Above and below

 Many people have observed that in the last 5 or 10 years, a gap has emerged between public ratings of economic conditions and standard measures like unemployment and inflation:  people say that the economy is bad even when the statistics look pretty good.  One view is that the gap is due to politics or the nature of media coverage; the other is that it's because the standard statistics miss something about people's experience of the economy.  In the New York Times, David French writes that he used to favor the first view, but has now shifted to the second.   He says that what the standard statistics miss is the development of complex pricing systems; rather than offering a standard product at a standard price, companies now offer different levels at different prices.  For example, airlines used to distinguish between first class, business class, and economy--now they make a lot of additional distinctions, charging for a little bit of extra legroom, boarding in the first group, and so on.  His idea is that now people are constantly being reminded that other people are getting premium service--they are discontented because they're more aware of what they are missing.  

This change seems likely to have had the most impact on the middle and upper-middle classes:  people who could afford something beyond the necessities, but not at the premium level.  You have to be able to afford to fly before you're aware of all the extras you can't afford.   Since 1972, the General Social Survey has asked "Compared with American families in general, would you say your family income is far below average, below average, average, above average, or far above average?"  If people have reacted in the way that French suggests, the percent who see themselves as "average" or "above average" will have declined in the last decade or so.

The percent who say their income is average:

That's been declining pretty steadily over the whole period.  Now, (somewhat) above and below average.  

They both go up and down with short-term economic conditions--for example, below average rose and above average fell from 2008 to 2010.  But they both have upward trends, and the percent rating themselves as "above average" reached its highest level ever in 2024.  

Finally, far above and far below average:

They both have clear upward trends.  

The basic pattern is that there's more dispersion, but no change in the mean.  In a general way, this matches real changes in the distribution of income:  inequality has increased since the 1970s.  Although the increase has slowed down or stopped in the last 15 years or so, it may take time for people to become aware of that.  In any case, average ratings of your relative economic position haven't declined in recent years.

Although French identifies a real change, it doesn't seem to have affected people's perceptions of their economic position.  I think that's because it can work in both directions--people may look up at the people who get something better, but they may also look at those who get something worse and congratulate themselves at being able to afford an upgrade.  There are also people who could afford an upgrade but pass it up and congratulate themselves at getting a bargain.  

So we're still left with the paradox:  people think their own economic situation is pretty good, but that "the economy" is in bad shape.  Of course, this is just one possible comparison:  looking at other people today.   Another comparison that people talk about is with previous generations:  for example, where your parents were at the same age.  I'll look at that in my next post.

Whose idea was that?

A lot of the commentary after Paul Ehrlich's death said that his ideas were popular among liberals and/or "elites."  For example, Nicholas Eberstadt writes:  "In retrospect, what may look most amazing about Ehrlich’s career is the company he managed to keep. Despite his harsh and jarring rhetoric, his strident ideology, and his proclivity for veering off toward pseudo-science, Ehrlich was embraced into the bosom of the American academy. .... But perhaps this shouldn’t surprise at all. Though polemical and extreme in so many of his formulations, Ehrlich’s pronouncements on the human condition were largely in consonance with the moral panic about the 'population explosion' that swept through the American Establishment during the Cold War era."* But the New York Times obituary mentioned a detail that suggests a different possibility--Ehrlich was a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.  So maybe his ideas were popular among the sort of people who watched the Tonight Show:  that is, a broad range of people.  

In 1974, a Gallup Poll asked "SOME PEOPLE FEEL THAT THE WORLD WILL REACH THE POINT SOMEDAY WHERE, BECAUSE OF POPULATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH, THERE WON'T BE ENOUGH WATER, LAND, FOOD, AND OTHER NATURAL RESOURCES FOR EVERYBODY. OTHER PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT THE WORLD CAN CONTINUE TO GROW WITHOUT RUNNING INTO SERIOUS SHORTAGES BECAUSE SOMEBODY WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS. DO YOU, YOURSELF, FEEL THAT SOONER OR LATER WORLD POPULATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH WILL HAVE TO BE REGULATED TO AVOID SERIOUS SHORTAGES, OR NOT?"  62% said yes and 30% said no.  It was asked again in 1976:   65% said yes and 27% said no.  

