Why Has Donald Trump Lost So Much Conservative Support
- edited by Ellie Shockley
Donald Trump has lost the support of many conservatives, a problem that may be explained by his lack of conscientiousness. This trait is more characteristic of conservatives than liberals, which makes it a critical trait for conservative candidates. In the case of Trump, a lack of conscientiousness has likely repelled conservative voters who would otherwise vote Republican in the presidential election. Nevertheless, Trump maintains some support among conservatives, and this support may arise from his right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation.
Trump is not only losing, but losing by a large margin, an indication that he is not only unpopular among moderates, but also among a fair share of conservatives. This lack of conservative support is evident in some solidly right-wing states. In South Carolina, for instance, where 43% of people identify as conservative, and Georgia, where 40% do so, the conservative candidate usually wins. However, Trump is likely to win these two states by small margins.
Why is the Trump campaign hemorrhaging conservative voters in the US, who have not been this skeptical of a Republican Party candidate since Barry Goldwater? A number of factors play into his unpopularity, and while psychological research on conservatives cannot tell us about all of them, it can explain at least one.
Views Of Donald Trump Four Ways
Based on a New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,399 registered voters nationwide from Sept. 6 to 14, 2022. Questions regarding Mr. Trumps actions after the election and whether he has committed crimes were each asked of half the sample.
That level of Trump support has effectively been unchanged since the last Times/Siena poll, which was fielded in July amid televised hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. It was also fundamentally similar to levels of support Times/Siena polls and other surveys found in recent years.
The publics view of Mr. Trumps fight against the election results also remained largely unchanged, with 54 percent in the most recent survey saying his actions posed a threat to democracy and 38 percent saying he had just exercised his right to contest the election.
And roughly half of voters said they thought Mr. Trump had committed serious federal crimes, while 38 percent thought he had not. That was similar to the responses from July, when respondents were asked more specifically about Mr. Trumps actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Trump Has Consistently Championed Protectionism
You asked Trump supporters why we trust that he will keep his word and work for our interests. I find it unlikely that any of the other candidates would work towards my interests, so to an extent theres nothing really to lose. That said, the first reason Id give for trusting Trump is that he had this same rhetoric toward China and Japan all the way back in the late 1980s. For example, he made an appearance on Oprah Winfrey back on April 25, 1988, where he discussed a full page ad criticizing U.S foreign policy. He discussed the issues with Japanese trade at that time. At the very least, the hallmark of his campaign, trade and foreign policy issues, is something that he has remained consistent on. Heres a link to the clip.
In addition, his position on immigration has remained largely the same as well. In Donald Trumps first political book, The America We Deserve, Donald Trump writes:
America is experiencing serious social and economic difficulty with illegal immigrants who are flooding across our borders. We simply cant absorb them. It is a scandal when America cannot control its own borders. A liberal policy of immigration may seem to reflect confidence and generosity. But our current laxness toward illegal immigration shows a recklessness and disregard for those who live here legally.
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Trump Could Make The Speech Police Go Away
Im in my early 30s and I grew up in San Francisco in a liberal home. And I have a very difficult time keeping up with all the various appropriate and inappropriate terms used to reference people and their causes. Trump makes brash and uncompromising statements about issues many people feel very passionate about. When he spoke about illegal immigration he made statements that many people agree with and are afraid to state. A lot of that fear is a fear of being labeled a racist or a fear of violating constantly changing societal norms. Its frustrating to listen to politicians speak and make no statements. Its even more frustrating to watch politicians fold in the presence of the slightest bit of pressure. The appeal of Trump isnt because they trust him to make the right decisions, its the hope that he will influence the rest of the field to make strong statements regardless of the media backlash.
Beating Others To The Punch
Trump is betting that his first-out-of-the gate strategy will fend off potential primary rivals and give him an early advantage with deep-pocketed donors, aides say. He is widely expected to be challenged by both conservative and moderate Republicans, though the calculus of some presidential hopefuls could change now that he is running. Others like his former Vice President, Mike Pence may proceed anyway.
