)? The organizers decided to contract security to the Hell’s Angels motorcycle club for about $500 worth of beer.

Violence was the result. Scores were injured. At least one died. Property damage was ginormous. It was a disaster.

This is an example of the wrong solution to a legitimate problem.

Trump identified a few legitimate problems in the 2016 campaign, but he was the absolutely wrong man, with the absolutely wrong plan, to address those problems.

But that is NOT a way to reach a meeting of the minds with MAGA folks. I fully acknowledge that.

20

Now, I’ve done similar things to @Velocity’s stance and the result varies a great deal by percentages:

Say 10-20% factual, 80-90% some version of FUD, and you have a chance of reaching them, making them wonder if the 10-20 is really worth the 80-90. And the success goes up as the percentage of “real” grievance goes down.

But in most cases of anything more than that, and in a truly disturbing portion of even the lower percentages, the 10+ percent that they are looking at is evaluated at being 10x as important! I’ll give a real world example from a no-longer-being-spoken-to friend. Their issue is guns/2nd Amendment rights. And they, accurately, quote certain members of the left who admitted that they absolutely want to take -his- guns.

I addressed this, and pointed out that yes, a specific individual said that, and they have a non-zero amount of support, but that almost all the legislation passed in both the TRUMP and Biden area were minor things that previously we had both agreed as good ideas in terms of keeping guns out of the hands of people not ready for the responsibility.

His response was “But that means they (a big word for this group of supporters) ARE planning it!” No matter that it was one individual, campaigning, that no credible threat was on the horizon, and that our SCOTUS was busy EXPANDING gun rights. Trump had to be supported because “they” could come for his guns at any time.

So it’s not just a simple matter of percentages, the way they have been trained to weigh the percentages is equally ungrounded in reality.