Keep right

 A few days ago, the New York Times published an opinion piece  by Matthew Schmitz which said that Donald Trump "isn’t edging ahead of Mr. Biden in swing states because Americans are eager to submit to authoritarianism.  . . . Mr. Trump enjoys enduring support because he is perceived by many voters — often with good reason — as a pragmatic if unpredictable kind of moderate."  This was once true-- September 2016, a survey found that only 47% thought that Trump was a conservative, compared to about 60% for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008.  But a lot has happened since 2016--is it still true?  In November 2023, a survey sponsored by Marquette Law School found that 78% thought Trump was conservative.  That is, perceptions are very different today than they were in 2016.   Comparing Trump with some Republican presidents and candidates from the past:

                                    VL    SL    M     SC  VC   DK   mean

Reagan 04/1980           5 15 33 30 7 10 0.21
Reagan 01/1981         2 7 15 38 24 15 0.87
Reagan 01/1983    4 7 16 28 28 16 0.83
Reagan 02/1984     4 10 31 26 19 10 0.51
Bush 06/1999         2 12 27 31 9 19 0.41
Bush 01/2000      3 11 19 38 10 19 0.51
Bush 03/2000         6 13 22 31 17 11 0.45
Bush 10/2000         5 10 18 39 20 8 0.64
Bush 11/2003         6 9 19 39 22 5 0.65
Bush 07/2004         2 6 19 43 24 5 0.86
McCain 12/2007         2 8 32 39 6 12 0.45
Romney 12/2007         1 8 22 39 8 21 0.58
McCain 01/2008         2 10 27 35 7 19 0.43
McCain 03/2008         4 7 31 29 17 12 0.55
McCain 06/2008         2 8 34 29 19 8 0.60
McCain 10/2008         2 8 26 45 17 3 0.68
Romney 12/2011         2 9 53 22 7 7 0.25
Romney 10/2012         5 9 21 40 16 9 0.58
Romney 11/2012         4 5 26 37 19 9 0.68
Trump 09/2016         8 12 21 30 17 13 0.41
Trump 07/2022         6 4 11 30 48 1 1.11
Trump 11/2023         7 3 13 30 48 0 1.08

Unfortunately, the question doesn't seem to have been asked between 2016 and 2022, so we can't say just when perceptions changed, but they have definitely changed--Trump is now seen as more conservative than GW Bush, Romney, or even Reagan ever was.  This isn't surprising, because he governed as a conservative Republican (as Alan Abramowitz, a professor of Political Science at Emory University, pointed out in a letter to the editor today).  As far as why Trump leads Biden in most recent polls, a more likely explanation is the tradition of the two-party system--if people don't think Biden is doing a good job, they turn to the Republicans.  And Republican elites haven't made an effort to discredit Trump or push him aside, so ordinary voters treat him as a normal representative of the party.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Not what it seems

 A day or two ago, a column by Bret Stephens said a Harvard/Harris poll  "finds that 44 percent of Americans ages 25 to 34, and a whopping 67 percent of those ages 18 to 24, agree with the proposition that 'Jews as a class are oppressors.' . . . . The same generation that received the most instruction in the virtues of tolerance is now the most antisemitic in recent memory."  I've seen several other references to that poll since then.  The full question is "Do you think that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?"  Some people have observed that other recent surveys suggest much lower levels of anti-Semitism.  But then how do you explain the Harvard/Harris results?  I think that the key is in a question that comes just before "There is an ideology that white people are oppressors and nonwhite people and people of certain groups have been oppressed and as a result should be favored today at universities and for employment. Do you support or oppose this ideology?"    That's followed by a question on "Do you think this ideology is helpful or hurtful to our society?" and then the question about whether Jews are oppressors.  Comparing the percent agreeing that white people and Jews are oppressors by age:

              Whites           Jews

18-24      79%              67%
25-34      49%              44%
35-44      39%              36%
45-54      33%              24%
55-64      26%              15%
65+         19%                9%

Support for the statement that Jews are oppressors is consistently a little lower than support for the statement that white people are oppressors.  So the most plausible interpretation of the results for that question is that most people who agreed that white people are oppressors regard Jews as white people rather than "nonwhite people and people of certain groups."  In any case, if you accept the results for the question on Jews as evidence of widespread anti-Semitism among young people, you have to accept the results for the previous question as evidence of even more widespread "anti-whitism."  My interpretation of the results on the first question is that people treated it as about general recognition of racial injustice and/or support for affirmative action, although it's so badly worded that it's hard to be sure.  

