They used to say that Bill Clinton was made of teflon because no bad news stuck to him, but last fall I began to think this was a better descriptor of Donald Trump who seemed to be able to say or do anything without it negatively affecting his polling numbers. What was hidden in those polling numbers, however, was just how differently Republicans (and particularly Republican men) view the universe. So, while 56% of Republicans have a positive view of The Donald, they’re completely alone in that assessment.
[Trump’s] 87 percent unfavorable rating among self-identified Democrats is not very worrisome for his candidacy, as Republican presidential nominees rarely win much support among Democratic voters in general elections.
Yet Trump also continues to receive strongly negative ratings among several key voting blocs that are at least partly up for grabs this year. Two-thirds of political independents have an unfavorable view of Trump, as do 74 percent of Americans under age 40; 75 percent of women, and 81 percent of Hispanics. Majorities in each group see Trump in a “strongly unfavorable” light, exceeding intense negative ratings of Cruz or Kasich by at least 20 points.
These are not survivable numbers, and Trump isn’t even coming close to doing well enough with the “poorly educated” whites he said he loved for giving him his victory in the Nevada caucuses.
Should those ratings fail to improve, Trump’s potential path to victory rides on a surge in support and turnout among whites, particularly those without college degrees. Yet Trump’s image among both groups is underwater. Whites see him negatively by a 59 to 39 percent margin, while non-college whites tilt negative by a narrower 52 to 45 percent.
Even Republican women are down on Trump, with only 47% of the them giving him a positive review. Trump’s success is driven entirely by his 64% popularity with white Republican men.
If you take the electorate and subtract every laid off mechanic and guy over 40 who obsessively fantasizes about being a successful golf pro, Trump’s support approaches zero.
So, perhaps the most shocking discovery of this campaign season is that the GOP has been so denuded of ordinary people that the aggressive a**hole vote is now a big enough plurality of the party to decide their nomination. This becomes doubly clear when you realize that the main alternative to Trump is Ted Cruz, who almost defines the aforementioned term of non-endearment.
I think this really is the surprise of the moment, because we all knew who Trump was going into this. After all, Birtherism is synonymous with being aggressively wrong and proudly rude and stupid. What we didn’t know (most of us, anyway) is that the GOP had devolved to the point where these were considered positive attributes and desirable credentials in someone who seeks the nuclear codes.
It’s looking increasingly possible that Trump will be denied the nomination despite winning the most votes, the most states, and the most delegates. And that this is possible is undoubtedly a good thing, and to the credit of the RNC’s rules makers. But what we now understand is the nature of the beast the Republicans created with their no-holds-barred opposition to President Obama. And the delegates in Cleveland will have to wrestle with this beast even if they are successful in preventing the rest of us from having to do so in the general election.
The underlying points are sound, of course, but I wonder if you’re not making a little bit of a mistake by eliding opinion-poll results with actual votes and support.
I’m not saying there won’t be dismal results, from a voting standpoint, if Trump ends up heading the ticket. I’m saying, a lot of these people — the women; the smarter Republicans — might be saying, yeah, I don’t like him, and I’ve got no problem saying that to a pollster or anyone else, but I’m still supporting him because we need to get the godless socialist tax-and-spend entitlement-society religious-persecution liberal Democrats out of Washington.
I mean, that’s clearly their ethos this time around. There isn’t anybody on their own team that they like. They haven’t really “liked” anyone of their candidates since Reagan, have they? (GWB, maybe, in some weird, twisted way, especially after 9/11, but it involved a lot of squinting and pretending not to see clearly.)
Let’s just do a thought experiment.
They’re saying that they haven’t seen numbers this bad since Mondale, so let’s use him as an example.
Pollsters asked people if they liked Mondale, and they said that they didn’t, and this included a surprising number of Democrats. Some didn’t like him because he wasn’t left-wing enough for them. Others thought he was too tied to the failed Carter administration. Others thought he was far too liberal.
The point is, it was understandable that a lot of Democrats would complain about him in the spring of 1984, especially those who had supported Gary Hart or Jesse Jackson. But it was reasonable to expect that most of thee voters would look at what Reagan had been doing and what he intended to do in a second term, and they’d say, “Hell, no, I am for anyone who will stop Reagan.”
It didn’t happen that way because the country was undergoing a realignment with a lot of conservative Democrats finally saying “enough is enough” and we’re not sticking with FDR’s party anymore.
Now, there are all kinds of reasons that happened back in the early 1980’s, and the specifics don’t necessarily matter right now.
The key is that voters can and do shift their allegiances when they are sufficiently provoked.
