Has Trump gained new supporters since 2016?
January 17, 2020 7:19 PM   Subscribe

And if so, who are they?

Thinking about the upcoming election, it seems to me that whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being, they're likely to win more votes than Clinton did in 2016, because (a) they won't have Clinton's high unfavorable numbers and (b) the Dem base will be more fired up. (If I'm wrong about this, I'd be interested to hear why, but that's not the focus of this question.) If this is right, given the very narrow margin by which he won in 2016, Trump would probably also need to up his vote total in order to have a chance of winning -- i.e. he'd need a substantial number of new supporters who did not vote for him in 2016.

Two questions:

1. Is there data to indicate about how many such new supporters Trump might have -- people who didn't vote for him last time, but are considering doing so now?

2. If such voters exist in significant numbers, who are they demographically? I'm finding it a bit hard to imagine the profile of someone who wasn't pro-Trump enough to vote for him in 2016, but would do so now.
posted by zeri to Law & Government (20 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
As much as approval ratings translate into votes, it does not look like there has been a net gain or loss since the election.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:59 PM on January 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


As far as who new voters would be, I think it’s important to remember that Trump won the white women’s vote. Four years of white identity politics later I think it’s safe to say he will have rallied more people to the cause.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:11 PM on January 17, 2020 [1 favorite]


Chris Hayes wrote this in 2004, on Undecided Voters: https://chrishayes.org/articles/decision-makers/

It comes up again because human psychology remains utterly opaque. https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1217864280126775297?s=21

“Hard to overstate how unpredictable talking to voters can be: Melissa from Algona, Iowa, caucused for Bernie in 2016, then voted for a Trump; she supports Medicare for All but supports Buttigieg, but will likely vote for Trump again if Buttigieg doesn’t win the Dem nomination.”
posted by Guy Smiley at 8:23 PM on January 17, 2020 [4 favorites]


Longitudinal data:

"Using data from past waves of the VOTER Survey, it is clear that the overwhelming majority (85 percent) of Americans have consistently held the same view about President Trump over the last two years. Since the 2016 presidential election, almost half (48 percent) of Americans have had a consistently “unfavorable” view of President Trump. By contrast, just over one-third (36 percent) have had a consistently “favorable” opinion of the president. Only 15 percent of Americans have changed their view at some point — having some combination of “favorable” views or “unfavorable” views, or saying they “didn’t know” over this time period."
posted by eponym at 8:35 PM on January 17, 2020 [6 favorites]


Voter and election predictions are meaningless this long before a Presidential election. However, there are some patterns that usually hold true.

- Since the end of WW2 incumbents usually win re-election. The only ones who ran for re-election and lost were Ford, Carter, George H W Bush.

- A growing economy and low unemployment are a big advantage for an incumbent. Ford and Carter suffered because of a recession in the early '70s that morphed into a state so unusual that economists had to create a new name to describe it: Stagflation. Under Trump, unemployment has hit historic lows, especially in voter segments that usually vote Democrat.

- From Reagan onward, Republicans have received about 9% of the black vote. Conventional wisdom is a Republican receiving 20% of their vote would win in an landslide. The anti-Trump media doesn't report when his approval numbers among blacks are high enough that the DNC should be deeply concerned.

Newsday opinion piece citing several polls
Rasmussen poll
posted by Homer42 at 10:01 PM on January 17, 2020 [2 favorites]


Polls almost always include a breakdown of their results by demographics. Here are Trump's approval numbers from black respondents to YouGov's latest poll (page 2 of the pdf):
strongly approve: 5%
somewhat approve: 4%
somewhat disapprove: 9%
strongly disapprove: 74%
not sure: 8%
The "anti-Trump media" isn't hiding these results from you. The demographic details are readily available if you want to look. It's a matter of clicking the link to the original poll in news articles reporting on the results of the poll.

YouGov's results are consistent with the results other pollsters have been getting. There's nothing in their data to suggest that there's been a surge in Trump support by black voters.
posted by nangar at 12:32 AM on January 18, 2020 [14 favorites]


Enthusiasm and turnout play a huge role. If one party gains 5% in turnout and then other loses 5%, there goes the whole ballgame. So you might not gain or lose voters per se, but you gain or lose enthusiasm among those voters.

As above posters have pointed out, savvy politicians aim to stem their losses even with demographic groups or geographical areas where they know they are going to lose.

