12 December 2016

Trump Voters Still Delusional

People who voted for Trump in the last election remain likely to believe a lot of basic facts that are completely false or are absurd.
-40% of Trump voters insist that he won the national popular vote to only 49% who grant that Clinton won it and 11% who aren’t sure. 
-Only 53% of Trump voters think that California’s votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote. 29% don’t think they should be allowed to count, and another 18% are unsure. 
There’s been a lot of attention to the way fake news has spread and been believed especially by Trump supporters and that’s borne out in our polling: 
-73% of Trump voters think that George Soros is paying protesters against Trump to only 6% who think that’s not true, and 21% who aren’t sure one way or the other. 
-14% of Trump supporters think Hillary Clinton is connected to a child sex ring run out of a Washington DC pizzeria. Another 32% aren’t sure one way or another, much as the North Carolinian who went to Washington to check it out last weekend said was the case for him. Only 54% of Trump voters expressly say they don’t think #Pizzagate is real. 
There’s also been a lot of discussion recently about how we might be in a post-fact world and we see some evidence of that coming through in our polling: 
-67% of Trump voters say that unemployment increased during the Obama administration, to only 20% who say it decreased. 
-Only 41% of Trump voters say that the stock market went up during the Obama administration. 39% say it went down, and another 19% say they’re not sure.
From Public Policy Polling.

Who cares what the truth is if you are rewarded by voters, and you can convince voters that things that are patently false are actually true?

George W. Bush looks "reality-based" compared to Trump and his supporters.

One of the biggest challenges for Democrats and liberals over the next four years will be figuring out how to get conservative perceptions of reality to correspond more closely to reality itself.

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