Using the 1976 survey, here are "yes" answers by self-rated ideology 

Very liberal                                54%                
Moderately liberal                     76%
Middle of the road                     74%

Moderately conservative            66%
Very conservative                       58%
Don't know                                 70%

Support seems to have been somewhat higher in the middle (and those who didn't choose a label) and lower in the extremes.  Why wasn't there a straightforward relationship?  I think it's because there were two offsetting factors:  on the one hand, environmentalism was associated with concern about overpopulation; on the other hand, the Malthusian position suggested that trying to help poor people would be futile or harmful, giving it an affinity with conservatism, 

Not college graduate                      67%

College graduate                            79%

College graduates were more likely to think that regulation would be necessary.  But if we restrict it to whites:

Not college graduate                      73%

College graduate                            80%

The difference by education is smaller (and not statistically significant).  The reason that restricting it to whites makes a difference is that blacks were much less likely to think that regulation would be necessary (divided about 50/50) and less likely to be college graduates.  I considered a few other group differences:  men and younger people were a bit more likely to agree, and there were no clear differences by religion.  I'm not sure why race was so important--I just tried it because it's a standard control variable.  But the general point is that it wasn't just the "Establishment": most people were concerned about the "population explosion," to the point of supporting a policy that would now be regarded as pretty extreme. That's not hard to understand:  world population was growing rapidly, and people often think in terms of a fixed stock of resources.  

*As a sociologist, I have to note that this is an example of the dumbing down of the term "moral panic" to  be just a way of dismissing something as not a real problem.  In the original sense, the "moral" part was important.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Bad to worse?

In late 2022, I had a couple of posts about perceptions of moral conditions.  I concluded that assessments had become more negative in the 1960s, and after that there might have been some further decline.  It turns out that Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert were doing a similar study, which was published in Nature in 2023.  Their conclusions are completely different:

"A linear model indicated that the proportion of participants who reported moral decline was not significantly influenced by the year in which the survey was administered, b = 0.07, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [−0.11, 0.24], t(175) = 0.77, P = 0.45, adjusted R2 = −0.002, and the same model fit in a Bayesian framework indicated strong evidence of no effect (Bayes Factor of 0.04), which is to say that US Americans have been reporting moral decline at the same rate for as long as researchers have been asking them about it. (These and all tests we report are two-tailed)."

A problem with their model is that it omits a potentially important variable, or a lot of potentially important variables, depending on how you look at it--the specific question asked.*  Their sample of 177 cases includes over 70 distinct questions.  Some of these differences are small, but some are substantial.   For example, "Would you say that people are more willing, less willing, or about as willing to help their neighbors as they were twenty-five years ago?" and "In the last eight years, do you think crime has increased, decreased, or stayed about the same?" are clearly different questions, although they both involve the general topic of change in moral conditions.  So you should consider a model that includes dummy variables for the different questions in addition to the time trend.  The data set is not available to the public (the numbers are the property of the data archives), so I can't fit that model.  However, I can consider two questions that were asked frequently (data are available from the Roper Center).  One is "how satisfied are you with the direction that the country is going in at this time in terms of morals and ethics?...Very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, not very satisfied, not at all satisfied"; the other is "right now, do you think the state of moral values in this country as a whole is getting better or getting worse?"

  The figure shows positive minus negative responses to both questions over time.  For the first question, there is a clear downward trend (a t-ratio of about 10 if you regress the summary measure on time).  For the second, there's no clear trend, but the numbers are consistent with the hypothesis of a drop after 2004.  In addition to the trend, the responses for the first question show some short-term variation--e.g., opinions were more positive in October-December 2001 than in January-March 2001.  It's easy to think of an explanation for that.  

While I'm at it, here's the estimated assessment of moral conditions, adjusting for question, in the data set that I compiled.  It's not the same as the Mastroianni/Gilbert data, but there's some overlap--mine includes the "getting better or getting worse" question, but not "how satisfied are you with the direction."

*Another problem is the appeal to a "Bayesian framework" to claim that there is positive evidence of no change, but I've written about that at length here and here, so I'll leave that aside for now.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

No problem

 Adrian Vermeule, a professor at Harvard Law School, writes that "the Supreme Court faces a serious problem in the court of public opinion . . . . If the Court, having invalidated the President’s tariffs, also invalidates the birthright citizenship order . .   the Court will have invalidated the President’s two main or signature issues, on which he has campaigned since 2016 and twice won the Presidency."  

In the past year, a number of surveys have asked about birthright citizenship.  The wording varies, so I'll summarize by giving percent in favor of keeping birthright citizenship and percent in favor of eliminating it:

                     Keep     Eliminate
Jan 2025       61%          30%
Jan 2025       56%          43%
Feb 2025       55%          31%
Feb 2025       56%          39%
April 2025     67%          31%
May 2025      54%          28%
June 2025      74%          23%
June 2025      64%          31%
Nov 2025      72%          28%
Dec 2025       70%         24%