A couple of other points on the Harvard/Harris survey:
1.  The general direction of the age differences is reasonable, but they seem implausibly large for many questions.  I suspect there's something wrong with either their sample (an online panel) or their weighting.
2.  Many of the questions could serve as examples of things to avoid when writing survey questions.  

And on anti-Semitism:
1.  I think that, like other kinds of ethnic and religious prejudice, it is declining, and there's less of it in younger generations.
2.  However, more than other kinds of prejudice, anti-Semitism tends to be elaborated into a comprehensive world-view.  That makes it more harmful than the numbers alone would suggest.
3.  There is an anti-Semitism of the left.  People on the left used to be aware of this--"anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools" was a well-known expression in the early days of the German Social Democratic Party--but I think that recognition has faded, and leftists now often assume that anti-Semitism just involves people like Richard Spencer and isn't something they need to look out for on their side.  

And the echo answered "fraud!"

 I have an account on Truth Social, and I check it from time to time to see what Donald Trump is saying.  He recently posted a story from Breitbart about a survey by Rasmussen Reports.  According to the story "more than 1-in-5 voters who submitted ballots by mail say they did so fraudulently."  This isn't just some Twitter "poll"--Rasmussen has decent record of accuracy in predicting elections (a B rating from 538)--so it deserves a closer look.  

The survey found the 30% of the sample said they voted by mail in the 2020 election.  Those who said they did were asked "did a friend or family member fill out your ballot, in part or in full, on your behalf" (19% yes); "did you fill out a ballot, in part or in full, on behalf of a friend or family member, such as a spouse or child?" (21% yes); "did you cast a mail-in ballot in a state where you were no longer a permanent resident? (17% yes); "did you sign a ballot or ballot envelope on behalf of a friend or family member, with or without his or her permission?" (17% yes).  Everyone was asked three additional questions whether "a friend, family member, or organization, such as a political party, offer to pay or reward you for voting?" (8% yes); whether "you know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted to you that he or she cast a mail-in ballot in 2020 in a state other than his or her state of permanent residence?" (10% yes); and whether "you know a friend, family member, co-worker, or other acquaintance who has admitted to you that he or she filled out a ballot on behalf of another person?" (11% yes).  

Rasmussen didn't release the original data, but they provided a detailed breakdown of responses.  In looking at that, I noticed something strange--people who said they voted for Trump were likely to say that they had done these things.  For example, among people who voted by mail, 26% of Trump voters and 14% of Biden voters said that a friend or family member had filled in their ballot.  A larger fraction of Biden voters voted by mail (36% vs. 23%), so overall, .23*.26=.060 or 6% of Trump voters and .36*.13=.050 or 5% of Biden voters said that someone else had filled in their ballot.  The total percent of voters who answered yes on each question:

                                                                   Trump                Biden

Someone else filled in your ballot                  6.0%                5.0%
You filled out someone else's                         6.9%                4.7%
Signed someone else's                                    5.3%                4.0%

So if you accept the data, Trump voters were more likely to engage in "fraud" than Biden voters.