Of course, any countereffort to inhibit Trumps path to the nomination is likely to prove difficult. Despite his myriad legal entanglements and the stain of January 6, the twice-impeached 45th president remains immensely popular among most Republican voters and boasts a deep connection with his core backers that could prove difficult for other GOP hopefuls to replicate or weaken. Even leading conservatives who disliked Trumps pugnacious politics and heterodox policies stuck with him as president because he helped solidify the rightward shift of the US Supreme Court with his nominations one of the most far-reaching aspects of his legacy, which resulted in the conservative court majoritys deeply polarizing June decision to end federal abortion rights. In fact, while Trump ended his first term with the lowest approval rating of any president, Republicans viewed him favorably, according to a May NBC News poll. That alone could give Trump a significant edge over primary opponents whom voters are still familiarizing themselves with.
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Why They Still Support Trump
The seven public hearings by the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, have made the task of dot connecting easy: Americas 45th president oversaw and directed a multipart plan to violently overturn the 2020 election. Texts and testimonies of those in Donald Trumps inner orbit have shattered every excuse that the former presidents supporters had publicly broadcast since that awful, searing day.
Which raises an important and intriguing question: How are those supporters responding now?
It depends on the Trump supporter, of course. For some right-wing zealots, who have an enormous stake in keeping the Big Lie alive, the reflex is to attack the committee as crazed and media-enabled and abusing Constitutional rights. For those somewhat less delirious, the reaction is to mock and dismiss committee members, most especially Representative Liz Cheney. Still others have avoided watching the January 6 hearings. They have other, more important things to do, as one person put it to me. Hear no evil, see no evil.
Almost all of Trumps supporters want to cast their gaze elsewhereon some other issue, on some other hearing, on some other controversy. Theyll do anything to keep from having to confront the reality of what happened on January 6. What youre very unlikely to see, except in the rarest of cases, is genuine self-reflection or soul-searching, regret or remorse, feelings of embarrassment and shame.
Why?
Would Trumps Support Change If He Were Charged With A Crime
The former president faces a handful of investigations, including from the Department of Justice and the U.S. House select committee on the origins of the Jan. 6 attack, a grand jury looking into potential election interference in Georgia and, most recently, an FBI probe into classified materials removed from the White House and kept at Trumps Florida estate. Some had been recovered or returned earlier this year. But when the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last month, agents still found more than 100 classified documents and 43 empty folders with classified markings, among thousands of other official records, according to a Department of Justice list of items.
Support for Trumps candidacy in 2024 would not change much if any of these investigations result in Trump being charged with a crime, according to this poll. Sixty-five percent of Americans would oppose another run for the White House. More than six in 10 Republicans would still want to see him launch a campaign. Meanwhile, 73 percent of independents say he should not run again if he is charged.
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This poll is just a snapshot of the current political environment. With two months until the midterm elections and another two years until the 2024 presidential election, a lot can still change with the Republican primary field and the investigations.
Graphic by Megan McGrew
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Deeply Partisan And Personal Divides
Trumps status as a political outsider, his outspoken nature and his willingness to upend past customs and expectations of presidential behavior made him a constant focus of public attention, as well as a source of deep partisan divisions.
Even before he took office, Trump divided Republicans and Democrats more than any incoming chief executive in the prior three decades.1 The gap only grew more pronounced after he became president. An average of 86% of Republicans approved of Trumps handling of the job over the course of his tenure, compared with an average of just 6% of Democrats the widest partisan gap in approval for any president in the modern era of polling.2 Trumps overall approval rating never exceeded 50% and fell to a low of just 29% in his final weeks in office, shortly after a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol.
Republicans and Democrats werent just divided over Trumps handling of the job. They also interpreted many aspects of his character and personality in fundamentally opposite ways. In a 2019 survey, at least three-quarters of Republicans said the presidents words sometimes or often made them feel hopeful, entertained, informed, happy and proud. Even larger shares of Democrats said his words sometimes or often made them feel concerned, exhausted, angry, insulted and confused.
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I Just Want To Watch The Chaos
I wanted to explain why Id vote for Trump. There are 2 main reasons:
His desire to be a successful president to feed his ego could paradoxically motivate him to be an extremely willing, conscientious delegater, surrounding himself with effective political operatives so he could stick to his strength of being a showman. Partly I just want to watch the chaos unfold if a purely ego-driven man were to experience success with a presidential run. Im a young guy who is immature, a bit antisocial, and with no plans for kids or a wife ever. At some level, I dont really care how things go with America as long as its fun to watch, like watching a basketball game when your favorite team isnt playing. I hope this sheds light.
