Do New Yorkers like bad boys?
[Most people will want to skip this post]
New York has roughly 15 million adults. It appears that 525,000 voted for Trump, a bit over 3%. Congratulations.
It seems as though when you point out how bad Trump is, it makes voters like him even more:
The key distinction in what we do compared with focus groups and regular polls is that we do not ask what people think of a message; we observe the impact the message has on vote choice in the treatment group compared with the placebo-control group. Since the respondents are randomly assigned to each group, average support should be about the same in each. Any statistically significant difference between support in the two groups is because of the impact of the ad.
And we found that Cruz’s anti-Trump ad backfires. It doesn’t hurt Donald J. Trump. It helps him.
Our clinical message trial showed Cruz’s anti-Trump actually made voters more likely to vote for Trump, boosting his support by 3 percentage points overall. That’s not a very large increase for the sample as a whole (and not statistically significant). But for blue-collar voters, the attack ad increased support for Trump by 18 percentage points; and it increased support among blue-collar men by more than 33 percentage points. (36 percent of the blue-collar men who watched the coke ad, for example, said they would vote for Trump—compared with 69 percent of the blue collar men who watched the anti-Trump ad.) And in both subgroups, incidentally, the anti-Trump ad caused actually support for Ted Cruz to fall.
One theory is that (some) voters are simply in the mood to support a bad boy, and the worse you make Trump sound, the more the voters like him. He’s bigoted against Muslims and Mexicans? So much the better!
It reminds me of what Borges said about Argentine Nazis in 1940:
I always discover that my interlocutor idolizes Hitler, not in spite of the high-altitude bombs and the rumbling invasions, the machine guns, the accusations and lies, but because of those acts and instruments. He is delighted by evil and atrocity. The triumph of Germany does not matter to him; he wants the humiliation of England and a satisfying burning of London. He admires Hitler as he once admired his precursors in the criminal underworld of Chicago. The discussion becomes impossible because the offenses I ascribe to Hitler are, for him, wonders and virtues. The apologists of Amigas, Ramirez, Quiroga, Rosas, or Urquiza pardon or gloss over their crimes; the defender of Hitler derives a special pleasure from them. The Hitlerist is always a spiteful man, and a secret and sometimes public worshiper of criminal “vivacity” and cruelty. He is, thanks to a poverty of imagination, a man who believes that the future cannot be different from the present, and the Germany, till now victorious, cannot lose. He is the cunning man who longs to be on the winning side.
PS. When Trump refused to disavow David Duke, the GOP establishment was highly critical. Rightly so. So why is there so little criticism of GOP leaders who refuse to disavow the racist and xenophobic Trump? Why aren’t more announcing that they will never vote for him? Perhaps the GOP wants to re-brand itself as the party for people who are slightly less racist and xenophobic that David Duke and slightly more racist and xenophobic than France’s National Front.
If so, they are doing a great job.
PPS. I agree with this comment by Tyler Cowen:
I have been seeing so many pieces about how GOP elites are responsible for the rise of Trump. These pieces offer many valid criticisms, but I have an alternative or should I say complementary theory: the people who have voted for Trump are responsible for the rise of Trump. How is that for a complex account of causation and individual responsibility?
Tyler links to a Scott Winship study that shows Trump support is about “cultural anxiety”, not the economy. I suspected as much when Trump won my own (booming) state of Massachusetts by more than any other state, even the affluent counties. Here are some of the disgruntled factory workers who form Trump’s “core”:
PPPS: A poll shows Trump favored in only one country, Russia:
Hmm, let’s start where he’s least popular:
1. Mexico: He called us rapists and drug dealers, and then wants us to pay for his wall? No thanks.
2. Italy: A businessman who’s a fan of Putin and knows nothing about policy? Been there, done that.
3. South Korea: Threatens to assassinate Kim Jung-un, and then pull out the defense umbrella? What could go wrong?
4. Germany: A right-wing, racist nationalist? I think we’ll pass.
And the only country where he’s favored (and by a huge margin):
Russia: Idolizes Putin? Da!
Tags:
21. April 2016 at 10:11
I think you’re finally starting to understand what’s going on with Trump.
