Polls you might have missed, indictment #3 edition
There were a few other things happening, plus some good indictment context that isn't horserace
Welcome to my weekly roundup of polls you might have missed. As a reminder, this newsletter will not include horserace as a general rule unless there is something unique to discuss. However, that does not mean avoiding the election context or former President Donald Trump’s indictments. In fact, let’s start with some non-horserace polls that offer context to the race and indictments:
Links 1 & 2: Important context to the latest Trump indictment
First up, we have a new CNN poll showing that the proportion of Republicans (in this case, Republicans plus independents who lean Republican) who think the 2020 election was stolen from Trump has increased again to 69 percent, up from 63 percent earlier this year. It’s not a huge jump, and I’ve seen numbers up around the 70 percentage point mark in other polls previously, but the change is a significant one. Interestingly, the proportion of Republicans plus leaners who think there is concrete evidence of election fraud is much lower at 39 percent. The additional 30 percent are “suspicious.”
Notably, the poll was conducted before the public knew Trump was indicted for attempts to change the election outcome, and we don’t know if that will move people. My personal expectation is that it won’t move very many Republicans, but as always, I could be wrong.
Relatedly…
Reuters-Ipsos did a post-indictment poll that shows some potential cracks in support for Trump, even as most horserace data shows little movement. This poll asked Republicans if they would vote for Trump if he gets convicted of a felony crime, to which 35 percent said yes, 45 percent said no, and the rest were unsure.
Now, I would caution against taking these figures completely at face-value; reality would depend a lot on the other alternatives to vote for, the particular conviction, and plenty of other factors. It’s also possible that there is a bit of social desirability in these poll responses — like, you’re probably not supposed to say you’ll vote for a criminal, right? Clearly that wasn’t a factor for everyone, but we have to consider it. The headline does a good job of hedging.
For a more academic read:
Academics have shown that people who say the election was stolen generally seem to believe it (i.e., it’s not just expressive responding - saying what they think their partisanship indicates they should say).
See also this new work from the Polarization Research Lab that argues efforts to hold Trump accountable are not hurting democracy.
Link #3: Perceptions of presidential ethics have declined, regardless of party in power
Another entry from Gallup’s treasure trove of historical and current polling data: Perceptions of presidential administrations’ ethical standards going back to Ronald Reagan.
Here’s the key chart:
Notice that there’s not a ton of variance here, and it has generally gone down over time, regardless of the party holding the presidency. Trump is a low point, but not by much at all - 37-38 percent, compared to Biden’s 42. Also notice that George W. Bush’s high point was likely false inflation in the immediate post-9/11 context; the two unlabeled dots that fit the trend are from later in his presidency. All of this tracks with general decreases in trust that we’re seeing throughout U.S.
Links #4 & 5: Young people are not super fond of either side of ideological/partisan divides
This chart, as published in The Hill with data from the “Monitoring the Future Survey” at the University of Michigan, took over some sectors of Twitter this week (I will call it Twitter forever, probably, but yes it has been rebranded as X):
The similar chart for girls shows them becoming more liberal. Some took this as a reason to panic about the future state of dating and marriage (not a new panic; we’ve seen it before) - but those people clearly missed the y-axis. The modal response for boys was to not choose conservative or liberal, and the uptick in conservative is a whopping 5 percentage points from a low of 17 percent to the 2023 reading of 23 percent. Girls have shifted farther in the liberal direction and are more likely to have an orientation overall, but still only about half gave an answer (30 percent liberal, 12 percent conservative).
Relatedly…
In JDV on Gen Z, John Della Volpe shows that much of the No Labels/third party interest we see in surveys is coming from younger voters who are disillusioned by pretty much all of politics. In the SocialSphere data, Gen Z and Millennials are the most likely to consider voting for Joe Manchin and Cornel West as third party candidates, and it’s not particularly close.
There seems to be a general theme in most survey data that younger people don’t think the system is really working. If you consider the time frame of Millennials’ and Gen Z’s lives, it’s not that surprising. I’d love to see elder and younger Millennials split out more frequently - because I do think there’s a divide in the Millennial group between those of us who clearly know what pre-9/11 and pre-internet life was like and those who don’t really remember. (Bias disclosure: I am an elder Millennial who usually has more in common with Gen X than with young Millennials.)
Link #6: Back to CNN, this time about Ukraine
This one surprised me. In CNN’s latest poll, 55 percent of Americans say we shouldn’t give more aid to Ukraine in their war against the Russian invasion. I knew partisan splits were widening, with Republicans becoming less favorable to supporting Ukraine, but that the overall population has crossed over into majority not supporting additional aid was an eye-popper for me. About half of Americans say we’ve done enough to support Ukraine.
Interestingly, younger and older people are more likely to support additional spending, while those ages 35-64 are much more likely to oppose it.
At any rate, this could become a larger issue in the near future if public opinion continues to turn against supporting Ukraine financially.
Bonus: not a poll, but…
It’s pretty amazing that NASA basically shouted over 12 billion miles into space and got the Voyager 2 to listen. That’s some pretty effective yelling.