Jeremy W. Peters
08/17/2020 - 16:38
- Clarín.com
- The New York Times International Weekly
MOORESVILLE, NC - It wasn't the most obvious place for a flag that people often buy to make a big statement. But there it was, poking out of the inside wall of a garage, the white letter "Trump 2020," visible from the street in this suburban Charlotte neighborhood.
From the porch, Tiffany Blythe, a homemaker, said that she and many of the people she knows will vote for President Donald Trump in November, but that many of them were nervous talking about it .
And that hesitancy is why Blythe doesn't trust polls that now predict defeat this fall for Trump and other Republicans in North Carolina and beyond.
"I don't believe it," Blythe said. "There are a lot of silent voters, and more will come out before the election. I think a lot of blue states are turning red, but you don't hear that in the media."
A pro-Trump campaign visits a family in North Carolina. Photo: Travis Dove / The New York Times.
The idea that the country is not getting the real picture about Trump's reelection chances has taken hold among many of his supporters .
For Trump loyalists, it's an engaging story with some validity: The media, which largely did not anticipate Trump's victory in 2016, is underestimating its voters, many of whom are even more reluctant today than they are. It was four years ago to be recognized as a supporter of hers.
Trump makes this argument often. On Saturday night, he told reporters that "we have a silent majority like no one has ever seen ." One of his pollsters, John McLaughlin, has even named this alleged data flaw, predicting that "Trump's hidden voter" will prove the media wrong.
But the idea that there are substantial numbers of Trump voters coming out of hiding on Election Day, large enough to influence the outcome, is not supported by the latest public opinion research .
Neither by an adequate understanding of what happened in the past elections in which the voter polls were wrong, said pollsters who work for Republican and Democratic candidates.
Trump supporters hope a repeat of what happened in 2016, when he was also down in the polls and won. Photo: Anna Moneymaker / The New York Times.
This does not mean that Joe Biden's lead, up to 10 points according to the latest polls, is not going to narrow. Public opinion experts said there is mounting evidence that Americans of all political stripes have become more fearful of sharing their political preferences outside of their circle of trust.
But it would be a huge leap to conclude that the country's tense political dynamic is causing people to lie to pollsters in large enough numbers to explain Trump's poor position.
"There are many people who vote for Trump in settings where it is politically untenable to admit it because he has become so toxic," said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.
"But I'm still not convinced that not telling your member, or your fellow Rotary Clubs, or your neighbors in the country, is the same as not telling a pollster."
The possibility that Americans are hiding their true intentions from pollsters has provided an irresistible sense of intrigue in previous presidential elections , although there are few confirmed examples where it has made a difference.
Political experts liken that speculation to the quadrennial predictions of a negotiated convention, which has not occurred since 1952.
"The idea that people lie is an interesting theory, and it's not completely outlandish," said David Winston, a pollster who works with Republicans in Congress. "But obviously it is something very difficult to prove, why, what do you do? Ask them if they are lying?"
Winston said many proponents of Trump's hidden voter theory rely on what's known as the Bradley effect , named for Tom Bradley, the former Los Angeles mayor who lost the California gubernatorial race in 1982, to even though the polls gave him a consistent lead over his white opponent.
Among political scientists, the theory that emerged to explain the gap between polls and election results was that white voters were concerned about appearing racist if they didn't say they supported Bradley, who was black.
However, some have questioned the validity of the Bradley effect, including Blair Levin, one of Bradley's former advisers, who has argued that Bradley lost due to a complicated mix of factors, including a robust Republican absentee voting campaign and an unpopular gun control initiative on the ballot, which resulted in an increase in Republican voters.
If voters were really afraid to voice their support for the president, Winston said, other figures in the poll would reflect that, such as seeing an increase in the percentage of undecided voters rather than an increase in support for Biden.
"It would not be for people to say they vote for Biden," he said, "but that they are undecided."
While the effects of a hidden Trump vote are certainly exaggerated by the president's allies, that doesn't mean there is no evidence that the polls are missing some of his voters. A small percentage of his support is likely being underestimated and has been in the past, public opinion experts said.
And in states like North Carolina, where the margin of victory could be narrow, undercounting could make the difference between whether a poll is right or wrong.
"We assume the race will tighten, and while that happens, the size of Trump's timid vote could come into play very easily," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican who led the Mitt Romney poll in 2012.
In 2016, Newhouse said that Trump tended to score 2-3 points higher in telephone polls when respondents were asked to press a button to record their preferences rather than speaking to a person live.
In post-election polls, when he asked people if they had ever been willing to talk about their vote, 35% of Trump voters said yes. And they tended to be women from Democratic-leaning counties.
Newhouse has collected more evidence of such reluctance recently. In polls he conducted late last month in North Carolina and Iowa, he found that between a quarter and a third of voters answered "yes" when asked if they knew someone who voted for Trump but would not tell. nobody but his closest friends.
"This totally confirms the notion of 'timid Trump voters, '" Newhouse said.
But, he added, if the polls don't sufficiently count some Trump voters - a group that tends to be exceptionally vocal and firm in its support for the president - no one can say by how much.
And in any case, pollsters said they have corrected one of the biggest mistakes they made in 2016 , when they failed to account for the high numbers of voters without college degrees who turned out, many of whom voted for Trump.
And they are including more potential voters in the polls - not just people who say they are likely to vote, as pollsters often do - because they anticipate historic turnout.
One variable that public opinion experts continue to grapple with is how the polarized political climate is affecting the accuracy of their work.
Recent research has shown that conservatives fear being more likely than moderates and liberals to be targeted for being honest about their political beliefs , although self-censorship appears to be on the rise among most Americans.
In a poll last month by the Cato Institute, close to libertarian ideas, 77% of conservatives said they felt unable to share their political opinions because others might find them offensive, an increase from 70% who said so. in 2017.
Among liberals, 52% reported those concerns, compared with 45% three years ago; among the moderates it was 64% against 57% before.
Interviews with voters like Blythe suggest that unrest over political discourse has become highly politicized.
"I see that the Democrats do not protect our freedoms, and that includes freedom of speech," he said.
Still, Geoff Garin, a Democratic pollster, said that what really explains Trump's underperformance is not a flawed methodology but rather the president's inability to expand his coalition.
"The problem with the campaign is not the silent voter for Trump, but the disappearance of the voter for Trump," Garin said. "And there are many more voters for the president who disappear than the silent ones."
The other side of that dynamic - the people who didn't vote for Trump in 2016 and who have now become a supporter of him - is just one factor.
" Among Clinton voters, it's less than 5% ," Garin said.
Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Center for Ethics and Public Policy, has noticed another red flag in the data for anyone hoping that a hidden pocket of voters will save Trump: Not many people support a candidate from a third party right now, and that could potentially alter their vote and opt for the Republican candidate.
Olsen said in an email that while some conservative voters often prefer the libertarian candidate in the months leading up to an election, many eventually return with the Republicans.
But Libertarian Party candidate Jo Jorgensen is registering miniscule support in the polls, compared to the high digits that Gary Johnson, the party's 2016 candidate, was enjoying right now four years ago.
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