Just for example, here in Missouri statewide elections have traditionally been quite closely matched between the two parties. Statewide candidates tend to pander a bit to the opposite demographic, and the one who does this best often wins.

Just for example, a Democratic US Senate candidate will spend a bunch of time doing outreach to rural communities and counties. They'll take positions that appeal to those communities. They'll take up specific issues they know will appeal to those voters (while not causing a revolt among their base voters, even if those issues are not necessarily the base's top priority). They know they'll never WIN those parts of the state but if they can lose at 45/55 instead of 35/65, there is the whole election.

Republicans do the opposite--play to the bigger cities. Again, they're aiming to lose by "only" 45/55 instead of worse. Even if they lost the last election 10/90, maybe they can lose by only 15/85 next time. That 5% represents a lot of votes.

Part of the dynamic here is that Republicans, for example, feel they're never going to lose their core base vote as long as they toe the line on major issues like abortion, gun control, etc. So that gives them some freedom to work their way around on minor and "special interest" issues to try to appeal to voters in major population centers.

The traditional way to do this was to "bring home the bacon" in terms of major federal funding for projects of importance to the urban areas. With the earmarks crackdown, they have to come up with other ways to do the same thing.

Democrats would do the opposite--bring home the bacon or work for special-interest/minor type projects they know will appeal to rural and overwhelmingly Republican areas of the state.

One outcome of this dynamic is that those "swing" voters (usual Republican voters who will sometimes vote Dem, or usual Dems who will sometimes vote Republican) carry a disproportionate weight in the political system.

Similarly with "sometime" voters--those who will come out to vote only if something really pushes their buttons enough. You could make the case that Trump won on exactly those voters.

Source: Have been working with these people and observing this for the past 20 years.
posted by flug at 12:39 AM on January 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


Anecdotally, I know a lot of people who didn't vote in 2016 as a deluded protest. (I think Dante would put them in the Vestibule of Hell.) Many of them say they are planning to vote in 2020. They are overwhelmingly conservative, or are vocally frustrated by what they see as Democratic in-fighting, so I strongly suspect they will vote for Trump, whose team has managed to twist the narrative on impeachment to cast him as the underdog.

There's also those who will jump ship if their personal Chosen One doesn't get the DNC nomination, and there's been four more years of voter suppression in traditionally Democratic areas, so I wouldn't assume that the Democratic candidate is a shoo-in unless Trump ups his game.
posted by basalganglia at 5:41 AM on January 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


given the very narrow margin by which he won in 2016, Trump would probably also need to up his vote total in order to have a chance of winning -- i.e. he'd need a substantial number of new supporters who did not vote for him in 2016.

This has been discussed a bunch on Metafilter and elsewhere, but one important thing to note is that thanks to the Electoral College Trump does not necessarily need to "up his vote total" so much as he needs to win in a relative handful of states, and these wins can be by a tiny number of voters. This is how he won in 2016, and here's a Guardian piece on how he could do the same in 2020.

IOW, your postulate sort of seems to be "how is he going to win if he doesn't get LOTS more people to vote for him?", and the reality is that he just needs a few more people to vote for him than for the Democratic candidate in a few places. He could conceivably win with fewer total votes than last time.

1. Is there data to indicate about how many such new supporters Trump might have -- people who didn't vote for him last time, but are considering doing so now?

2. If such voters exist in significant numbers, who are they demographically? I'm finding it a bit hard to imagine the profile of someone who wasn't pro-Trump enough to vote for him in 2016, but would do so now.


So, here's the 538 Trump approval ratings project, which collates approval polls over the course of his presidency, and as you can see and others have mentioned, his ratings have stayed relatively steady since virtually the beginning. (Scroll down that page for similar data for previous Presidents - Trump's is virtually straight lines in comparison.)

Which means, I think, that any sort of fine-grained detailed info about possible new Trump voters and their demographics are not really going to be caught by most publicly available polls - there clearly aren't enough of them (if they exist) to move the meter enough to register. There's no real significant bump in Trump approval that might signal new voters, so there's no way to track or analyze them.

If there is any data to suggest new Trump voters, it's being collected on the local/regional/state level by campaign organizations to try to figure out where and how to concentrate their efforts, and is undoubtedly a closely guarded secret.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:51 AM on January 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


Trump's approval numbers have been pretty flat, which doesn't suggest there are new groups of Trump supporters emerging. Presidential approval numbers are usually based on polls of adults or registered voters, so these polls can be expected catch changes in support by infrequent voters that polls of 'likely voters' might miss. They aren't seeing anything.