This can be temporary if the main objection is specific to a candidate rather than an ideology. So, Trump could lose a bunch of normally reliable Republicans for no other reason than people don’t trust him with the responsibility of the presidency. Others will reject him for not being ideological enough, and they’ll sit out the election or skip the top of the ticket.
One scenario indicates a permanent shift, and the other a more temporary one. For example, 1964 was a temporary bump and 1968 was nearly as close as 1960 had been. Whereas, 1972 was a leading indicator of what would happen in 1980, 1984, and 1988. It was a persistent shift.
It’s looking like 2016 is going to be one or the other of these two scenarios, but in the short term, a 1964 election looks as good or better than a 1972 or 1980 election.
Sure, I can see your point, but the Republicans’ long-term project of systematically stripping away their constituents’ reasoning ability was a lot younger then.
I mean, we’re seeing something truly astounding in these Trump supporters. Even the most stalwart conservative commentators are badly rattled. I would get more depressed about it but I’m having too much fun enjoying the “just deserts” aspect of it all.
How many people actually formulate their support/opposition based on ‘responsibility of the presidency?’
Honest question, not rhetorical.
All of them?
I mean, setting aside the more egregious “protest votes” over the years (McCloskey, etc.) I don’t think even the stupidest or least-well-informed voters have any problem grasping that they are, in fact, selecting a President.
(Even though many people — including Trump himself! — don’t quite have their heads around the concepts of what the President actually does.)
Yes, you are, in fact, selecting a president. And they do take that seriously. Yet I am sure a lot of these people haven’t got brain one on waht it actually takes to be a good president (leaving out ideological questions). I mean the responsibilities, the challenges, the political pressures, etc. I can see that even in some ocomments by young whippersnappers here, and this is a fairly literate bunch.
For a long time already, it it’s no secret that (male) voters have been encouraged to think the main criterion should be whether you’d like to have a beer with him. Or maybe whether he has “good hair.” An idea that’s been around since 1945 is, if a foreign country is a problem, you just nuke ’em. A lot of other folks are one-issue voters, and that’s not just on the right end of the spectrum.
Meetings. Meeting after meeting after meeting. Then a decision that resets thousands (millions?) of lives. Then more meetings.
Every minute of every day is scripted. EVERYONE has a agenda. Three quarters of the people you meet want to isolate you from the ‘real’ world. Look at your hand, subtract your index finger and thumb, and that is how many people , besides family, that you can trust.
Oh ya, Trump could do that.
.
So basically, as usual, people talk about this shit without doing ANY research.
The thing to really focus on at this point is how uniquely awful the numbers of Cruz, Trump and Cruz are. They are just terrible. McGovern’s were better in September of 1972. Mondale’s were significantly better.
The lesson to learn is the opposite of the one suggested. Mondale and McGovern got killed even though there were far from as disliked as Clinton is.
The losses in ’72 and ’84 happened despite the Democratic Candidate – not because of them.
Because there was a very real alignment going on.
As Pew has shown, the dominant trend now is DE-ALIGNMENT. People are trending away from both parties. The people that represent those parties are historically unpopular in a way we have never really seen before.
So once you realize this, you can start to ask why.
Is it:
*A function of social media driving polarization
*A function of the anger that social media has unleashed
OR is it because both the establishment ideology in both parties has become less appealing.
I think the last explanation is the correct one. The conventional explanations offered to explain reality are failing.
For the record, Mondale had a LOWER unfavorability rating among Democrats than Hillary Clinton does now. His favorable numbers among all voters were better than Hillary’s at this point, and not too different from Obama’s.
In point of fact this sentence is demonstrably wrong.
“Pollsters asked people if they liked Mondale, and they said that they didn’t, and this included a surprising number of Democrats.”
See the numbers below. Mondale’s net was lower, but his favorable numbers among Democrats are about average for a candidate for nomination.
When I saw the Cruz, Trump and Clinton favorable numbers I went back to see if anyone was this bad.
Mondale, CBS, 9/28/03, 43/31
1/14: 42/28
2/20: 40/31 (Iowa was on 2/18)
3/5: 30/40 (Hart won NH on 2/27)
3/21: Dems only (51/23)
Versus PPP (3/24-26)
Clinton 63/27, Sanders 64/21
So at about the same point in the process, Mondale’s net favorability among Democrats was +28, and Clinton’s was +36.
4/23 40/36 (among all voters)
Compare this to Obama on 6/3/08 (41/31)
And Clinton (pollster has her at 39-54)
At this point Mondale had a significant edge over hart.