Average          63%        31%

All ten surveys showed a majority in favor of keeping birthright citizenship.  The narrowest margin (56%-43%) was for a question that mentioned Trump's executive order: "As you may know, Donald Trump signed an executive order arguing that children born in the United States are only US citizens by birth if they have at least one parent who is a US citizen or a legal permanent resident. Several states and outside groups have sued the Trump administration, arguing that there is a longstanding constitutional guarantee that children born in the US are automatically US citizens by birth. All in all, do you approve or disapprove of Trump's executive order limiting citizenship?"   The widest margin (72%-28%) was for "The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments asking whether the 14th Amendment’s provision that those 'born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,' are U.S. citizens was intended to only apply to newly freed slaves after the Civil War and should not apply to a non-citizen‘s child who is born in the United States today. How do you think the Supreme Court should rule?"  There were some questions that just asked for opinions without giving arguments on either side:  for example, in May 2025 "Do you support or oppose . . . ending birthright citizenship, which makes anyone born in the United States a citizen" got 28% support and 54% opposed.  Although the small number of surveys and variation in wording means that there's a lot of uncertainty, support for birthright citizenship may have increased over the year.  But clearly the Supreme Court will have more trouble in the "court of public opinion" if it supports Trump than if it opposes him on this issue.  

I found only three questions on the subject before 2025--one from late 2024, one from 2023, and one from 2015.  This is relevent to Vermeule's claim that it is "one of his signature issues, on which he has campaigned since 2016."  The general idea of "getting tough" on illegal immigration was certainly a central part of Trump's appeal, but ending birthright citizenship was not a major issue.  The Trump Social Media Archive shows only one mention of birthright citizenship during the 2016 campaign (charging that Ted Cruz had changed positions, but not giving Trump's own position) and none in 2020.  There were a few in 2024 reposting articles supporting Trump's position, but nothing in his own words.  That is, he didn't campaign on the issue--he (or Stephen Miller) just decided to elevate it after his election.   This is part of a general pattern in which the second Trump administration has been more extreme than the first.  After January 6, 2021, mainstream Republicans temporarily distanced themselves from him, and the people who stuck with Trump during his exile have had a lot of influence in his second term.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]  

Old and new

 I'll start with the new.  The SAVE Act requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.  If it were implemented, which party would it help?  The most convenient form of proof is a passport--of course, people who don't have a passport could assemble the necessary documentation, but it's safe to say that many of them would not get around to doing it.   There aren't many surveys that include questions about both passports and politics, but Pew had one in February 2016.  52.5% of Democrats and 46% of Republicans said they had a passport; independents were in between at 48%.  The survey didn't have any questions about anticipated vote in November, but it did ask who they wanted to get their party's nomination.  Among Republicans who had a passport, John Kasich led with 33%, followed by Ted Cruz with 23% and Donald Trump with 20% (the rest were undecided or scattered among other candidates).  Among Republicans without a passport, Trump led with 31%, then Cruz with 25%, and Kasich third with 20%.  The difference by passport status was smaller but still apparent after controlling for education.   That is, if this pattern held today, it's not just Republicans that would be more affected, but especially Trump's base.  I think the pattern would hold, because distrust of foreign countries is a central part of Trump's worldview, and people who distrust foreign countries are less likely to be interested in getting a passport.  

And now, following up on two older posts:

1.  In Munich, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that high levels of inequality were to blame for the growing strength of authoritarian movements.  In December, I had a post about a paper by Eli Rau and Susan Stokes which found that income inequality was associated with a higher risk of "democratic erosion."  I found that this was still the case after controlling for another potential influence, presidential vs. parliamentary system.  Rau and Stokes noted that "democratic erosion" was becoming more common, and suggested that inequality could explain this trend:  they spoke of "the suspicion that rising inequality is playing a role in the wave of cases of democratic erosion."  However, they didn't directly look at changes in inequality.  This is the average of their measure of inequality by year (adjusting for changes in the nations in the sample):

It peaked around 2005, and in 2020 was lower than it had been in 1995.  Although nations with higher inequality seem to have higher risk of democratic erosion, inequality is not behind the rise in democratic erosion.

2.  My most recent post was about the difference between two presidential ratings:  one by political scientists, the other by a collection of conservative journalists, activists, and academics.  I compared ratings by the conservative (PragerU) sample to Republicans in the political science (APSA) sample and concluded that the differences weren't entirely due to ideology.  It occurred to me that I could improve the analysis by considering party differences in the APSA sample.  That is, maybe rankings depend on ideology and the PragerU sample was farther to the right than the APSA Republicans were.  You can estimate a model where the rating of each president by each group is the product of scores for the president and the sample.  If you do this, the difference between PragerU and the APSA Republicans is about 1.5 times as large as the difference between APSA Republicans and Democrats.  If you fit this model, the largest residuals (by absolute value) are for McKinley, Kennedy, GW Bush, Polk, Taft, and Madison.  McKinley, Bush, Taft and Polk get relatively better ratings from APSA Republicans, and Kennedy and Madison get relatively better ratings from PragerU.  For most presidents, the APSA Republican ratings are in between the APSA Democrats and PragerU; for these six, the PragerU ratings are in between the two APSA groups.  For example, LBJ got 74 from APSA Democrats, 55 from APSA Republicans, and 35 from PragerU; JFK got 66, 50, and 57.