As others have said, the outcome of the election is probably going to depend mostly on turnout. Democrats turned out in big numbers in 2018, and Virginia's odd-year local and state legislature elections in 2017 and 2019. Republican turnout was also up in those elections, just not as much as Democratic turnout. Will that continue? After three years in row of this, I think we may have reached a new normal of high Democratic turnout – and higher turnout in general. But predicting what other people are going to do in the future obviously involves a lot of uncertainty.
posted by nangar at 8:28 AM on January 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


1.

Such data as exists, as already mentioned, suggests that Trump has accumulated very few new supporters during his term. Individuals may have changed their opinions, but on net his level of support has been remarkably static.

2.

The isn't quite the same thing as a "new" supporter, but, anecdotally, I believe there are a number of mainstream Republicans who were once weak Trump supporters that have become strong Trump supporters. However, I'm not sure this would turn up in any numbers; most of these people did vote for him 2016, just with heavy reservations (and those who did not probably either sat it out or voted for Johnson).
posted by breakin' the law at 9:45 AM on January 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


Admittedly, they have a side hustle asking people to rate celebrities and fast-casual restaurants and whatnot, but yougov is also a pretty good pollster (CBS News partners with them for some of their polls).

538 gives yougov a B-, which is higher than they rate e.g. Ipsos and Pew.
posted by box at 11:05 AM on January 18, 2020 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: Maybe I should have set up the question more clearly. As far as I can see the possibilities are these:

1. My assumption that the total D vote will be significantly higher than in 2016 is wrong. Are there reasons to think this?

2. The D vote will be significantly higher and the R vote will not. In this case, Trump might still win because of the EC, but it'll take a very specific distribution of votes across states.

3. The D vote will be significantly higher, but the R vote will be too. This is the part I can't figure out if there's actual data for. There must be polls addressing the question "Do you, person who didn't vote for Trump in 2016, intend to vote for him in 2020?", but I'm not sure how to find them.
posted by zeri at 12:29 PM on January 18, 2020


Best answer: Clinton's unfavorable ratings were only bad after she started running. I wouldn't be surprised if we see something similar once we have a Democratic front-runner. Especially since Republican-style attacks will start to be more prevalent as we get closer to the election.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 12:34 PM on January 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


Things are weird enough that it might not be so in 2020 -- but in all historical Presidential elections there are people who vote for the incumbent party when things are economically good. That means a vote for Clinton in 2016, and Trump in 2020 (if things continue as they have recently been).

Polls do indicate Trump has measurably more African American support than he had in 2016, although 20% nationally seems very unlikely. However, if that incremental African American support is Detroit, Milwaukee, or Philadelphia, it could make a real difference.

Unless he or she were to swing hard right for the general, Sanders or Warren being the nominee will result in plenty of people who voted for Clinton voting for Trump ... but might also increase turnout among people who saw Clinton as another corporate candidate, so it could end up a wash or even a net positive. (I think there's a good chance Bloomberg runs as an independent if Sanders or Warren is nominated, which throws all that math right out.)
posted by MattD at 1:00 PM on January 18, 2020 [3 favorites]


Anecdotally, I know a lot of people who didn't vote in 2016 as a deluded protest. Many of them say they are planning to vote in 2020. They are overwhelmingly conservative

I'm guessing this is geographical? Because I could make the same statement about Californians I know, but these voters are overwhelmingly Democrats and Greens.
posted by Rash at 8:27 AM on January 19, 2020


It is not at all clear that Trump has seen an increase in black support.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:26 PM on January 19, 2020 [1 favorite]


Best answer: My assumption that the total D vote will be significantly higher than in 2016 is wrong. Are there reasons to think this?

Not necessarily, although the most data-driven evidence that you may be right is sort of indirect - it's extrapolating from the 2018 midterm results (and not, AFAICT, from direct polling evidence that lots more Dems are planning on voting.)

The 2018 midterms had record-setting voter turnout for midterm elections, and not only did the Democrats win many races, the data suggests that the boost in turnout was higher for Dem-leaning demographics - various under-65 age groups, women, college-educated, metropolitan, Hispanics, non-Hispanic blacks, etc. census.gov analysis

And so, given that turnout for general elections averages about 18% higher than turnout for the previous midterms, if there is a similar proportionate response in the 2020 election, then yes, the D vote will be noticably higher than 2016. Brookings Institute: What does high voter turnout tell us about the 2020 elections?

