Yesterday I wrote a piece explaining that Trump’s polling is terrible because he has failed to deliver on his campaign promises. Some people, though, responded with wonder that Trump’s approval remains so high despite the devastation he is wreaking.
This issue comes up a good deal. Trump is obviously monstrous and incompetent, but he retains support. Is he magic? Does he have some special charisma that prevents his bad actions from damaging him?
The answers there are “no” and also “no”. Trump does in fact suffer when he does horrible shit—which is why his numbers have plummeted in the first seven months of his administration. At the beginning of his term, according to poll aggregator G. Elliot Morris, Trump’s approval/disapproval was 50.7/38.7—or +12. The honeymoon period quickly evaporated though; his numbers are now 42.5/54.2, or -11.3. He’s lost about 23 points in just 7 months, a stunning reversal, and solid evidence that Trump’s evil actions and failures cause those who supported him to stop doing so.
But, many point out, he’s still got 42% of the country saying he’s doing a good job. Which seems nuts.
And it is kind of nuts. But it’s not because Trump is magic. It’s because…well, several reasons.
—
If I paywalled things, this would be where the paywall would be. But I hate paywalling articles. So…if you read on, and find my writing valuable, please consider becoming a paid subscriber? It’s $50/year, $5/month.
__
People don’t pay attention
Especially when there’s no election in the offing, the vast majority of voters just don’t pay that much attention to politics. Many voters don’t know that Trump has cut Medicaid; they don’t know he’s cut cancer research; they don’t know he’s raising tariffs and prices; they don’t know he’s kidnapping people off the streets. They don’t know anything.
For those of us who do pay attention to politics, this seems impossible. How can you not know that Trump is raising tariffs or cutting Medicaid! It’s been all over the news!
Again, though, lots of people don’t pay attention to the news. Some time back I explained it by pointing out that lots of people (like me!) don’t know anything about the Super Bowl. They don’t know who’s playing; they don’t know when it takes place; they don’t know who the players are. This despite massive coverage in most media. It doesn’t matter how many people talk about a thing if you just don’t care about that thing.
People who aren’t paying attention to politics are not just a little less knowledgeable than you.They are in many cases sweepingly ignorant of even basic facts. Large numbers of voters don’t know who the vice president is. They can’t name a Supreme Court justice.
If you don’t even know the players, are you likely to have deeply informed opinions about, say, Trump’s indictments, or the war in Gaza, or Hur’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents? Or are you likely to not even know what any of those things are?
Trump’s evil and incompetent actions (letting children die in Texas floods! Encouraging measles epidemics!) can’t harm him if the public doesn’t know about them. And lots of members of the public don’t know about them because they simply aren’t paying attention.
Partisanship
Of course, if nobody was paying any attention at all, you’d expect people to just answer polls by saying, “I don’t know.” Yet, some 42% of people still say they approve of the president, even though many of those people probably don’t really know what he’s doing. What’s up with that?
What’s up with that is partisanship. Most people don’t pay attention to politics—but most people also identify to one extent or the other with a political party, Democrats or Republicans. They don’t know what the president is doing, but they know (vaguely) that he is on their side or that he isn’t. And if they feel like he is their guy, then they will say they approve of what he’s doing, even if they only have the vaguest idea of what that is.
Currently about 28% of people identify as Republicans and some 28% as Democrats. Some 43% identify as independents…though the truth is most of those independents vote like partisans, and just call themselves independents because Americans like to feel like they are above partisanship. Independent leaners are about 81% of independents, which would mean that in the electorate as a whole you’ve got something like 10% independents, 45% GOP, 45% D.
If some 45% of the electorate is Republican, you’d expect a Republican president to hover around 45% approval unless things were really going egregiously wrong. Trump again is under 45%—he’s at around 42.5 in aggregates. That means he’s lost a fair number of Republican voters.
He could still lose more. But as a recent study notes, “partisanship remains the most important driver of vote choice in presidential elections.” That means that most Republicans are going to continue to support the president, and many will continue to support him no matter what he does (especially since, again, many of them aren’t paying attention to what he does.)
A lot of Americans like fascism
Finally, Trump (and the GOP) retain the support of many Americans because many Americans are racist authoritarians who approve of racist authoritarianism and consciously, enthusiastically support white supremacy and the segregation, violence, and genocide which goes along with it.
The evidence for this is basically the entire history of the United States, from slavery, to Jim Crow, to the Reagan backlash to the Civil Rights movement, and on and on to our own sorry state today. One especially resonant data point though is a 2018 study which found that intolerant or racist white people tended to turn against democracy and towards authoritarianism when they felt that Black people or other outgroups were gaining rights or influence.
Trump is an avatar of white backlash, and many of his policies are rooted in American history—for instance, his mass deportation harks back to Eisenhower’s racist attacks on Mexican immigrants. Trump’s appeal isn’t new or surprising; he’s offering a lot of white voters (and not just white voters) traditional American racism and hate, and traditional American racism and hate has long had a powerful constituency.
Trump is not magic
Trump’s 42.5% approval is bad. It should be worse. But his numbers aren’t resilient because he’s a brilliant campaigner or a genius speaker or a uniquely charismatic figure. His numbers are resilient because Americans don’t pay attention to politics; because when they do pay attention they tend to do so through a partisan lens; and finally because a lot of Americans like fascism.
Obviously, “Large numbers of Americans are ignorant and racist” is not a very inspiring explanation for Trump’s (relative) success. I think it’s more encouraging than the alternative, though. You can’t fight magic. But ignorance has its limits—people eventually do notice that their lives are getting worse. And even racism is not all powerful in the face of falling standards of living and the dawning realization that, yes, in fact, Trump hates you too. Trump’s declining poll numbers don’t mean we’ve defeated him. But the fact that they’re not lower doesn’t mean we’ve lost, either.
He would be more unpopular if the press were more willing to call out all the BS he and his people speak by presenting the actual truth.
There’s also that thing that his supporters admire about him, which is the ability to sound as if he’s “not a politician” and “tells it like it is”. What they don’t understand is that so-called plain speaking is really just a constant stream of lies. They like the mob-boss, tough-talking persona. If they could elect Tony Soprano for President, they probably would. They automatically resist smart, educated people because they see it as an indictment about themselves. I’m talking, of course, about the true believers, not the 1% who approve of him simply on the grounds that they can make more money and pay less in taxes with Trump in office, because they won’t ever suffer the consequences of his fascism.