Amazingly, his +4 rating is something Hillary Clinton could only dream about. It is not significantly different than Obama’s.
As I have said her before for months, I think this is a good deal like ’64, were one party just went crazy. In 2 years the GOP did well in the
Hello, Jordan! (I’m confident it’s you from the use of “ethos”.)
Given Trump’s demonstrated incompetence in the mechanics of delegate selection, his ability to attract votes as a nominee may be a moot point. But I would never underestimate the power of the Republican brand to draw at least 40% of the popular vote – even to a specimen like Donald. Especially running against a Democratic opponent as comprehensively demonized as Hillary Clinton. (Who, let us not forget, is not exactly beloved of her countrymen either.)
Eric! Oh my GOD!
What an incredible, unexpected pleasure.
(You make a good point, above, but I can’t even concentrate because I’m so stunned that it’s you. Let’s catch up! Email me! Go to my website if you don’t have the address any more…it’s got my name.)
“eliding opinion-poll results with actual votes and support.”
I think you mean conflate, in which case I’m bound to agree.
Polling data is so noisy that candidate preference is really the only thing that is ultimately informative. And even then, only very late in the game.
That said, Trump’s negative aspects are loud and obvious. You don’t need a poll to tell you that.
No, I really did mean “elide.”
See my remarks below about Trump’s “negative” aspects. We have to get our heads around the fact that his supporters like those aspects — they’re strengths, not weaknesses, in their eyes.
The worrying thing is that Trump is managing to do so well despite his many, many disadvantages.
This indicates to me that a more polished fascist could replicate Trump’s platform of racial revanchism and right-wing economic populism while managing to avoid the needless drama and outright idiocy that plagued Trump and Cruz. Another thing is that we won’t know who this person might be, because Trump and to a lesser extent Cruz showed that it’s quite possible to completely avoid the party apparatus to get a plurality.
That could be bad news for this country come 2020. Favorable demographics won’t save a Democrat, especially one that can’t get legislation passed, is saddled with a flailing and ineffective DNC, is viewed as untrustworthy, and has problems controller their warhawk tendencies.
Your concern is one I share as well, but counterpoint: is it inherent that to achieve this level of support within the party that you must resort to these types of tactics that will make you unpopular with a general population? I wouldn’t go as far to say that it’s inherent, but it’s certainly linked.
I think the thing to worry about is depressed turnout. Ok, Trump loses 75% of the Latino vote. The question remains: 75% of how many people?
Depends on what you mean by ‘unpopular’. Racial revanchism is very unpopular, but hasn’t quite run its course yet. And, of course, it’s pretty undeniable that Trump only shot up to the top of the pack when he ran his ‘Mexicans are rapists’ comments and, at worst, had a couple of scares from Carson since then.
A lot of the other stuff that Trump has piled on in addition to that, such as his whacked-out foreign policy, sexism, vulgarity, narcissism, etc., didn’t really seem to help him and often does hurt him. On the other hand, a lot of the stuff that Trump has piled on since them seems to have helped him or at least hasn’t hurt him such as his secularism, bullying, vague and hypocritical economic populism, and his anti-intervention stance.
I can easily see some proto-fascist going ‘okay, next cycle, racial minorities get it extra hard while we completely lay off women, gays, and white religious beliefs. Brush up on foreign policy trivia — the media loves that shit — throw in some Ron Paul libertarianism mixed with some old-people focused economic populism, and voila. A fascist platform that isn’t saddled with Trump’s baggage.’
I think the bullying as you call it is a necessary aspect. It can be more tasteful than Trump, but you have got to show your alpha male bonafides to be charismatic enough to make it work.
Romney lost 73% of the Latino vote in 2012. That was one of the biggest holes in his viability.
A POTUS candidate can’t run an explicity white supremacist campaign and win in 2016, and in 2020 and beyond it’ll be difficult to run even an implicitly racist campaign and win.
I’m not denying that. You’re not addressing the point: 73%…OF WHAT? Clinton (assuming she’s the nominee) will win 93%+ of the AA vote. 93%+ of HOW MANY people?
I don’t think Trump is a strong candidate — even against a weak candidate such as Clinton. But this was addressing Deathtongue’s argument that a more polished fascist could win. I offered a counterpoint with that because in order to get such a fascist following you cannot be “polished” enough to win over the white nationalists in the GOP — not enough to wrest control from Reince. It’s a Catch-22 of Newton’s Laws of Motion: one reaction equals another reaction. Where is that line to be straddled. I think it’s extremely difficult, but if you can do it to the point that 73% of a low turnout election isn’t enough to off-set a 61% white vote that it is possible.
