This was a very informative summary, though I'm puzzled by one important issue.
It seems inconceivable that the GOP populists truly value the policies over the man. Trump supporters had the option to vote for DeSantis who promised Trump policies 'without the baggage' and they overwhelmingly chose Trump.
I suppose it's possible they believe that only Trump can deliver these policies, but I'm still a bit skeptical.
I apologize for my delayed response. You ask a good question.
You're right that most of the people who qualified as "populists" in our survey said the primary reason for their vote was that they agreed with their candidate's policy agenda, not that they felt a personal connection with him. But to qualify as a potential populist, they didn't just have to say their primary reason was, "I agree with his policy agenda." They had to also had to *strongly* agree with each of the two following statements about their candidate: "He's the only recent candidate who understands people like me," and, "He's the only recent candidate who will actually fight for people like me." In both cases, the word "only" was underlined for emphasis. Not many people chose all three, though Trump supporters did so more frequently than Biden supporters.
In other words, for all the people who ultimately qualified as populists, there was an element of strong feeling about the candidate himself, either because they said it was the primary reason they would choose to vote for him, or because they said that the primary reason was his policy agenda *and* that he had both an unusual understanding of them and a willingness to fight for them.
You might wonder why we were interested in people who focused on the "policy agenda." We added it as an element of our larger schema for detecting populism because the literature mentions that members of populist movements often strongly link the agenda with the populist leader and vice versa. This isn't that surprising: One of the distinctive political abilities of a populist leader is identifying major issues that have gone unaddressed and unifying those into a platform that energizes and unites people who have felt that their concerns have been excluded from the political process. These leaders have, in effect, given voice to a set of ideas and proposals. If you're someone who has felt the importance of these issues and their exclusion from the political discussion, it's not surprising that you might emphasize them in explaining your vote for the person who expressed and championed them.
I would posit the possibility that Trump's most fervent supporters look to Trump to tell that what issues to elevate.
Traditionally, the GOP supported the military and FBI without question, for example. Suddenly, they're in favor of effectively neutering these organizations.
These are top-down issues, stemming from Trump's dictatorial ambitions.
The foundational flaw underlying RDS's candidacy is the idea that in the hierarchy of Republican sentiment Trumpian policies matter more than Trump himself.
What voters have shown—time and again—is that their overarching allegiance is to Trump, the man.
The fact that their devotion has actually *intensified* in response to his electoral, legal, and constitutional troubles makes it clear that their support is not the product of an intellectual calculus but of an elemental yearning to see him, not someone else, vanquish the libs.
Whenever they suggest otherwise—that they actually prefer the policies over the person—I ascribe that to a kind of self-delusion about what their actual commitments are.
There is also the possibility that they were saying what sounds like the "right" answer rather than what they actually believe. It's part of the rationalization and self-deception required to go along with the cult leader. "He has the best policies..." "His policies were successful..." they believe with no evidence or believe what is objectively false.
I think the general MAGA indifference to DeSantis is rooted in his essentially unlikable character. Let's face it Trump has a charisma of sorts that is entertaining and engaging to his supporters and DeSantis, who doesn't like people generally, is a dweeb in contrast to Trump. As long as Trump is a choice--- Trump will be their choice.
DeSantis implying that Trump has "baggage" is an admission that Trump may have done something wrong.
Looking at the Iowa results (which is far less representative than a voter driven contest) I think the support that DeSantis got was from people who actually like Trump's policies but they don't like Trump personally and believed Trump will lose to Biden.
And Haley's supporters were people who just want to move on from the whole thing, Trump, the divisiveness, nonsensical policies, the mean tweets and all of that.
Although I've haven't looked at the polling results, I suspect you're right about the Iowa constituencies for DeSantis and Haley. DeSantis voters may also agree with the perception that he's a better executive than Donald Trump; Haley voters may think the same.
To me, one underexplored area of DeSantis' failure to gain traction with Trump followers lies in his perceived willingness to fight. In particular, I'm thinking of a finding from the Brookings Institution book "Trump's Democrats," published a few years ago by scholars Stephanie Muravchik and Jon Shields. (Full disclosure: I've spoken with Muravchik and at one point, helped promote the book. The authors have also been interviewed for The UnPopulist by Aaron Ross Powell at https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/why-did-staunchly-democratic-counties#details).
