I did not vote for Trump but I’m in the middle of a conservative area in an overall liberal state (Eastern Shore of MD) and this area went for Trump in a big way. Some progressives think the shit show over the past few weeks has made Trump supporters re-think their positions. I’m here to tell you it has not.
Trump supporters are all about controlling Muslim immigration and honestly so are a lot of non-Trump voters. Trump’s actions may get impeded by legal challenges but conservative and conservative leaning voters do not give rat’s ass about Muslim travails. To a lot of Americans the impression is that they are a dangerous and untrustworthy group with a propensity for hiding terrorists.
A lot of the progressive oriented articles I read in Huffpo, Slate and Salon etc have the same kind of shocked “How can this be happening in America? We’re better than this!” tone. But the truth is we’re not better than this. Trump voters want the Trump pitbill to chase all the dangerous Muslims and job stealing illegals out of the yard. The hypocrisy of these Trump voters having been immigrants at some point in the past themselves has no resonance for them.
Even though a lot of progressives have said “Ok I get it” post election they really don’t “get it” and are still in a self made echo chamber. The deplorables won and if you think they are going to become dismayed because Trump is being mean and nasty to helpless people you are smoking powerful herb. They are overjoyed he is doing what the said he would do and progressives are still unbelieving that he is actually doing what he said he would do. Thinking that the mass of conservative leaning Americans are going to start rejecting Trump for his moves on immigration and the wall is a delusional fantasy.
The dragon is in his cave and his supporters are LOVING it.
I’m not sure if progressives are saying that, but some of Trump’s most unpopular policies among progressives are pretty popular even beyond Trump supporters:
Put me in the “I still don’t get it” camp. I’ve read a lot of analysis of the election, and tried to keep an open mind, but none of it makes sense to me. If Americans really want this ignorant bastard to be President, then I’m at a loss. I want my country back.
42% approve of temporary ban for seven Muslim-majority countries
38% approve of order to build border wall
36% approve of indefinitely suspending Syrian refugee program
I suspect that when people are told facts about any of these–like the actual cost of the wall or the nature of current vetting–support drops further.
(And, yes, all new immigrants register with the federal government and are biometrically tracked.)
I’d be surprised as hell if his support eroded appreciably at this point. Despite his poor choices, nothing he had done has had any negative effect on his voters yet. His cabinet picks haven’t set policy, and the wall and Muslim ban don’t affect them.
The voters who put Trump over the top voted for him to change things – for their own benefit. They will stick with him until things something he does effects them for the worse.
It’s not that they’re stupid, but it’s because they aren’t interested in the minutiae of government and policy. They just want things to improve, or at least not get worse. It takes years to notice things like that.
Trump voters for him out of malice, because they wanted someone who would hurt as many people as possible. And Trump looks on track to do that. So, it’s not surprising they still like him. They’d only turn against him if he started acting like a decent human being and capable leader, instead of effectively trying to burn down the world.
Is this the opinion of the population in general or of people who voted? Because the people who actually showed up to vote were, what, 57, 58% of potential voters? which would place the number of people who did vote for him at 27 or 28% of the total eligibility universe. So if those are “whole population” numbers then he still wins.
But yes, his actual supporters are in no way disappointed. In fact that the liberal talking heads are dismayed is proof to them he must be doing something right.
Ahh–polls always show how much we have to fear!!!
Unless, say, the poll* says that 23% of muslims in Britain support Sharia law for England, and 44% support stoning adulterers.
Then we have nothing to fear, right?
My point is that polls in general are not really good indicators of how the political system will function.
What counts is the voting booth.
As the OP says, progressives may be deluding themselves…But we won’t know till election day in 2020 whether Trump voters still support him.
*this poll seems respectable , and not from some right-wing source. It’s a major British newspaper the Guardian, which is generally liberal and very pro-Palestinian.
This, right here, is the root of the problem, in my opinion. What is it going to take for people to understand that polls have ceased to be in any way measurably accurate? The questions, if you’ve ever been polled, are as far as you can get from unbiased and straight forward. And we have clearly entered an age where people are willing to say one thing to the pollster but go with their true feelings once in the voting booth. What more evidence do y’all need exactly?
How anyone, can quote any poll, after these election results, with a straight face is beyond me.
And how can the Left still look to poll numbers for answers to how we got here?
Besides which, he was clearly elected to burn down the house, why would you expect people to be regretful that he’s doing so?
They want the old order swept away, and they are willing to risk this buffoon to get there, I think!