We've still got a ways to go, though - things could change, maybe especially once a particular candidate wins the Democratic nomination.

There must be polls addressing the question "Do you, person who didn't vote for Trump in 2016, intend to vote for him in 2020?", but I'm not sure how to find them.

Mmmmmm. While I don't doubt this question is being asked in some polls, I don't think results are being produced at that level of granularity - at least not outside of campaign organizations. Polls are expensive to run and analyze, and this far out from the election pollsters are more interested in general trends and if they're getting specific they seem to be concentrating on polls about Trump administration policies and practices (on, say, immigration, or appointing judges, or foreign policy, things like that.)

And, again, I suspect these detailed results aren't being produced (or maybe even investigated that deeply) because the general results don't show any significant bump in Trump approval. If there was a noticeable larger trend in growing Trump approval, then that would suggest that there are a significant number of "new" Trump voters, and people would be investigating this. But there isn't said trend, so nobody is going to spend time and money looking for "new" Trump voters that don't seem to exist. (Or if they exist, they are essentially being balanced out by new "Anti-Trump" voters, so the end result is pretty much flat.)

The DailyKos page Conrad Cornelius linked to contains a link to this Civiqs poll aggregate, where not only can you see that his approval/disapproval ratings are relatively flat, you can see that the "unsure" percentages have never been higher than 11% , dropped to 4% in April of 2017, and have steadily been drifting downwards since then to their current 2%. IOW, it really seems that most people have had their minds pretty much made up for quite a while now - Trump hasn't even gotten enough potential new voters to move the "unsure" line.

And you can scroll down and look at the results organized by Party, and see that 90-something % of Republicans approve, and 90-something % of Democrats disapprove, and these results have remained consistent across many polls for quite a while now. You can sort results along various factors, too, and even among Independents he's never hit above about 43% favorable or 15% "unsure", even including before he won the Republican nomination.

The TL:DR is, "If such voters exist in significant numbers, who are they demographically?" Strong evidence points to such voters not existing in significant numbers, so little or no research has been done to figure out their demographic. (Again, besides, possibly, various campaign organizations who are trying to figure out if they might be in trouble in the Pittsburgh susburbs or whatever, and what they can maybe do about it.)
posted by soundguy99 at 6:49 AM on January 20, 2020 [1 favorite]


> YouGov's results are consistent with the results other pollsters have been getting. There's nothing in their data to suggest that there's been a surge in Trump support by black voters.

Results most other pollsters are getting. Most over-sample democrats. We all saw how that affected poll accuracy in 2016.

YouGov is a marketing research service firm. Political polling is different. YouGov predicted electoral vote winners for 10 battleground states in 2016. They were wrong on 5. They predicted Hillary for 4 of those, 1 was too close to call. Trump won all five, totaling 74 electoral votes. He won the election by 77 electoral votes.
posted by Homer42 at 12:47 PM on January 20, 2020


There won't be useful polling until there's a Democratic candidate. Then the attacks will start (sorry for unpleasant language below):

1) Warren is a woman; the attacks against her will include all the standard sexism, plus attacks against every political action she's ever taken. Also, she will be declared to be too old.

2) Sanders will be declared an "atheist Jew," which will have traction in evangelical communities. There'll also be critiques of both his plans and his political history. Also, he is old.

3) Biden will be critiqued as being behind every one of Obama's unpopular actions and choices, and will simultaneously be portrayed as a powerless stooge with no plans of his own, just a continuation of Obama's failures. Also, he is old.

(Yes, Trump is old. If his supporters decide not to just ignore that fact, they will point out that Trump has a younger spouse and a teenage child. His supporters will say he is "young at heart.")

4) Buttigieg will be declared a shill of Wall Street, lacking understanding of people of color (plz to ignore the raging hypocrisy there), overly intellectual, part of the rich elitist left. There'll also be shock memes declaring him anti-gay, but of course, those won't be directly trackable to Republican sources. And he will be declared too young and inexperienced for the job. The label "barely legal" may be used.

Trump hasn't notably gained supporters. He probably doesn't have more votes than he did before (he's gained some; he's lost some). He's lost the wedge that won him three to six battleground states: There's no third party candidates for disaffected liberals to vote for. But incumbency is a strong advantage, and the Republicans have been working hard to disenfranchise anyone who's not white and rich.

We need to figure out how to encourage people to vote for whichever candidate gets the nomination, which means preparing in advance for the attacks we know are coming.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:41 AM on January 21, 2020


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