Presidential elections aren’t low turnout elections.
The scenario you paint does describe one of the root problems we’re having in too many non-POTUS elections, though.
A “more polished fascist” might not have Trump’s advantages.
What needs to be emphasized over and over is how precisely the elements that we find so repulsive are the ones his followers like the most. They like the bad suits and ties; the gold plating; the casinos, the stupid ads; the slutty women; the crude remarks; the refusal to consider the details or nuances of anything.
It’s difficult for any of us more reasonable people to understand — we naturally assume that his supporters are saying, Well, yeah, he’s this ridiculous figure, but he’s making the correct arguments. We have to remind ourselves that they legitimately like him — the same awful cultural impulses that (for example) send him to a tanning bed and a hair-dye salon rather than a gym or that compel him to put his name on everything in big gold letters or brag endlessly about his wealth are ones that all those people respect and identify with.
I don’t buy that. Trump had all those things in 2012 yet failed to take off. When Trump added racial revanchism (well, a heaping helping this time) and hypocritical economic populism to the mix, that’s when he became a megaton force.
I think it’s just Occam’s Razor that what made Trump Trump was not the useless and obvious cultural flotsam. Especially since his path was partially blazed before by George Wallace and Pat Buchanan (i.e. Middle American Radicals) who didn’t have any of that glitzy crap.
Agreed — I’m simply saying, the imaginary “reasonable” conservative we think about would think, “Trump is great because of his unapologetic racial views…but, on the other hand, his awful persona is a detriment.” But the actual rank-and-file republican voters might very well be thinking, instead, “Trump is great because of his unapologetic racial views…and, as an added bonus, he’s so refreshingly charming and funny and stylish! My kind of guy!”
You’re on firmer ground with an epoxy-like explanation, but I still don’t find it all that convincing, because there were other candidates who were nowhere near as cartoonish (including Goldwater) who both ran on explicit racial revanchism and managed to give the dominant political consensus a bloody lip. See: Thurmond, Goldwater, Wallace, and Buchanan.
There’s just more evidence for the fact that a candidate can make it big with downscale whites simply on a herrenvolk uber alles platform than evidence that you need to combine it with Trump-like buffoonery for it to get anywhere.
Trump didn’t run for President in 2012.
Trump didn’t appear on the primary ballots, but he definitely was more than a blip on polling. He was exhibit ‘A’ in the whacko-bird polling, with Bachmann as exhibit ‘B’, Cain as exhibit ‘C’, etc.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2011/04/15/poll-donald-trump-leads-2012-gop-field
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/poll-donald-trump-catapults-place-2012-gop-field/story?id=13318814
Yes he did, but in his normal manner of doing it HIS way;
He said he did, “unofficially”, but decided he couldn’t beat Obama, and couldn’t stand the thought he’d lose to Obama so he chickened out.
PS: he also ran for a short while in 2000;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign,_2000
Herr trumpster has been at it since 1988 when he mulled running as a repug.
Trump said he ran unofficially for president in 2012. It’s true.
Trump says lots of things.
Damn, cannot even accept the truth when pointed out to you?
Trump said he was running unofficially, and you claim he wasn’t,
who to believe as to what his intentions were?
who to believe.
Regrets that it didn’t come through; sarcasm doesn’t read through in print sometimes. Yes, I recognize the fact you brought here, that Trump said back in 2012 that he had run “unofficially” for the GOP POTUS nomination.
But! Running “unofficially” for President is not a thing; that was one of my points. Trump is an absurd person who blows crap out of his gob; that was my other point.
I don’t know that either Trump’s or Cruz’s net favorables matter that much. That single variable is often predictive of general election results for a Presidential nominee, but the larger question concerns down-ticket races. Thus, many other variables are required to game-out the possible three scenarios: Trump, Cruz, or X as the nominee.
For example, what would Trumpistas and Cruzins do if their guy isn’t the nominee? And does that change based on who is the DEM nominee? Which of the three is the lowest risk option against HRC? Doesn’t matter if that person loses as long as he preserves the down-ticket GOP Congressional candidates as well as Romney did.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I think it’s even more gnarly than that … if you’re a party elite who despises Trump and hates Cruz and thinks the party has gone a Wall too far, you might want Cruz to get the nomination if you believe he will lose soundly so that Cruz doesn’t come back in 2020 … as he likely will if Trump gets the nomination this year.
Gnarly is right. The various agendas combined with the various plausible electoral scenarios are yuuge. Good enough data doesn’t even exist to game out some of those scenarios.