21. April 2016 at 10:13
Lawrence, Thanks for the kind comment. From here on out this comment section is likely to turn into a cesspool.
21. April 2016 at 10:18
“When Trump refused to disavow David Duke, the GOP establishment was highly critical. Rightly so.”
-Except Trump never refused to disavow David Duke. That was just a left-wing media fiction. Besides, Trump has good reason to be soft on White Nationalists -they form a good part of his online base.
“So why is there so little criticism of GOP leaders who refuse to disavow the racist and xenophobic Trump?”
-Because they’re followers, not leaders. And what, exactly, is wrong with keeping Muslims out of the First World? Cruz supports building a wall against the illegals. And Trump has said nothing racist -that’s just your imagination.
Make America Great Again!
And, for non-Trump voters, may I recommend Jill Stein 2016? Bernie’s been eliminated by New York.
“And the only country where he’s favored (and by a huge margin)”
-It’s only 31 Trump v. 10 Clinton. It says more about Clinton’s unpopularity than Trump’s popularity. Russians and Serbs remember the bombing of Belgrad.
“Perhaps the GOP wants to re-brand itself as the party for people who are slightly less racist and xenophobic that David Duke and slightly more racist and xenophobic than France’s National Front.”
-That’s a good idea, and I fit the profile.
21. April 2016 at 10:19
“In 2004, Thomas Frank scored a hit with What’s the Matter with Kansas?, lamenting that voters from that state failed to recognize their economic interests and instead sided with Republicans year after year.”
-Kansas has been solidly Republican since Lincoln, with the exception of 1896 and 1916 and the Democratic landslides of 1932, 1936, and 1964. What’s the big mystery here?
21. April 2016 at 12:05
Ignoring the Kasich, Cruz and Sanders votes, here’s how NY voted:
Clinton 1,054,083
Trump 524,932
That’s 67% Hillary, 33% Denald. I would expect roughly the same margin in a general election.
21. April 2016 at 12:15
Illegal immigration is so 2008:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/donald-trump-will-build-a-mexican-wall-to-solve-a-problem-that-doesnt-actually-exist-2016-04-20
———–quote———-
In the 1980s and 1990s, the large number of people born in the 1960s and 1970s [in Mexico], when fertility rates were high, were moving into the migration-prone age interval to produce many migrants to the U.S. Those who are between 15 and 30 years old today were born in the 1990s and 2000s, when fertility was falling rapidly toward replacement level.
Mexico is now an aging society with an average age of 27.8 years, yielding a population that is increasingly unlikely to migrate. As a result, more people return to Mexico each year than depart for the U.S., a pattern that holds for both documented and undocumented migrants.
There are still apprehensions of undocumented migrants along the border, of course, but they are at record low levels and no longer comprised primarily of Mexicans. The annual total is lower than at any point since 1972 despite the fact that the Border Patrol today is 13 times larger and has a budget that is 60 times greater than back then.
….
Most of those apprehended today are young Central Americans seeking to reunite with family members already in the U.S. Their number isn’t enough to offset the annual number of undocumented Mexicans leaving the nation. Moreover, the potential for additional undocumented migration from Central America is limited by small population sizes and the fact that fertility rates there are also falling rapidly. So overall, net undocumented migration hovers around zero.
Given these realities, building a longer wall is a clear waste of taxpayer money.
————endquote———–
21. April 2016 at 12:28
That’s 67% Hillary, 33% Denald. I would expect roughly the same margin in a general election.
I don’t think Hellary will be rolling up a Johnson landslide – in New York or the country at large.
21. April 2016 at 12:29
Illegal immigration is so 2008:
You fancy we’re all just marks, I take it.
21. April 2016 at 12:31
Hmm, let’s start where he’s least popular:
Academics and journalists and partisan Democrats have their shticks. It’s doubtful too many normal people give a damn what the Mexican or German public thinks of the President of the United States, nor should they give a damn.
21. April 2016 at 12:34
It reminds me of what Borges said about Argentine Nazis in 1940:
Back to this are we? Argentine politics is grossly silly and the Peronist movement abusive. There has never, at any time, been a fascist movement in Argentina of any popular significance.