In a general way, my conclusion that there was something beyond politics holds up, but my focus on Wilson and Coolidge was misplaced.  Basically, there's a big ideological/partisan difference in the rating of these presidents, which shows up within the APSA sample and between the APSA Republicans and PragerU.  As far as what that "something" is, I would say it reflects differences in knowledge.  For example, I gather that most experts regard Polk as an effective president, although there's disagreement about the merits of his policies (Republicans tend to be more favorable).  APSA Republicans would know that, while for many in the PragerU sample, he would just be another one of the nondescript run of presidents who came in between Jackson and Lincoln.   In my last post, I also said that the PragerU sample gave higher ratings to pre-1900 presidents; there's still some evidence for that, although it's weaker than in my previous analysis.

[Some data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

More than politics

 A New York Times story yesterday said that the conservative organization PragerU had just released ratings of the American presidents, and that their top scores went to Washington, Lincoln, Reagan, and Calvin Coolidge.  In contrast, a survey of members of the Presidents and Executive Politics section of the American Political Science Association in 2017-8 placed Lincoln, Washington, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt at the top.  PragerU suggested that the differences reflected politics:   "most presidential rankings have come from a narrow, left-leaning perspective."  However, although the APSA sample was mostly Democrats, 13% were Republicans and 30% were independents or other parties.  It's possible to calculate the scores for respondents of each party from the information in this paper by Brandon Rottinghaus, George Eady, and Justin Vaughn.  The figure shows the mean rating for each president among Democrats and Republicans in the APSA sample.

There is some tendency to rate presidents of one's own party more favorably, but there's a lot of consensus:  among Republicans, the top four is Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and Teddy Roosevelt; among Democrats, it's Lincoln, FDR, Washington, and Teddy Roosevelt.  Considering all presidents, the correlation between APSA Republicans and Democrats is .899, while the correlation between APSA Republicans and PragerU respondents is .765.*

The next difference shows the difference between the PragerU and APSA Republican ratings by president in chronological order.**

The PragerU respondents gave higher ratings to almost all of the 18th and 19th century presidents:  18 of the first 21 presidents were rated higher in the PragerU surveys.  Starting with McKinley (elected in 1896), there's more variation.  Coolidge is rated 24.9 points higher in the Prager survey, by far the largest positive difference (Harding is second with 15.1).  Reagan is also rated higher, but it's not an especially big gap--only the 10th largest positive difference.  On the other side, Wilson, FDR, Johnson, and Obama are rated far lower by the Prager respondents.

What accounts for these differences between two samples of Republicans?  One factor is that the the Prager respondents are probably more conservative than the APSA Republicans.  The other is that although Prager says that "we reached out to scholars and experts," many of their respondents are journalists, political activists, or talk show hosts, and most of the academics don't seem to focus on the presidency.   Rather than "experts", I'd call them "intellectuals" in Hayek's sense of "second-hand dealers in ideas." An idea that has become popular on the right is that early in the 20th century, progressives set aside the Constitution and established the "administrative state."  Wilson is the leading villain in this story, but T. Roosevelt and Taft are also implicated, and the Prager respondents rate them lower than APSA Republicans do.   On the other side, Coolidge gets credit for fighting a last-ditch effort to protect the Constitution.   This account hasn't trickled down from leading conservative scholars--it's developed within the movement.  I think the case illustrates a more general point.  A passage from Keynes is often quoted:  "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. . . .  Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back."  He's right about the power of ideas, but often (usually?) those ideas don't come from economists and political philosophers, but from journalists, popular historians, and freelancers.  In fact, sometimes academics (not so much economists, but other social scientists) find themselves following the same influences.   

* Prager didn't ask about Trump and the APSA survey took place before Biden became president, so they are excluded.  Prager also omitted Garfield and William Henry Harrison, who only served briefly.  

**Prager ratings were on a 0-10 scale and the APSA ratings were 0-100.  For this comparison, I converted the Prager ratings to 0-100. 

