I recently spent about 20 minutes on Mettacomms looking at public opinion around Donald Trump, soon to be sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. It took less than 4 seconds for Mettacomms to return 20 pieces of public opinion research for me to interrogate. I focused on 3 data sources that were particularly interesting to me. It took a further 15 minutes to read, digest and write the blog that follows. I found it utterly fascinating. Let me share my key findings with you.
Mettacomms allows you to search public opinion research in the USA and in Europe. I focused on the USA only and just on the name “Donald Trump”. I found two different types of public opinion research, each, equally interesting.
Personality Traits and Decision Making Skills
The first pieces of research look at whether or not Americans believe that Donald Trump would take good or bad decisions. On issues like the economy, foreign policy, crime and immigration the majority of Americans trusted in him to take good decisions. They were much less sure when it came to decisions around abortion, or their faith in him to unite the country.
On the incoming President’s personal traits, most Americans believe that he is mentally sharp and keeps his promises. However, on the negative side, they also believe that he is not honest or even-tempered, doesn’t not care about the ‘ordinary people’ and is a bad role model.
It’s a fascinating mix of insights reflecting the views of a country which has just overwhelmingly elected him to the office of President.
Pollsters Predictions
That research above was from Pew. I also looked at research from Brookings and they took a different angle on the recent elections. Their research revolved around the inaccuracy of the polls. The fact that pollsters underestimated the size of Donald Trump’s support. They believe that the Trump figures were wrong by 3 percentage points , while the Harris figures were correct.
The Brookings Institute tried to offer reasons for this inaccuracy. They had no conclusions – but some interesting thoughts on the matter. The inability to call the level of Trump support accurately might be due to some Trump supporters simply not taking calls from pollsters. Or, it might be that the criteria used to create the persona of “likely” voters is wrong. Either way, there is a belief that this was not a sudden surge to the Trump campaign. These voters were Trump voters all along, sitting in plain sight of the pollsters, who were unable to see them. Polling itself and the methods used to calculate results will need a radical overhaul if the future of pollsters is to be assured.
Conclusion
So , what do we learn in the end? That people are complex. That messages need to be simple to be understood. That voters rally to clarity. That people vote to support positions that reflect their key focus. That, perhaps, they make election decisions based on policy, in the round, and not on softer personality traits, like being good tempered, or ethical issues like honesty.
And we learned what we all knew on election night – that the pollsters got it wrong!
Query:
“latest public opinion research about Donald Trump” 04.12.2024
Sources:
https://beta.mettacomms.com/query_research
with direct links to:
- https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/11/22/views-of-trump-personal-traits-confidence-on-issues-ideology/
- https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/11/22/public-narrowly-approves-of-trumps-plans-most-are-skeptical-he-will-unify-the-country/
- https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-polls-underestimated-trumps-support-again/