Muravchik and Shields did on-the-ground studies of three areas that had long voted Democratic, but flipped for Trump when he ran for president. One key finding was that voters in these areas all had experience with old-school Democratic pols who spoke tough and meant business, getting right up in their own voters' faces and in the faces of opposing politicians. One of these leaders described himself as a "bully's bully"—i.e., someone willing to bully the bullies—and said that if he weren't combative, people wouldn't trust him to fight for their interests. They would think he was weak.
When DeSantis entered the presidential race, Trump didn't chuckle, shake hands and wag his finger at "Ron's" crazy ideas. He called him names and savaged DeSantis' record as a Republican governor. It was no-holds-barred.
DeSantis didn't retaliate in kind; nor did he find a way to aggressively punch back against Trump in his own voice, rather than Trump's. This was probably because he saw the polls indicating that most Republicans didn't want to vote for a Republican candidate who attacked Trump. Thus, tempering his response to Trump made some sense as a political calculation, but I suspect it may have sent a larger message that he was afraid of Trump and the political polls.
If you're a voter tired of milquetoast establishmentarian politicians who bend to the political winds, you probably didn't find this to be, in DeSantis, a good look. I'm not sure it was a great look to other voters either. Everyone knew him as a governor who had taken on some ugly fights with other residents in his state when he had a certain degree of power over them. When he faced Trump on a more equal playing field, he got mean with ... well, Nikki Haley.
To be clear, I'm not saying that civility is a weakness. It isn't: It's a strength. I am saying that when someone is flatly uncivil and comes right at you, and when you aspire to a position of leadership, you probably have to find a way to respond that lets people know that you aren't intimidated. If you can't, it's harder for them to choose you as a leader. They start to worry that as president, you'll cave when you're faced with other ugly actors in the world.
Regarding the idea of a "cult leader": It may be that some of Trump's supporters have developed this kind of psychological relationship with Trump. Our survey, both exploratory and limited in length, couldn't detect that; I'm not sure any survey could. And I would agree that social desirability or some degree of self-deception might have led some respondents to choose "policy agenda" over "personal connection" with the candidate.
But I don't know that those elements are required to explain all the respondents' thinking, or that even when they are, they're all that unusual. When I think about someone whose ideas really struck me, someone who sparked my enthusiasm—a writer, a pundit, a politician, an economist, a sociologist, a philosopher—I might well cite their ideas, their observations or their "agenda" as being what attracted me to them. I might do that without a second thought.
But when I really reflect on what I liked in what that person said or wrote, I'd often have to admit that some element of *how* they expressed themselves was part of the attraction. In other words, there was often some element of *them* intertwined with the ideas I found attractive. I'd like to say that this didn't unbalance my judgment and that it wasn't more about the person, and I'd be willing to defend that thesis—but I wouldn't be the first person to be wrong about it, at least a little.
"There is also the possibility that they were saying what sounds like the "right" answer rather than what they actually believe. It's part of the rationalization and self-deception required to go along with the cult leader."
Pollsters are aware of the "social desirability" inclination affecting responses. There is no easy way to address it except to ask the same questions many ways (and ask them in a neutral way, which we tried to do)
I’ve not found a poll or survey that has done a better job than we have at trying to outmaneuver this. This is me just registering my frustration with the epistemic gap that can exist between a person’s inner preferences and their outward justifications, the latter ultimately being the only thing we have access to.
Your criticisms are very one-sided. Supporters of Biden are very happy to blithely ignore him flouting the law but because they don’t fall into your silly definition of who is scary to the “liberal” order you aren’t interested.
“conservative views on several hot-button cultural issues surveyed, such as transgender athletes.”
I guess that means they don’t think males should be allowed to compete with females but is that really a conservative position? It’s conservative in the sense that if athletics is currently segregated into male and female categories then it’s conserving the status quo, but it’s a position held by many on the left who view it as much a women’s rights issue as abortion. In most Western countries, as in the US until quite recently, women have the right to have an abortion so would supporting that right be regarded as a conservative position?
This was a very informative summary, though I'm puzzled by one important issue.