The (roughly) three percent

At one time, it was often said that almost all Americans thought of themselves as part of the middle class, regardless of their actual economic circumstances.  It turned out that when asked if they belonged to the "middle class" or "working class," about half chose middle class and half chose working class--this is still true, despite the social and economic changes since the question was first asked more than 80 years ago.  But this post isn't primarily about either the middle class or working class:  it's about the people who say they are "upper class" if that option is offered.  They are a very small minority--usually less than 5%--so they are generally ignored or lumped in with the middle class.  But one of the surveys that includes the upper class option is the General Social Survey, and over the years they have accumulated a fairly large number of them (about 2,500).*

The figure shows party identification (proportion Republican minus proportion Democratic) by class in the GSS data.  For the lower, middle, and working class, the changes are pretty much parallel--more exactly, they have the same shape but slightly different slopes, so they have converged.  In the 20th century, Democratic identification was highest in the lower class and lowest in the middle class, with the working class in the middle, but now it's almost the same in all three.  The upper class has followed a different path--unlike the other classes, it's been moving towards the Democrats in the 21st century.  Because of small numbers in the individual samples, it's not possible to say much about the exact timing--the smoothed line shows it starting around 2000, but you could argue that it was a more sudden change that started later, somewhere around 2010.  But there's definitely been a change--in 2021, 2022, and 2024 samples Democratic identification has been highest in the upper class.  

I can think of two possible explanations.  One is that the images of the parties have changed:  Republicans are seen as less sympathetic to the upper class and/or Democrats are seen as more sympathetic, so people who regard themselves as part of the upper class are less likely to see the Republicans as the party that will serve their interests.  The other possibility is that the way that people who say they are part of the upper class see themselves has changed:  they're more likely to see their position as partly a matter of "privilege" or luck, and therefore more likely to think that the public interest is different from their class interest.  

Who are these people who think of themselves as part of the upper class?  When the GSS began, income, education, and occupational prestige were about equally important.  Over the time since then, income has become more important relative to the other two factors--about 4 or 5 times as important in recent years.  That is, the (self-identified) upper class used to be people with high incomes, high levels of education, and professional jobs; now it's closer to being just people with high incomes.  I think this makes the first potential explanation less plausible:  Republican criticism of "elites" is directed at educated people and people in professional occupations, but not at people with high incomes.  Morever, the extent to which the Republican party serves the immediate interests of high-income people has increased:  in the 1970s and 1980s, they sometimes accepted higher taxes on high-incomes as an unfortunate necessity; since then, support for tax cuts on high incomes has become an absolute.   That leaves the second possibility, which is consistent with these data and has support from other data.  

*It also includes "lower class" as an option--it's chosen by about 6%.

Misdiagnosis

 Last week, the New York Times published the transcript of an interview with the the heading "Jay Bhattacharya, the N. I. H. Director, says authorities broke the public’s trust in the Covid era. Now it’s up to outsiders to restore it."  In the course of the interview, Bhattacharya said "a Pew poll in 2024 that said 25 percent of Americans don’t believe that scientists have the best interest of the public at heart. One in four. And then people will come back to me — scientists — and say, 'Well, look, 75 percent trust us.'  That’s too low a bar, Ross [the interviewer was Ross Douthat]. It needs to be 100 percent. . . . If only 75 percent of the public thinks that the work that the N.I.H. does benefits them, it’s an utter failure."  

His memory was accurate:  the survey asked "How much confidence, if any, do you have in each of the following to act in the best interests of the public? A great deal, a fair amount, not too much, no confidence at all"  For "scientists," it was 26%, 51%, 19% ,4%; for "medical scientists" it was 30%, 48%, 18%, and 4%.  How does that compare to other groups?  To make the comparison easier, I'll combine the first two categories:

The military                       78%
Medical scientists              78%
Scientists                           77%
Police officers                    73%
Public school principals    72%
Religious leaders               55%
Journalists                          45%
Business leaders                40%
Elected officials                 33%

2024 wasn't the only time that the question was asked--it was also asked a number of times beginning in 2016 and again in 2025.  The figure shows the average for four groups with relatively high confidence:  medical scientists, military, police, and principals.*

All of them followed a similar course, with a drop from 2020 to 2021, and stability since then.  You could say that trust in medical science declined "in the Covid era," but it didn't happen until vaccines were available and things were opening up (the 2020 survey was in November and the 2021 survey was in December).  That is, the "lockdowns"** and closures than Bhattacharya criticizes didn't damage public confidence in medical science:  it was higher in November 2020 than it had been in January 2019.  