21. April 2016 at 12:39
It seems as though when you point out how bad Trump is, it makes voters like him even more:
The parsimonious explanation for that is that Cruz (or the SuperPac in question) hired an ad man who doesn’t know the audience. During Richard Nixon’s campaign in 1968, his principal ad man, Harry Treleavan, was not assigned to supervise any ads shown exclusively in the Southern United States. The reason was he was considered ‘Madison Avenue’, not someone who understood the South.
21. April 2016 at 13:40
@Art
-I see no big reason to reject those numbers for New York State, aside from the Democrat registration advantage.
21. April 2016 at 13:44
Here are some of the disgruntled factory workers who form Trump’s core
I love those oversimplified explanations that vilify a political opponent that is hated: “You vote person XY?! That means you must be dumb or evil or both.”
It’s a feeling of smug moral superiority.
A serious economic explanation would make more sense to me.
21. April 2016 at 13:59
-I see no big reason to reject those numbers for New York State, aside from the Democrat registration advantage.
Again, the only Republican to have performed that poorly in New York in 160 years was Barry Goldwater. Haven’t seen an indigo bunting in 40 years and I’m not expecting to see one this year.
21. April 2016 at 15:12
Art, Mitt won 35.17% of the New York State vote, and the state is only trending in one direction- blue. 33.24% is hardly an unreasonable performance for the Donald.
21. April 2016 at 15:53
Actually I am becoming a Bernie Sanders supporter. The old Brooklyn leftie has his charms.
But then why do some people support Ted Cruz?
Cruz has said he wants to drop nuclear bombs in the Middle East, that he supports Trump’s immigration and trade policies, and that he favors higher interest rates or a gold standard, and that he believes higher interest rates will cut the federal deficit.
So who is nuttier, Trump or Cruz?
BTW— the protectionist record of Ronald Reagan makes Trump’s trade proposals look a little bit tame!
21. April 2016 at 16:13
“Cruz has said he wants to drop nuclear bombs in the Middle East”
-Huh? No, he hasn’t. He has, however, lied that the U.S. has a treaty obligation to defend Ukraine. Of course, it doesn’t.
21. April 2016 at 17:27
You shouldn’t be publicizing Trump’s unpopularity with foreigners: that will only make him seem more attractive to many (probably, most) American voters.
By the way, let me suggest that the topic of electoral politics is not where your comparative advantage lies.
21. April 2016 at 17:43
Philo, bingo. BTW, Trump is also popular with Russia because he says stuff like this:
http://www.citizenop.com/video/2016/04/21/donald-trump-denounces-war-party-calls-for-cooperation-with-russia/
When was the last time you heard Ted Cruz or this guy:
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-crisis-kerry-idUSBRE9880BV20130909
say anything like that?
Kerry, Obama, and Clinton, have all proven themselves to be vicious and vile people, especially on the international stage. Even Bush II was better.
21. April 2016 at 19:32
Harding:
“We will utterly destroy ISIS,” Cruz said. “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”
“Glow in the dark” is a reference to radioactivity.
I do not know why Cruz wants to drop carpets on ISIS, though. Maybe he thinks the heavy Persian carpets will do some damage.
BTW, it ain’t only Cruz.
Obama has been prosecuting a war in Afghanistan for his entire eight years in office, unsuccessfully, to prop up an Islamic narco-state regarded as one of the most corrupt in the world.
Now is Obama is seining more ground troops to Iraq to beat ISIS.
You know, the way we beat Saddam and Al Qaeda.
We showed ’em in Vietnam too.
Your sure you are not going to vote for Sanders?
Although to be fair, Trump correctly identified Iraq as a $5 trillion waste of money and has proposed a smaller international US military footprint.
21. April 2016 at 21:40
I think there’s considerable truth to the idea that Trump’s appeal is a reaction against political correctness and identity politics. When everyone’s expected to abide by a strict dress code, some people can’t help but admire the lone lunatic who prances around naked without the slightest concern for etiquette.
And of course among the poor and uneducated nationalism has and always will have a lot of appeal. Those who have few accomplishments as individuals of which to boast will naturally look for something else to be proud of, like their country. Note all his talk of ‘winning.’ A lot of his supporters have been losing their entire lives as individuals, so why not try to be ‘winners’ as part of the collective entity they believe America to be?