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Trump Should Not Run For President In 2024 Majority Of Americans Say
As former President Donald Trump considers launching another bid for the White House, more than six in 10 Americans do not want him to run in 2024, according to a new PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. And while Trumps possession of more than 10,000 government documents at his Florida home seems not to have changed the minds of his steady supporters, a plurality of Americans think he has done something illegal.
The level of support for another Trump campaign remains virtually unchanged from December 2020, the month after he lost the presidential election and weeks before a mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of the Electoral College votes.
His numbers dont move. Theyre locked in, said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion. The good thing for former President Trump is his numbers dont drop. The bad thing is hes only talking about a third of the electorate who are in his corner.
Graphics by Megan McGrew
Thats not a great place to launch an election campaign, he added.
Just 28 percent of independents believe Trump should run again, this poll found, while two-thirds say the former president should sit out the next election. According to 2020 exit polling, 41 percent of independents had voted for Trumps reelection, suggesting a significant cratering of support since.
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Graphic by Megan McGrew
Trump May Face Challenges In Organizing Republican Support
In the days leading up to former President Donald Trump’s announcement Tuesday evening that he would seek the Republican Party’s nomination again in 2024, influential voices in conservative political circles expressed their opposition to the idea of handing the party’s reins back to him.
With Trump leading the party after his election in 2016, Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in 2018. Then in 2020, despite his false claims to the contrary, Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden and watched as his party also lost control of the Senate.
Last week in elections they were expected to dominate, Republicans failed to take over the Senate, and as of Tuesday, appeared poised to win the House of Representatives by only a slim margin. One reason for the underwhelming GOP performance was that a number of Trump’s hand-picked candidates underperformed other, more mainstream Republican candidates.
Tuesday morning, Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of the Citadel hedge fund and a major donor to Republicans, voiced what many within the party have apparently been thinking.
“I’d like to think that the Republican Party is ready to move on from somebody who has been for this party a three-time loser,” Griffin said at an event sponsored by Bloomberg News in Singapore.
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The Psychology Of Trump Supporters
Some of the explanations come from a 2017 review paper published in the Journal of Social and Political Psychology by the psychologist and UC Santa Cruz professor Thomas Pettigrew. Others have been put forth as far back as 2016, by me, in various articles and blog posts for publications like Psychology Today. A number of these were inspired by insights from psychologists like Sheldon Solomon, who laid the groundwork for the influential Terror Management Theory, and David Dunning, who did the same for the Dunning-Kruger effect.
This list will begin with the more benign reasons for Trumps intransigent support. As the list goes on, the explanations become increasingly worrisome, and toward the end, border on the pathological. It should be strongly emphasized that not all Trump supporters are racist, mentally vulnerable, or fundamentally bad people. It can be detrimental to society when those with degrees and platforms try to demonize their political opponents or paint them as mentally ill when they are not. That being said, it is just as harmful to pretend that there are not clear psychological and neural factors that underlie much of Trump supporters unbridled allegiance.
The psychological phenomena described below mostly pertain to those supporters who would follow Trump off a cliff. These are the people who will stand by his side no matter what scandals come to light, or what sort of evidence for immoral and illegal behavior surfaces.
1. Practicality Trumps Morality
Your Opinion: Six Reasons Why I Support Donald Trump For Re
I am proud to support Donald Trump for re-election as President and heres why:
1. Economy: Trump has done more for the U.S. economy in terms of creating jobs, deregulation, and tax cuts than any other President. He has stopped the flow of U.S. jobs to Mexico and has brought them home.
2. Law & Order: Trump is a law and order President. The police have a difficult job – they put their lives on the line every day. I served as Tupelo City Prosecutor for ten years. The policemen I knew were professional and did their jobs well. Tupelo and the surrounding area can be proud of their police.
3. Border Control: Trump has made the borders mean something. Unless we stem the flow of immigrants from Mexico, we will look like Little Mexico in ten years. Immigrants want to immigrate from Mexico to the U.S. because we are the land of opportunity. The Democrats apparently want us to look like Mexico in terms of drugs, lack of jobs, and poor people. If we listen to the Democrats, we will be as poor as those in Mexico.
4. U.S. Supreme Court: Trump has appointed two conservative Supreme Court justices during his first term. The next President will likely appoint two as well, and we cant afford to elect Joe Biden, who will appoint liberal justices. Conservative appointments to the Supreme Court are critical to the preservation of human life.
I wholeheartedly endorse Trump for re-election as President and encourage your readers to endorse him also.
T.K. Moffett
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