The Pew report on the 2025 survey gives a breakdown of confidence in medical scientists by partisanship.  Among Democrats, it's stayed about the same; among Republicans, it dropped between 2020 and 2021 and has not recovered--not even in 2025.  Later in the interview, Bhattacharya unwittingly explains why Republican confidence didn't increase once Trump was back in office.  Douthat says that RFK Jr is "comfortable saying something positive about some vaccines, but he’s not a salesman for vaccines."  Bhattacharya replies "I think we’ve had enough of salesmen. . . .  if I had the choice between someone like the former head of H.H.S., who was not a doctor either and was much more in this politician salesman mode, or Bobby, I think Bobby will ultimately be better for American public health."  Republican confidence in medical scientists has fallen because leading Republican politicians, especially Trump, have been "salesmen" for suspicion of vaccines and medical authorities in general.  If they now turned and said that the vaccines recommended by their team of experts was really essential, Republican confidence might rebound.  But if it's just Dr Bhattacharya saying that "world public health agrees with this,"  he's appealing to the same sentiment (trust in medical experts) that Republican leaders have undermined.  

*Confidence in "scientists" was very similar to confidence in "medical scientists," so I omit it to make the figure more readable.

**The measures in the United States didn't meet the dictionary definition of  "lockdown," but that's the word he uses.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Words, words, words

 A few days ago, Megan McArdle had a column objecting to descriptions of Trump as a fascist, not necessarily because they are wrong, but because "when ordinary people hear 'Trump is a fascist,' they aren’t primed for an academic debate over when right-wing populism shades over into fascism; they hear you saying that Trump is either an adherent of the political ideology known as fascism or a dictator whose practices are fascist."  That is, calling Trump a fascist will reduce your credibility because even people who have negative feelings about him will regard the charge as overstated.  Shortly before the 2024 election, an ABC News survey asked a question which was introduced with "A fascist often is defined as a political extremist who seeks to act as a dictator, disregards individual rights and threatens or uses force against their opponents," and then asked if Kamala Harris was a fascist, Trump was a fascist, both were, or neither were.  16% said only Harris was, 42% only Trump, 6% both, and 33% neither.  Putting it together, 48% of those surveyed thought that Trump was a fascist and 22% thought that Harris was.  

The ABC survey gave people a definition of fascism; in May 1945 a Gallup poll asked people to give their own.  They classified the answers into groups--they didn't give them labels, but illustrated them with examples of things that people had said.  The biggest group, at 37%, included "nothing," "not interested," and "can't explain."  Second, at 28%, included "dictatorship," "totalitarianism," and "one man rule."  Third, at 11%, included "Nazism," "Hitler," and "Mussolini."  Fourth, at 8%, included "hoodlum regime," "against everything," and "evil."  The second group can be regarded as correct answers.  The third is ambiguous:  they apply the term correctly, but don't demonstrate any understanding of the principle behind it.  The fourth is just a negative characterization.  My overall classification is:

                             All              College grads       

Correct                 32%                 65%
Vague                   23%                 18%
Wrong                   4%                    3%
Don't Know         37%                  10%
Miscellaneous      4%                      2%

Correct answers include the second group and some smaller ones; vague is the third and fourth plus some smaller ones; don't know is the first group, and "Socialism and Communism; a red" is counted as wrong.     The survey also asked "Are there any individuals, organizations, parties or other groups in this country which seem to you to be at least partly fascist in their aims or interests?" 29% said yes, 29% no, and 43% didn't know.  Of course, people in 1945 had less formal education than they do today, but they also had more direct experience with fascism. 

Taken together, the surveys suggest that most people understand "fascist" term in only a vague sense:  that someone is really bad or wants to be a dictator.   It's only educated elites like McArdle (BA, Penn; MBA, Chicago) and me who worry about the precise definition.   McArdle does touch on a valid point:  that people often act as if words have a magical power.   I remember that in 2016 some people seemed to think that if the media would just say "racist" or "lies" then Trump's support would disappear; now "fascist" is supposed to do the trick.  If you want to influence public opinion, talking about specific things that Trump has done will have more impact than calling him a fascist.   But then there's the question of whether the public will be allowed to express its opinion:  I think it's unlikely that the November 2026 election will be cancelled or delayed, but there's a good chance that there will be attempts to interfere with the casting or counting of votes.  That's the real importance of the debate over whether Trump is a fascist.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

What could happen here, part 4

In my last post, I gave some evidence that many people aren't attached to core principles of democracy (see also this post).*   However, people are strongly attached to some of the particular features of American democracy.  In 2004, a survey asked:   "If there were a terrorist attack in the United States near the November election, should we postpone the election because that would not be a good time to be deciding who should lead the country? Or, should we go ahead with the election because postponing would be a victory for the terrorists?" Only 10% said that we should postpone the election, while 86% said we should go ahead.  And in April 2020:  "If the coronavirus outbreak persists through November, would you support postponing the election, moving to all-mail balloting, or proceeding as normal?"  18% favored postponing, 53% all-mail balloting, and 26% proceeding as normal.  That is, few people supported postponing elections even in an emergency.  

