From Day One of his presidency to this day, Donald Trump has promoted an alternate reality that has caught on with a shocking proportion of his base. But we don\u2019t often get good polling that shows just how much Trump\u2019s misinformation has penetrated the country.<\/p>\n
Today, we have such polling. And it\u2019s sobering, if unsurprising.<\/p>\n
As Trump has launched a series of claims and suggestions that are bizarre even by his standards, new data shows large swaths of his supporters believe them.<\/p>\n
But the most drastic among them \u2014 most notably the claim about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, stealing and eating pets \u2014 have not caught on with more middle-of-the-road voters. That suggests there is real potential downside for Trump in pushing these fantasies.<\/p>\n
The new data come from YouGov, which has occasionally tested Trump\u2019s false claims. After last week\u2019s debate, YouGov asked voters about a battery of them.<\/p>\n
The major findings on what Trump supporters believe:<\/p>\n
A majority of Trump supporters say they believe the claim about Haitian migrants \u201cabducting and eating pet dogs and cats.\u201d Excluding those who are \u201cnot sure,\u201d twice as many say it\u2019s at least \u201cprobably true\u201d as say it\u2019s at least \u201cprobably false.\u201d (There remains no real evidence for this claim. Officials have debunked it and linked it to threats, and Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Sunday called it \u201ca piece of garbage that was simply not true.\u201d)<\/span> The claims about Haitian migrants, post-birth executions and sex changes at school are actually some of the least pervasive. But the other claims that Trump supporters believe are more about statistics than ridiculous assertions.<\/p>\n For example, three-quarters say they believe the United States has given more aid to Ukraine than all of Europe combined (false), 7 in 10 say they believe millions of undocumented immigrants are arriving every month (false), and 7 in 10 say they believe inflation is at its highest rate ever (not true today or at any point in recent years).<\/p>\n Americans of all political stripes have a long history of getting such data points wrong and exaggerating perceived problems, especially on the economy. So what\u2019s really striking about the new numbers is how much Trump\u2019s conspiracy theories have caught on.<\/p>\n The numbers on those counts aren\u2019t terribly surprising in context, given the many false things Trump supporters have convinced themselves of in recent years. For example, most Republicans have told pollsters that Trump didn\u2019t try to overturn the 2020 election, that Trump didn\u2019t have classified documents at Mar-a-Lago and that Trump\u2019s offices were wiretapped during the 2016 election. And of course there is the 2020 stolen-election claim that as many as two-thirds of Republicans have believed.<\/p>\n But these things have also generally only caught on to an extent, and that\u2019s a key point with the new data.<\/p>\n For instance, independents disbelieve the Haitian migrants claim more than 2-to-1, and five times as many say it\u2019s \u201cdefinitely false\u201d (35 percent) as say it\u2019s \u201cdefinitely true\u201d (7 percent).<\/p>\n The gaps are even wider on executing babies and sex changes in schools. More than 6 in 10 independents dispute both, and relatively few independents \u2014 less than one-quarter \u2014 embrace them. Many independents are actually reliable voters for one side or another, and the data suggest these are likely Republican-leaning ones.<\/p>\n All of which indicates Trump is largely preaching to a credulous choir here, while the potentially decisive voters generally see his conspiracy theories for what they are.<\/p>\n Whether they will punish him for that is an open question. Voters have long viewed Trump as an unreliable narrator, with a survey last week showing 57 percent of Americans say his campaign messages are \u201crarely\u201d or \u201cnever\u201d based on facts.<\/p>\n But in the meantime, we have apparently tens of millions of Americans embracing a truly bizarre version of reality based on little more than one man\u2019s say-so.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n From Day One of his presidency to this day, Donald Trump has promoted an alternate reality that has caught on with a shocking proportion of his base. But we don\u2019t often get good polling that shows just how much Trump\u2019s misinformation has penetrated the country. Today, we have such polling. And it\u2019s sobering, if unsurprising. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9620,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMore than 4 in 10 Trump supporters say they believe that \u201cin some states it is legal to kill a baby after birth\u201d \u2014 another claim Trump referenced at last week\u2019s debate. In fact, slightly more said they believed this was true than disbelieved it. (It is false.)<\/span>
\nNearly 3 in 10 Trump supporters say they believe that \u201cpublic schools are providing students with sex-change operations,\u201d something Trump has recently suggested is happening but for which there is no evidence.<\/span>
\nAnd 8 in 10 Trump supporters say they believe Venezuela is \u201cdeliberately sending people from prisons and mental institutions\u201d to the United States. (There is no evidence that Venezuela or any other country is doing this, and Trump has used bad data to support his claim.)<\/span><\/p>\n