 For the questions asked of everyone:

Offer of reward                                               6%                    9%
Know out-of-state voter                                13%                    8%
Know someone who filled out other's           12%                    9%

There was also another odd pattern in the data.  For all of the questions, people in the youngest age group (18-39) were more likely to answer yes--a lot more likely.  For example, 33% of people aged 18-39, 9% of people aged 40-64, and 1% of people aged 65% said that they had signed someone else's ballot.  Of course, there is sampling error, but these aren't tiny groups--there are roughly 100 absentee voters in each age group.  Since people in the youngest age group were more likely to have voted for Biden, the tendency for Trump voters to be more likely to report irregularities would be even stronger after controlling for age.   The age differences are also present in the questions asked of everyone--19% of 18-39 year olds, 7% of 40-64 year olds, and 3% of people over 65 said they knew someone who admitted casting a ballot in a state of which they weren't a resident.  

How can you explain the age differences? I doubt that there has been a dramatic increase in propensity to violate the rules for mail in ballots (and to tell friends, family members, and acquaintances that you've violated the rules) across the generations.  Rasmussen has a statement on their methodology that might provide an answer.  Their sample is mostly obtained by random-digit dialing of phone numbers, but "to reach those who have abandoned traditional landline telephones, Rasmussen Reports uses an online survey tool to interview randomly selected participants from  a demographically diverse panel." Unlike most survey organizations, Rasmussen doesn't use live interviewers--there's a recorded voice and people answer by "press 1 for yes, 2 for no....."  I suspect that people are more likely to give a false answer with this format than when speaking to a person, and because Trump has been saying that there was fraud in mail voting, Trump voters may have wanted to help give evidence of fraud.**  This tendency is likely to be stronger in the panel--since they are regularly asked to do surveys (and probably are generally more online), they are likely to have a better sense of how the results will be used.  People without landlines tend to be young, so the panel probably makes up a much larger share of the 18-39 group.  So my hypothesis is that many of the "yes" answers are a result of Trump voters (especially in the panel) giving answers that they think will help to make Trump's case that there was a lot of fraud in the election.   Another factor is that people in the online panel are presumably given some compensation for participating in the surveys, so they may rush through without paying much attention.  Most organizations make some effort to identify people like this and remove them from the sample, but they are usually pretty crude and Rasmussen doesn't say anything about whether and how they do it.  So some of the "yes" answers, especially in the youngest cohort, may be people who are essentially answering at random.  

*The "no longer a permanent resident" question was left out of the table.  

**The question about who you voted for was asked before the questions on voting irregularities--that is, people answered it before they knew what the survey would be about.  

Do you know what I mean?

 There's been a lot of discussion of the evasive answers given by the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT to a question on whether a call for genocide against the Jewish people would violate their institution's code of conduct.  But one point that has rarely been mentioned is that there's no evidence that anyone at those universities, or any other university, has called for genocide against the Jewish people.  The premise of the question was that certain slogans , like "from the river to the sea," are equivalent to calls for genocide.   

What do people who say "from the river to the sea" mean?  I think that the great majority would say they want a secular state encompassing what is now Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank in which Jews, Muslims, and people of other religions all are equal.  It's easy to see why this vision would be appealing, especially for Americans.  Of course, you could object that it's naive and unrealistic, but student politics (and let's face it, faculty politics too) often involves taking stands on principle with little regard to practicality.  

There is a poll that bears on this issue--it has a question on whether Israel should "remain a Jewish state," "become a mixed state in which Palestinians have a major share of power," or "should no longer exist as an independent country."  Unfortunately, it's from 2002, but it's the only one I could find that asks about general vision for the future.  Overall, 42% said Israel should remain a Jewish state, 39% that it should become a mixed state, 6% that it should no longer exist, and 14% didn't know.  Some factors that were related to opinions (from now on, the base for the percentages excludes don't knows):
1.  Religion--there were only 19 Jews in the sample, and all 19 said Israel should remain a Jewish state.  Among Protestants, 56% said it should remain a Jewish state, 37% that it should become a mixed state; Catholics favored a mixed state by 60%-34%.  People with no religion were in between.  
2.  Race--blacks were more likely to say Israel should not exist (18%-6%).  Support for a mixed state was highest among Hispanics (53%).
3.  Education--more educated people were more likely to say Israel should become a mixed state and less likely to say it should not exist, but the differences were not very big (50%-39%-11% among people without a high school degree, 47%-49%-5% among college graduates).  
4.   Age--younger people were more likely to say that Israel should become a mixed state--support for that option fell from 54% among people aged 18-29 to 31% among people aged 65 and above.  
5.  Party--Republicans were somewhat more likely to say Israel should remain a Jewish state, and Democrats more likely to favor the other two options.  But the highest support for a "mixed state" was among independents (57%, against 39% among both Democrats and Republicans).  Independents tend to have less political knowledge and interest, so I think this shows that the mixed position has an intuitive appeal.  

