It’s been my understanding for quite some time that hardcore trumpers make up around 1/3 of the potential voting public. The Venn diagram of ‘strongly pro-trump’ and ‘believes Biden was not legitimately elected’ is likely pretty close to completely overlapping circles, so yes, I’d say your numbers are pretty accurate.
I’m more concerned about some of the Biden voters staying home rather than them switching their vote to Trump. The left has a tendency to forget the old saying “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people (men in the original quote) to do nothing.” See 1994, 2000, 2010, and 2016 as examples of this phenomenon. I hope we’ve learned our lesson. Last year’s mid-terms give me some hope, but I’m not convinced.
I think there’s a lot of this. People are using polls to just pick a team. If I’m a Trumper, I’ll answer every question in a manner that is pro trump. I might not honestly think the election was stolen, but what the fuck to I care if I say so. Maybe a liberal will cry.
If they asked me in a poll if I thought Trump wore his wife’s underwear at rallies, I’d say “sure, I believe that with all my heart.” Polls have become just a feedback device.
I’m 100% with you on this.
Yes that is a bit of a worry and would keep me sleepless except for abortion. I think Democrats will have that issue driving turnout until the dreadful Dobbs decision is overturned by a saner court in the future.
That will be true only to the extent that D politicians from the top down are campaigning explicitly on a major talking point delivered at every single rally of:
The Rs packed the court and stole the right of abortion from every woman. Want it back? Always vote, and always vote D. It’ll take us 20 years to age the Reactionary dinosaurs off the SCOTUS as we slowly put in different justices to get it back, so be patient. But keep voting D no matter what.
Substantially no US woman of childbearing age today will ever see abortion safe and legal for her. Selling current high school girls / women on voting D their entire adult life so their daughters can have an abortion starting in 2040-something may be a tough sell. Not that they don’t want it, but that they’re maybe not willing to sacrifice every other consideration in their life to something that far in the future.
Packing the court is a maneuver with a very long half-life.
I doubt very much if you would say that.
If the poll asked it I though Trump tried to interfere with the election, and caused many injuries and some deaths. Well of course. Because that’s what he did.
Of course the true MAGA is blind to that. They have been conned and it’s hard to admit that you have been conned. Conned by an idiot.
All I’m saying in people lie to pollsters. They’re not under oath and there’s no downside. They’re just trying to send a message While some indeed believe Trump won, a whole other group is just saying they believe it to piss off the liberals.
What is more, polling is an art. It is easy to design a question or series of questions to support a desired conclusion. When the poll is reported, it often won’t include the previous questions, or say whether people had to pick from a limited number of alternatives, or whether they larger only polled members of a specific demographic. Even honest polls by reputable companies might miss subtleties.
The most accurate political polls, for example, are said to be ones conducted by taxi drivers. Less pressure to lie or worry about being seen in a positive light. And for the ambivalent, the taxi driver can say “sure, but who would you vote for if I held a gun to your head” or some such, which pollsters might not wish to say.
I’ve done a few political polls on the phone. I’ve tried to tell the truth because I really did want to be helpful, but if I lied, they never would have known and nothing bad would have happened to me. I’m sure lots of people lie. Especially because you’re not talking to a robot, you’re talking to a real person, and so you might be trying to convince that person of something or impress them or not be embarrassed or be angry at them and try to trick them, etc.
I agree that this issue hurts the GOP and should be a talking point at every single rally.
However, it won’t stop Trump from being viable for two reasons.
One is that only 2 - 3 percent of voters consider abortion the most important issue.
The other is that voters don’t really believe Trump is against abortion. And he will probably, after the convention, push for something like a 15 week limit that would allow 95 percent of abortions. I know, I know. It doesn’t make any difference if he is really against abortion – all that matters there are his court picks. And I know that the Democrats have to push hard on that. But it is not going to much matter.
I think the three biggest culture war issues for 2024 are abortion, affirmative action, and trans kids. Biden apparently has too much integrity to take a popular position he doesn’t believe in on any of them. But, aside from the polls, if you want to know why Trump is still viable – Donald takes the popular position on two or the three, and with the third, abortion, he can finesse it.
P.S. I am not saying that any of those three culture war issues are big – just that they are the biggest. They only are only electorally significant because the election will again be close. Biden, no more than Trump, can control the biggest variable, which is where we are in the business cycle a year from now.
Earlier today, a video showed up in my “suggested” feed on YouTube that was posted earlier today, and it was a guy who poses as a satirist but you know he isn’t, and he was presenting “proof” that Barack Obama is a closeted gay man, and Michelle is actually his husband, Michael. Okay, people can say whatever they want in this country regarding things like that, but the comments suggested that hundreds of the people who saw this video actually agree with the premise.
Things like this may explain it, at least in part.
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The channel is called “JP Reacts.”
My brother was exit-polled a while back, and gave all wrong answers on purpose. I realize that these are surprisingly accurate.
Ask many people. Get many answers.
In summary, these answers (see above link, these are not my personal opinions):
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Both Trump supporters and opposers want the same things. A great America.
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Trump supporters like someone who doesn’t follow the rules, seeing these as the problem.
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Trump supporters believe his stories of persecution. Having invested much in these stories, changing horses is difficult.
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Better than others, Trump has turned support into personal identity.
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Elites and media wrongly dismiss Trump supporters and their dislike of identity and progressive politics as fringe.
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Trumpists don’t value education but wish to “rage against the machine”, be contrarian.
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Taxes, entertainment, libertarian freedom, like authoritarian figures.
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Supporters are ridiculed for their beliefs but believe Trump shares them.
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Disdain for way of life and identity.
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Believe Trump more honest than the media.
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Insecurity.
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Makes people feel good about their anger and resentment.
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People want to belong and so identify with something. Having done that, they struggle to view reality objectively.
This brings up a point that I think too many of us have been overlooking since that day in 2020 when we all swooned with relief in the premature assumption that Trump was done forever. The thing is, Trump did not decisively lose in 2020; he just barely lost, thanks to the Electoral College. Or putting it another way, Biden needed 7M more votes than Trump in order to just barely beat him.
Democrats and progressives are fond of saying that the Republicans have lost the popular vote in every presidential election since 2000, but prior to 2016 when the difference in the popular vote was on the order of a rounding error. It wasn’t until 2016 that we saw a candidate lose the popular vote by millions and still win the election.
Trump lost by as many votes in the Electoral College to Biden as Hillary lost to him, and Trump considered that to be a “landslide” victory. Biden ultimately received the majority in the Electoral College with 306 electoral votes, while Trump received 232. Not sure where you’re getting this “narrow loss” from.
I’m curious what the popular position is on trans kids that Biden should take?
I admit, a margin of 74 votes in the Electoral College looks more than comfortable. But the Electoral College vote count can grossly exaggerate (or sometimes flip) the popular vote result. In several key states, Biden won by only a few thousand votes; had those voters gone the other way, Trump would now be in his second term despite still having lost the popular vote by almost seven million. The decisive factor in Biden’s victory wasn’t his seven million vote margin in the popular vote, but the fact that he carried some key states by mere thousands in addition to all the millions of votes he got from the safe blue states.
While it would be practically impossible, a candidate could conceivably win all fifty states, each by a single vote, and thus carry the Electoral College by 538 - 0 but win the popular vote by only fifty individual votes.