It seems inconceivable that the GOP populists truly value the policies over the man. Trump supporters had the option to vote for DeSantis who promised Trump policies 'without the baggage' and they overwhelmingly chose Trump.
I suppose it's possible they believe that only Trump can deliver these policies, but I'm still a bit skeptical.
I apologize for my delayed response. You ask a good question.
You're right that most of the people who qualified as "populists" in our survey said the primary reason for their vote was that they agreed with their candidate's policy agenda, not that they felt a personal connection with him. But to qualify as a potential populist, they didn't just have to say their primary reason was, "I agree with his policy agenda." They had to also had to *strongly* agree with each of the two following statements about their candidate: "He's the only recent candidate who understands people like me," and, "He's the only recent candidate who will actually fight for people like me." In both cases, the word "only" was underlined for emphasis. Not many people chose all three, though Trump supporters did so more frequently than Biden supporters.
In other words, for all the people who ultimately qualified as populists, there was an element of strong feeling about the candidate himself, either because they said it was the primary reason they would choose to vote for him, or because they said that the primary reason was his policy agenda *and* that he had both an unusual understanding of them and a willingness to fight for them.
You might wonder why we were interested in people who focused on the "policy agenda." We added it as an element of our larger schema for detecting populism because the literature mentions that members of populist movements often strongly link the agenda with the populist leader and vice versa. This isn't that surprising: One of the distinctive political abilities of a populist leader is identifying major issues that have gone unaddressed and unifying those into a platform that energizes and unites people who have felt that their concerns have been excluded from the political process. These leaders have, in effect, given voice to a set of ideas and proposals. If you're someone who has felt the importance of these issues and their exclusion from the political discussion, it's not surprising that you might emphasize them in explaining your vote for the person who expressed and championed them.
Thank you for this explanation.
I would posit the possibility that Trump's most fervent supporters look to Trump to tell that what issues to elevate.
Traditionally, the GOP supported the military and FBI without question, for example. Suddenly, they're in favor of effectively neutering these organizations.
These are top-down issues, stemming from Trump's dictatorial ambitions.
I thought the same thing.
The foundational flaw underlying RDS's candidacy is the idea that in the hierarchy of Republican sentiment Trumpian policies matter more than Trump himself.
What voters have shown—time and again—is that their overarching allegiance is to Trump, the man.
The fact that their devotion has actually *intensified* in response to his electoral, legal, and constitutional troubles makes it clear that their support is not the product of an intellectual calculus but of an elemental yearning to see him, not someone else, vanquish the libs.
Whenever they suggest otherwise—that they actually prefer the policies over the person—I ascribe that to a kind of self-delusion about what their actual commitments are.
There is also the possibility that they were saying what sounds like the "right" answer rather than what they actually believe. It's part of the rationalization and self-deception required to go along with the cult leader. "He has the best policies..." "His policies were successful..." they believe with no evidence or believe what is objectively false.
I think the general MAGA indifference to DeSantis is rooted in his essentially unlikable character. Let's face it Trump has a charisma of sorts that is entertaining and engaging to his supporters and DeSantis, who doesn't like people generally, is a dweeb in contrast to Trump. As long as Trump is a choice--- Trump will be their choice.
DeSantis implying that Trump has "baggage" is an admission that Trump may have done something wrong.
Looking at the Iowa results (which is far less representative than a voter driven contest) I think the support that DeSantis got was from people who actually like Trump's policies but they don't like Trump personally and believed Trump will lose to Biden.
And Haley's supporters were people who just want to move on from the whole thing, Trump, the divisiveness, nonsensical policies, the mean tweets and all of that.
Although I've haven't looked at the polling results, I suspect you're right about the Iowa constituencies for DeSantis and Haley. DeSantis voters may also agree with the perception that he's a better executive than Donald Trump; Haley voters may think the same.
To me, one underexplored area of DeSantis' failure to gain traction with Trump followers lies in his perceived willingness to fight. In particular, I'm thinking of a finding from the Brookings Institution book "Trump's Democrats," published a few years ago by scholars Stephanie Muravchik and Jon Shields. (Full disclosure: I've spoken with Muravchik and at one point, helped promote the book. The authors have also been interviewed for The UnPopulist by Aaron Ross Powell at https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/why-did-staunchly-democratic-counties#details).