These results raise a question of why political elites pretend the "mixed" position doesn't exist rather than trying to explain why it wouldn't work.  Of course, part of the answer is just the search for political advantage--discrediting an opinion is often more appealing than engaging with it.  Another is that it's a fringe position among political elites, so they don't realize that it's fairly popular among the public.  And finally, there's the "anti-elitist" mood that I've remarked on before:  people who (rightly) say that we should try to understand working-class Trump voters rather than just condemning them as racist will go straight to condemning college students, especially Ivy Leaguers, as anti-Semitic.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Changing views of Israel?

In the last few months, strongly negative views of Israel have been more prominent than they have been in the past.  Does this reflect a change in general public opinion?  In 1956, 1966, and then frequently from the 1970s to the 1990s, there were questions asking people to rate Israel on a scale of -5 to +5.  Since the 1980s, there have been frequent questions asking if you have very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable, or very unfavorable views of Israel.  The figure shows the percent holding strongly negative views--"very unfavorable" or  -4 and -5 on the -5 to +5 scale.  (I started from the present and worked backwards, so "Form 1" is the newer question and "Form 2" is the older one).

Over the long term, there is no trend.  Although there's a lot of short-term variation among surveys, it seems like there was an increase in the 1980s and then a decline in the 1990s, but since then it's been pretty steady (at least until the last survey in February 2023).  I don't recall the history well enough to offer an explanation for the change in the 1980s-90s.   

So the change in political discourse apparently doesn't reflect a change in the overall distribution of views.  But what about the social location of anti-Israel views?  The General Social Survey regularly asked the -5 to +5 question from the 1970s to the 1990s, so I got breakdowns by some demographic groups and compared them to the average from the last four Gallup surveys (2020-23)

                                            Strongly Unfavorable Views of Israel

                             
                                          1970s-90s                 2020s
White                                     10%                        5%                       
Non-white                             13%                        13%

18-34                                      11%                       10%
35-54                                        9%                         8%
55-64                                      12%                         6%

Republican                               9%                          5%
Independent                             10%                         9%
Democrat                                 11%                        10%

Conservative                              9%                          5%
Moderate                                  11%                          9%
Liberal                                      10%                         11%

College grad                               6%                           6%
Not college grad                        12%                          9%

The differences by race, age, party, and ideology were small in the GSS sample--strongly negative views of Israel were scattered about equally among all of those groups.  In recent years, however, there is a pattern--strongly negative views are more common among younger people, non-whites, liberals, and Democrats.  So they now have more of a definite social location.  But education is different--the gap has become smaller.  Despite the attention given to anti-Israel views in universities, particularly elite universities, strongly negative views of Israel remain more common among less educated people.  How do you reconcile this with the apparent strength of anti-Israel views at universities, especially elite universities?  It's possible that there's an interaction involving education and age--that anti-Israel views are common among  college students or young college graduates.  I can't check this, since I don't have access to the individual-level data for recent surveys, but I don't think that it's likely to be more than a secondary factor.  I think this is a case where advocates of a minority view are unwilling to or don't feel the need to moderate their demands in order to appeal to the majority.  This is somewhat unusual, but not remarkably so--for example, you also see it with abortion (on both sides), and the Freedom Caucus approach to government spending.  I don't know of any attempts to explain when and why it happens, although it seems like an important issue.   

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]