Attachment to tradition can be an barrier to reforms like direct election of the president or multi-member districts for Congress.  But it can also be a barrier to things that would be harmful to a democratic system, as in this case.**

This leads to a question that I've touched on, but not addressed directly:  is the Trump movement fascist?  I would say no, for two reasons.  First, Fascism was clear about rejecting both democracy and tradition:  it was about the future.  Second, Fascism took the military as a model:  according to The Doctrine of Fascism (attributed to Mussolini although partly written by Giovanni Gentile), "the individual in the Fascist state is . . . multiplied, just in the same way that a soldier in a regiment is not diminished but rather increased by the number of his comrades... [the individual] is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential..."  Trump  hasn't made any attempt to organize his supporters along military lines--all he asks is that people praise him and buy his merchandise.  With January 6, there doesn't seem to have been any central organization--it was just a matter of gathering a mob and (as Trump likes to say) "we'll see what happens."  Trump also doesn't openly reject democracy or the American political tradition, but claims to be defending them.  So the movement continues to get support from people who see it as basically traditional American conservatism, just with a different style. 

A practical implication is that there is a chance to get some Republicans to break with Trump on specific issues--for example, Indiana Republicans rejected his demands to redistrict.  It wasn't just a few either:  21 of the 40 Republicans in the state Senate voted no.  I haven't seen anything on why Indiana Republicans acted differently than Republicans in other states, but there have to be some lessons there.  

*Also this question from 2002: "When it comes to protecting the country from terrorism, some people say it's more important to ensure people's constitutional rights, even if it means that some suspected terrorists are never found. Others say it's more important to find every potential terrorist, even if some innocent people are seriously hurt. Which is closer to your view?"  Opinion was almost evenly divided, with 44% saying it was more important to protect constitutional rights and 47% saying it was more important to to find every potential terrorist.  

**Elections have been postponed with no lasting harm, as in Britain during the Second World War. But doing it creates the possibility of a slippery slope.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

What could happen here, part 3

 A few days ago, Bret Stephens wrote that American democracy will survive "because most Americans, including most Republicans, remain faithfully wedded to a democratic system. "  It's true that an overwhelming majority of Americans are committed to a democratic system in the sense of believing that governments should be selected by voters choosing from competing parties.  But as I've observed before, people aren't necessarily committed to the things that are needed to make a democratic system work.  For example, in the 1950s several surveys asked whether it was "more important to find out all the Communists in this country, even if some innocent people are accused--or is it more important to protect people who might be innocent, even if some Communists are not found out?"  Solid majorities said it was more important to find out all the Communists (e. g. 64% in January 1956).  There were also questions about whether the Socialist Party, which was fully committed to electoral democracy, should be allowed to publish newspapers.  Opinion was pretty evenly divided--the last time it was asked, 43% said yes, 5% gave a qualified yes, 39% said no, and 13% didn't know.   So maybe people were wedded to a democratic system, but many of them weren't all that faithful.  But political elites generally didn't try to appeal to the potential anti-democratic sentiments.  This was partly because of the Constitution and the legal system--it was pointless to advocate banning Socialist newspapers when that was going to be rejected by the courts--but partly because elites of both parties were more consistent than the general public in their commitment to democratic principles.  This is still true to some extent--for example, if Trump said we should cancel or delay the 2026 elections, he might get substantial support among Republican voters, but I'm confident (OK, pretty confident) that almost all Republicans in Congress would still oppose it.  However, there are many ways in which the system can be altered in ways that make it harder for those who disagree with the administration to operate, and here is where there's been a change.  Republican political elites accept or even defend things that were once considered off-limits, like mid-decade redrawing of Congressional districts, or selective denial of funds to disfavored states or organizations.*  If the process continues, the result will be an increasingly unbalanced system, where we still have regular elections offering a choice between parties, but it becomes harder for the Democrats to win and to implement their policies when they do have office.    

*See this article on Trump's actions against Colorado.  A revealing passage:  "Some Colorado Republicans blame the state’s Democratic leaders for provoking Mr. Trump’s wrath."

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Who wanted war?

 A couple of days ago, Christopher Caldwell wrote "Republicans trusted Mr. Trump to take over their stumbling party in large part because he cursed the George W. Bush administration for having led the country into the Iraq war with a bunch of specious talking points about weapons of mass destruction."   Today a New York Times news story said "Mr. Trump won the presidency in 2016 in part by rejecting nation-building and foreign wars."  This seems wrong to me--Trump has always been clear that he has no objection to war as long as it's profitable.  I searched the Trump Twitter Archive through 2016 and found nothing objecting to the original rationales for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but lots of complaints that we were spending money and not getting Iraqi oil.  