Since the idea of the ‘sharia law’ is not something that, contrary to the religious bigots promotion of their hateful distortion, is a single thing, this is not ‘scary’.
For some Muslims the affirmation of the desire for the sharia law is not more than a Catholic christian making the vague statement that the canon law should be the basis of the legal morality, without any specific objective.
In addition, not different from the orthodox jews, and in the tradition of the region, many likely would like to have some aspect of the religious family code in the marriage and the inheritance to apply or to be used by themselves.
Even in the Middle East and North Africa region, this is actually the only place where the legal code has in fact having a religious aspect (despite the hysterical hateful distortions of the religious bigots), the remainder is almost all based on the Code Civil of Napoleon and its subsequent forms.
and then some maybe want to have the Salafiste approach of imposing Ibn Tammiya or Wahhabite type law. That is the scary things you seem to believe about the Shariah.
So no the mere statement of desiring the sharia law to be applied in some “parts” is not scary if you go beyond a pure bigotry and ignorance and understand the meaning of the sharia law can range from something as banal as a desire like the tradtional catholic or the orthodox jew to have some kind of following of the canon law or the religious law in particular in the places of the family law areas - which is typical in the countries from which many immigrated- to something more.
It may not be ‘progressive’ or desirable, but it is hardly something that any but the most hateful person should be upset about.
that for the british muslims they have attitudes like the native british of only a few decades ago about the gays… what horror that they have not instantly made the very recent (and I support it) change in the western attitudes (and given the two faced way the extreme right in the western countries acts on gays, I think the attacks are instrumentalized and gross hypocrisy on many parts).
The actual quote is
So in fact the actual information undisorted is the 79% condemn this and do not support.
Of course it is left out this:
So yes you have nothing special to fear if you are not searching to be afraid and restart the old western habits.
a total lack of understanding of the statistics and complete lack of understanding of the mathematics of the probability leading to a complete misunderstanding of the polls.
This would not be a fault of the polls, it is a fault of a bad education in the mathematics of probabilities or the ignorance.
It is easy if one has the actual understanding of the polling mathematics and can see easily that the actual results of the polling was in fact very accurate, and within the margins of the error, and if one understands the more conservative probability estimations based on the actual mathematical models - not the pundit non mathematical assertions - were entirely fine.
But it is the case that most people do not understand the mathematics or the statistics and grossly misinterpret the numbers to say things they do not say.
This is not the error of the poll, it is the error of your poor education system and bad journalism that does not give a correct idea about the meaning, and leads to exagerrated ideas and incorrect conclusions.
Condescension notwithstanding, any poll can only be as accurate as the truthfulness of the respondents. And, this past election indicates people are willing to say one thing, to avoid appearing a deplorable before the pollster, but vote their truth once in the voting booth.
Tell me again how better math education is going to correct for that.
The Trump voters in my immediate family, which is my entire immediate family, have gleefully owned up to this. They didn’t vote for Trump because they like him. They voted for Trump because it makes liberals (which they define as anyone to the left of Pat Buchanan) angry. Absolutely no other reason.
Trump won the election because of three voting blocks:
His base made of voters who share his populist anger at trade deals and immigration and who like his personality of not taking shit from liberals, establishment politicians, and the media. His political incorrectness plays into this because these voters feel that the left, the establishment, and the media all use political correctness to belittle their views on immigration and trade.
The conservatives who want, among other things, lower taxes and a conservative judge on the supreme court. They do not like Trump, but will support him in a general election because he is their only chance of getting these policies.
Working class white voters who used to vote for Democrats but switched in this election because of Trump’s views on trade deals and jobs being outsourced. These voters include people who lost their manufacturing jobs because of NAFTA and are still unemployed because they are older than most of the work force and they have no skills or experience in other areas of employment.
If progressives think Trump is losing support from the first two groups, then they are delusional. The first group will continue to support Trump if Trump continues to be Trump. The second group will support him as long as he doesn’t fuck with the things conservatives want like lower taxes and the supreme court (which he isn’t so far). If anything, I’ve seen Trump gain more support from conservatives because so far he has been very conservative with his policies and cabinet choices (they were worried he might be too liberal.)
A lot of progressives need to wake up to the fact that a lot of the country does not think the same way that NYC liberals do. The things that horrify progressives get a “meh” in most of America, and in other parts are strongly supported.
If the election were held today Trump would get better than 95% of the voters who originally voted for him. Clinton would get 95% of the voters who voted for her, plus a lot of votes from people who said there wasn’t a nickels worth of difference between them. I guess it turned out there was.