21. April 2016 at 21:57
Mark–
Did you not read the post? Scott Sumner points out that upper income neighborhoods in New York and Massachusetts voted for Trump. Those do not seem like uneducated poor neighborhoods.
Perhaps voters remember the robust protectionism of President Ronald Reagan and yet the good decade that was the 1980s, and have conflated Trump’s limited protectionism with the much more robust and pervasive version that Ronald Reagan offered and implemented.
21. April 2016 at 22:00
@Ben
-I think he’s thinking of the sort of mass indiscriminate bombing that Russia first started in Syria (which the SyAAF couldn’t do on its own, due to equipment constraints). It usually does lead to a reduction in manpower needs to capture territory.
“Now is Obama is seining more ground troops to Iraq to beat ISIS.”
-I don’t know why they’re there. Obama wants to take the credit for a fundamentally piece-of-cake victory?
Saddam and AQ were soundly beaten in their original form, but a combination of U.S. incompetence and deliberate malevolence created bigger fish to fry.
22. April 2016 at 00:21
Scott,
I noticed the same thing. Trump supporters seem to be the kind who didn’t quite make it to high school bully, but always dreamed of it. Indiscriminate admirers of power, as raw as possible. Plays to teenage fantasies.
Bullies prey on the weak, but the kind who admires the bully is too cowardly even for that. But they love it when someone bullies for them. Hence the love for Trump, crusher of the weak, apologist for the strong. It’s easy to see the pattern. The person who admires Trump usually also admires the Putins and Pinochets of this world and probably has a secret crush on Kim Jong Il too.
But why? Economics it is not, re: List. Culture, maybe. How about Baudelaire’s hunch in the “Flowers of Evil”. It’s
“l’Ennui!—l’oeil chargé d’un pleur involontaire, Il rêve d’échafauds en fumant son houka.” or,
Boredom, eyes of an involuntary tear, He dreams of the gallows while smoking his pipe”.
Harding,
” ‘…people who are slightly less racist and xenophobic that David Duke and slightly more racist and xenophobic than France’s National Front.’
-That’s a good idea, and I fit the profile.”
That comes as such a surprise.
22. April 2016 at 02:56
“Kerry, Obama, and Clinton, have all proven themselves to be vicious and vile people, especially on the international stage. Even Bush II was better.”
Nah, one thing for sure. Much better to travel today and say “I’m an American” than it was when Bushie2 was Pres. That’s when I started saying “I’m a NY’er”, foreigners freakin LOVE LOVE LOVE NY. Must be the Kosher delis??
22. April 2016 at 04:15
Trump supporters seem to be the kind who didn’t quite make it to high school bully, but always dreamed of it.
You fancy 40% of the Republican electorate meets that description?
22. April 2016 at 04:42
“You fancy 40% of the Republican electorate meets that description?”
Scary, huh? – Then again, by Scott’s accounting, it’s just 3% (of New Yorkers, in that instance where he won big) … not completely implausible.
22. April 2016 at 04:50
Scary, huh? – Then again, by Scott’s accounting, it’s just 3% (of New Yorkers, in that instance where he won big) … not completely implausible.
It’s a stupid ad hom.
22. April 2016 at 05:01
“It’s a stupid ad hom.”
You mean, supporters of the offensive one might feel offended? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Feels funny when it flies back in the other direction, I know. Dishing it out is much easier than taking it in.
22. April 2016 at 06:08
Harding, You said:
“Besides, Trump has good reason to be soft on White Nationalists -they form a good part of his online base.”
OKaaaaaay.
Patrick, Good post
Christian, You said:
“It’s a feeling of smug moral superiority.”
Take a deep breath, I did not “vilify” anyone. I was mocking the claim that Trump voters were just a bunch of unemployed workers who had lost jobs to China. Saying they are actually a wide cross section of society is not “vilification”.
Harding, You said:
“Art, Mitt won 35.17% of the New York State vote, and the state is only trending in one direction- blue. 33.24% is hardly an unreasonable performance for the Donald.”