A Pew survey in September 2015 asked Republicans about a hypothetical candidate for the party's nomination who "wants to send US ground troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria."  Among people who favored Trump, 56% said they would be more likely to support such a candidate and 26% that they would be more likely to oppose one; among people who favored someone else, it was 52% more likely to support and 26% more likely to oppose (the rest said it wouldn't make much difference to them).  That is, opinions about sending ground troops to fight ISIS were unrelated to Republican candidate preference.  

This question was part of a series.  Two of the other items--"wants to end the nuclear agreement with Iran" and "will compromise with members of the Democratic Party" were also unrelated to the choice between Trump and other candidates.   Three others were related.  One was "wants to deport all immigrants living in the US illegally."   Among Trump supporters, 51% said they would be more likely to support such a candidate and 18% that they'd be more likely to oppose; among supporters of other candidates, it was 36% and 39%.  Another was "wants to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood."  Among Trump supporters, 42% more likely to support and 27% less likely; among supporters of other candidates, it was 57% to 20%.  Finally, on "wants to raise taxes on wealthy Americans," 44% of Trump supporters said they would be more likely to support and 24% to oppose; among supporters of other candidates, it was 30% to support and 39% oppose.  That is, Trump supporters were more in favor of a hard line on immigration, but more moderate on Planned Parenthood and taxes on wealthy people.

It's often said that Trump has achieved a takeover, sometimes even a "hostile takeover," of the Republican party.  But it's actually gone in both directions:  he's moved the party towards his position on some issues (especially immigration and tariffs) but has adopted orthodox Republican positions on others where he once seemed to be more moderate (taxes, abortion, "our always under siege Second Amendment").  Between his first and second terms, Trump also has taken up some previously fringe positions on the right, like unbridled hostility to colleges and universities, and introduced them into the mainstream. 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research] 

Guilty men (and women)

In 2016, Donald Trump lost the popular vote to a weak candidate, although the mysterious workings of the Electoral College gave him the presidency.  During his first term, he never reached a 50% approval rating.  In the 2020 election, despite having the advantage of incumbency, he lost both the popular and electoral votes to a mediocre candidate.  So why did the Republicans ignore this record of failure and nominate him again in 2024?  Most observers seem to think that the answer is obvious--it was because he had a strong hold on ordinary Republican voters.  

After the 2020 election, there were a number of surveys that asked if you wanted Trump to run again in 2024.  I compared the results for similar surveys about Gore running in 2004 and Kerry running in 2008. 

The years in the x-axis are 1 for the first year after he lost, 2 for the second, etc.  The y-axis is percent saying yes minus percent saying no.  Trump is consistently below Gore, and about the same as Kerry.  That is, he didn't have an especially large base of support among the voters.  

 These figures are based on the whole population, but some surveys limited the question to supporters of  the candidate's party.*  

Compared to Gore and Kerry, Trump looks stronger within his own party.  But another losing Republican candidate, Romney, got about the same results as Trump, suggesting that maybe Republicans generally are more willing to consider second chances.**  In any case, Trump's value of +30 means that about 35% of Republicans didn't want him to run again, and wanting someone to run again doesn't necessarily mean that you will support him.   So there was definitely an opening for other candidates.  

Turning from voters to elites, here are endorsements from Republican senators and governors (data from Ballotpedia).  

Trump announced his candidacy after the 2022 elections, and within a few days picked up his first endorsement (from Tommy Tuberville). Then there was a cluster in early 2023, and some more in April.  By April 17, he had 10.  Then other candidates got some endorsements, and by June 21st the gap had narrowed:  10 for Trump, 6 for others.  After that, Trump pulled ahead:  32 endorsed him before the Iowa caucuses, six more before the New Hampshire primaries, and another 10 before Nikki Haley dropped out.  Out of a total of 76 governors and senators, 44 endorsed Trump and  only 11 endorsed other candidates (four of those endorsed Trump after their first choice dropped out, so 48 endorsed Trump before the race was settled).  

My overall conclusion is that "the base" didn't impose Trump on Republican elites; Republican elites asked for him.  That leads back to my original point about Trump's poor record in general elections--why would professional politicians want a weak candidate at the top of the ticket?  One possibility is that they thought his electoral record was actually a good one--I can imagine an argument along those lines.  Another, and more disturbing, possibility is that they looked at the candidates and thought that Trump would be the best one to lead the country.  

*Partisan breakdowns could be found or calculated for some of the surveys of the general public, but I'll leave that to someone who has a research assistant to do the work.

**This seems plausible to me--my impression is that when Democrats lose, they blame their candidates; when Republicans lose, they blame outside forces (especially the media).

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]