I suppose that’s obvious:
For Americans of nearly every race, gender, political persuasion and location, disdain for Donald Trump runs deep, saddling the Republican front-runner with unprecedented unpopularity as he tries to overcome recent campaign setbacks.
Seven in 10 people, including close to half of Republican voters, have an unfavorable view of Trump, according to a new Associated Press-GfK poll.
It’s an opinion shared by majorities of men and women; young and old; conservatives, moderates and liberals; and whites, Hispanics and blacks — a devastatingly broad indictment of the billionaire businessman.
Even in the South, a region where Trump has won GOP primaries decisively, close to 70 percent view him unfavorably. And among whites without a college education, one of Trump’s most loyal voting blocs, 55 percent have a negative opinion. . . .
A survey conducted by Gallup in January found Trump’s unfavorable rating, then at 60 percent in the their polling, was already at a record high level for any major party nominee in their organization’s polling since the 1990’s.
Candi Edie, a registered Republican from Arroyo Grande, California, is among those whose views on Trump have grown more negative.
“At first, I thought he was great. He was bringing out a lot of issues that weren’t ever said, they were taboo,” Edie said. Now the 64-year-old feels Trump’s early comments masked the fact that he’s “such a bigot.”
“I don’t know if he’s lost it or what,” she said. “He’s not acting presidential.”Trump’s unpopularity could provide an opening for Cruz, though he is loathed by many of his Senate colleagues and other party leaders. After a big win Tuesday in Wisconsin, Cruz is angling to overtake Trump at the July GOP convention. . . .
Andrew Glaves, a “hard core” Republican from Bothell, Washington, said he might have to side with Clinton if Trump becomes the nominee, even though she’s out of step with his views on gun rights, his top election issue.
“I’d be willing to take that as opposed to doing so much harm to the country’s reputation,” said Glaves, 29.
More than 60 percent of all registered voters and 31 percent of Republicans said they definitely would not vote for Trump in the general election.
So why keep repeating the obvious? Because lots of articles keep trying to explain why Trump is so popular. They cite trade, even though polls suggest that most Americans view trade as an opportunity, not a threat. They cite de-industrialization, even though Trump’s best state was (high-tech) Massachusetts, and one of his worst was Wisconsin, which is America’s second most industrial state, after Indiana. (This week, I’m proud to call myself a cheesehead.)
So if Trump is really unpopular, maybe there’s no reason to try to explain his popularity. Maybe he’s just another Pat Buchanan, but getting 35% instead of 25%, because he is a TV celebrity.
Nor has he picked up strength as others have dropped out:
(The pink lines are territories. Note to myself: When vacationing in the southern Pacific, stick to the Southern Mariana Islands.) In fairness, Trump’s expected to do very well in New York, and still has a 50% chance of getting the nomination, and a 12.7% chance of winning the White House. That’s more than any other man (although he’s not that far ahead of Sanders.)
Even so, Trump is really, really unpopular. His success in politics can be explained in many ways, but there no evidence that we can learn anything about what policies the voters want by looking at his primary wins.
But what about the minority that do like Trump? Surely we can learn something about their policy views? Here’s Jonah Goldberg:
I often read the Twitter profiles of the Trump supporters who pester me. Sometimes I discover they’re phony “TrumpBots” created by some marketing firm. Sometimes I see that they’re members of the coprophagic phylum of white supremacists using Trump as a blocking tackle for their repugnant cause. But just as often, I see these people describing themselves as “classical liberals” or “constitutionalists” or “Goldwater Republicans,” and my heart weeps. There’s nothing classically liberal about Donald Trump. To the extent he’s a conservative at all, he’s a throwback to a time when a Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon were “conservatives.” Nixon’s politics of resentment led to his impeachment. Hoover’s “best practices” gave us the Depression and Franklin Roosevelt (whose policies made the Depression Great).
Scott Alexander recently produced one of his routinely brilliant posts (not about Trump, BTW), explaining the strange phenomenon of tribalism:
My title for this post is also my preferred summary: the ideology is not the movement. Or, more jargonishly – the rallying flag is not the tribe. People are just trying to find a tribe for themselves and keep it intact. This often involves defending an ideology they might not be tempted to defend for any other reason. This doesn’t make them bad, and it may not even necessarily mean their tribe deserves to go extinct. I’m reluctant to say for sure whether I think it’s okay to maintain a tribe based on a faulty ideology, but I think it’s at least important to understand that these people are in a crappy situation with no good choices, and they deserve some pity.
Read the whole thing—you’ll learn a lot. For instance, I finally understand the Sunni/Shia split.
PS. I did a couple posts at Econlog. Check out my post on the minimum wage; I’d be interested in feedback. I also did a post on Sanders and trade, and Jonah Goldberg makes similar points, much more effectively:
Sanders says that he believes in “fair trade.” What he means is that we can’t be expected to do business with countries that pay their workers a lot less than we pay our workers. He suggested to the New York Daily News this week that we should have free trade only with countries that have the same wages and environmental policies as us, which is another way of saying we shouldn’t trade with poor countries.
In practical terms, Sanders wants to keep billions of (non-white) people poor — very poor. If America were a flea market, his policy would be akin to saying, “Poor people of color cannot sell their wares here, even if customers want to buy them.”
International trade, led by the United States, has resulted in the largest, fastest decrease in extreme poverty in human history. Roughly 700 million Chinese people alone have escaped extreme poverty since 1980, and most of that is attributable to China’s decision to embrace the market economy and international trade. Want to keep Africa as poor as possible? Throw up as many trade barriers as you can.
If China’s embrace of international trade was (in utilitarian terms) one of the best things that’s ever happened in human history, then enacting a Sanders/Trump trade policy might be one of the worst. If you care about the welfare of the world’s poorest people, I implore you not to vote for either individual.
PPS. The always interesting Robin Hanson had this to say:
Today a big chunk of the U.S. electorate feels neglected by a political establishment that they don’t especially respect, and is tempted to favor political bad boy Donald Trump. The main response of our many establishments, especially over the last few weeks, has been to constantly lecture everyone about how bad an idea this would be. Most of this lecturing, however, doesn’t seem to tell Trump supporters anything they don’t think they already know, and little of it acknowledges reasonable complaints regarding establishment neglect and incompetence.
By analogy with these other cases, the obvious conclusion is that all this tone-deaf sanctimonious lecturing will not actually help reduce interest in Trump, and may instead increase it. But surely an awful lot of our establishments must be smart enough to have figured this out. Yet the tsunami of lectures continues. Why?
My tone-deaf sanctimonious lecturing will continue, as I see it as a way of annoying Trump commenters. I could pity them (as Scott Alexander recommends), but I’m doing them a favor by insulting them instead. I pity the Trump supporters who aren’t smart enough to read blogs about monetary policy. More importantly, I see my tone-deaf sanctimonious lecturing as a way of making Trump seem more toxic. The goal is not to turn Trumpiacs away from him, but to stop others from being seduced. So far this seems to have worked, as his popularity has topped out. As long as 70% of Americans hate him, I don’t need to move to Australia.