I actually agree with this. Trump may do better, but 33% is certainly not an absurd prediction for NY. At least some Romney voters will abandon the GOP–it all depends how many new voters Trump can draw in.
Ben, Sanders is actually not too bad on many non-economic issues, but on the economy – – – what a horror show.
Philo, You said:
“By the way, let me suggest that the topic of electoral politics is not where your comparative advantage lies.”
No need to gently suggest it, it’s patently obvious. Anyone who discusses politics immediately loses 20 points of IQ, unless your name is Scott Alexander. I’ve consistently indicated that my political posts are dumb, I really don’t know why anyone reads them.
Mark, Good points, but also see Ben’s response.
mbka, Good comment.
Art, You said:
“You fancy 40% of the Republican electorate meets that description?”
I guess you never spent 4 years in a public high school. People don’t stop being jerks after they grow up, they just become better at disguising that fact. (Of course Trump voters are not all that way, but I’d bet there’s a correlation.)
mbka. On your last comment, Borges said something similar, right before the section I quoted. It’s worth reading his entire essay.
22. April 2016 at 06:45
Scott,
I just read the essay you quoted, ghastly, I can almost feel having had that kind of conversation. I have in fact come across a few people who would talk like that, not on Trump but on nazism or other fascistoid politics elsewhere, and it is truly soul-destroying. It’s the total denial of any principle or value other than power and hate of the other, and it’s hard to even forget these conversations.
22. April 2016 at 07:07
You mean, supporters of the offensive one might feel offended?
No, I mean it’s a stupid ad hom. The people you’re describing are a tiny social niche and largely in your imagination. He won 60% of the vote in New York. (And his merits as a candidate are not governed by the demerits some of his supporters piled up in high school).
22. April 2016 at 07:09
People don’t stop being jerks after they grow up,
Somehow that had occurred to me on these threads.
22. April 2016 at 11:00
Ben Cole:
“Mark–
Did you not read the post? Scott Sumner points out that upper income neighborhoods in New York and Massachusetts voted for Trump. Those do not seem like uneducated poor neighborhoods.”
But look at the alternative for them: Ted Cruz. Trump is at least a rich northerner who’s not an evangelical and is in truth fairly socially liberal for a Republican. Kasich may be more the ideal candidate, but the perception that he has already lost.
It is worth noting that among the socially liberal northeastern states, the pattern is Trump winning by miles and Kasich coming in second. It is entirely plausible that Trump is winning wealthier northeastern voters for a very different reason from why he’s winning poor West Virginians: for the former group, he’s not as bad as a southern evangelical socially conservative redneck (Cruz). And while Trump’s anti-Muslim or anti-immigrant rhetoric may woo rednecks, the relatively socially liberal rich northern republicans are, expect, more indifferent to immigration and fair treatment of Muslims than in favor of them, so Trump’s remarks on those matters is has a pretty neutral, rather than deterrent, effect on their opinions of him. So he gets to enjoy the best of both worlds (or the worst, one might say).
22. April 2016 at 18:13
“and is in truth fairly socially liberal for a Republican.”
-Yup. The irony of this campaign is the Republican nominee will have been a supporter of same-sex marriage for well over twice as much time as the Democratic one.
https://web.archive.org/web/20060507020036/http://donaldtrump.trumpuniversity.com/default.asp?item=121537
23. April 2016 at 05:43
Manhattan (Trump’s neighbourhood) voted for Kasich. Amusing.
This Vox essay captures an important and pervasive trend in postmodern progressivism — where the white working class, with so little of the power, gets so much of the blame. I particularly liked the line “the wages of smug are Trump”.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism
NB: I distinguish postmodern progressivism (with its identity and cultural politics obsessions and its post-Enlightenment pretensions) from the modernist Left (which focused on economics issues and was an Enlightenment project and proud of it). The modernist Left is dying in the West, supplanted by the hostile parasite that is postmodern progressivism. Notionally, they share a commitment to equality, but postmodern progressives rarely interact with the folk they are allegedly so concerned to equalise (gay friends excepted).
23. April 2016 at 06:13
mbka, I feel your pain.
Lorenzo, Yes, American progressives have abandoned the white working class. It’s all about identity politics today.