Muravchik and Shields did on-the-ground studies of three areas that had long voted Democratic, but flipped for Trump when he ran for president. One key finding was that voters in these areas all had experience with old-school Democratic pols who spoke tough and meant business, getting right up in their own voters' faces and in the faces of opposing politicians. One of these leaders described himself as a "bully's bully"—i.e., someone willing to bully the bullies—and said that if he weren't combative, people wouldn't trust him to fight for their interests. They would think he was weak.
When DeSantis entered the presidential race, Trump didn't chuckle, shake hands and wag his finger at "Ron's" crazy ideas. He called him names and savaged DeSantis' record as a Republican governor. It was no-holds-barred.
DeSantis didn't retaliate in kind; nor did he find a way to aggressively punch back against Trump in his own voice, rather than Trump's. This was probably because he saw the polls indicating that most Republicans didn't want to vote for a Republican candidate who attacked Trump. Thus, tempering his response to Trump made some sense as a political calculation, but I suspect it may have sent a larger message that he was afraid of Trump and the political polls.
If you're a voter tired of milquetoast establishmentarian politicians who bend to the political winds, you probably didn't find this to be, in DeSantis, a good look. I'm not sure it was a great look to other voters either. Everyone knew him as a governor who had taken on some ugly fights with other residents in his state when he had a certain degree of power over them. When he faced Trump on a more equal playing field, he got mean with ... well, Nikki Haley.
To be clear, I'm not saying that civility is a weakness. It isn't: It's a strength. I am saying that when someone is flatly uncivil and comes right at you, and when you aspire to a position of leadership, you probably have to find a way to respond that lets people know that you aren't intimidated. If you can't, it's harder for them to choose you as a leader. They start to worry that as president, you'll cave when you're faced with other ugly actors in the world.
Regarding the idea of a "cult leader": It may be that some of Trump's supporters have developed this kind of psychological relationship with Trump. Our survey, both exploratory and limited in length, couldn't detect that; I'm not sure any survey could. And I would agree that social desirability or some degree of self-deception might have led some respondents to choose "policy agenda" over "personal connection" with the candidate.
But I don't know that those elements are required to explain all the respondents' thinking, or that even when they are, they're all that unusual. When I think about someone whose ideas really struck me, someone who sparked my enthusiasm—a writer, a pundit, a politician, an economist, a sociologist, a philosopher—I might well cite their ideas, their observations or their "agenda" as being what attracted me to them. I might do that without a second thought.
But when I really reflect on what I liked in what that person said or wrote, I'd often have to admit that some element of *how* they expressed themselves was part of the attraction. In other words, there was often some element of *them* intertwined with the ideas I found attractive. I'd like to say that this didn't unbalance my judgment and that it wasn't more about the person, and I'd be willing to defend that thesis—but I wouldn't be the first person to be wrong about it, at least a little.
"There is also the possibility that they were saying what sounds like the "right" answer rather than what they actually believe. It's part of the rationalization and self-deception required to go along with the cult leader."
Precisely.
Pollsters are aware of the "social desirability" inclination affecting responses. There is no easy way to address it except to ask the same questions many ways (and ask them in a neutral way, which we tried to do)
I’ve not found a poll or survey that has done a better job than we have at trying to outmaneuver this. This is me just registering my frustration with the epistemic gap that can exist between a person’s inner preferences and their outward justifications, the latter ultimately being the only thing we have access to.
Your criticisms are very one-sided. Supporters of Biden are very happy to blithely ignore him flouting the law but because they don’t fall into your silly definition of who is scary to the “liberal” order you aren’t interested.
“conservative views on several hot-button cultural issues surveyed, such as transgender athletes.”
I guess that means they don’t think males should be allowed to compete with females but is that really a conservative position? It’s conservative in the sense that if athletics is currently segregated into male and female categories then it’s conserving the status quo, but it’s a position held by many on the left who view it as much a women’s rights issue as abortion. In most Western countries, as in the US until quite recently, women have the right to have an abortion so would supporting that right be regarded as a conservative position?