Who Cared?

A few months ago, I wrote about the idea that Donald Trump appealed to less educated voters because he seemed to care about them.  I pointed out that he didn't do particularly well in surveys that asked if he "cared about people like you"--in fact, he ranked lower than almost all other recent nominees.  But the individual-level data weren't available at that time, leaving open the possibility that people with less education rated him highly.  Now the individual data for a relevant survey has been released:  a CBS News poll from early October 2015.  That survey asked "How much do you think that ___________ cares about the needs and problems of people like you--a lot, some, not much, or not at all?" for Republicans Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina and Democrats Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden.  Here are the average scores (4 points for a lot, 3 for some, 2 for not much, 1 not at all) for non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic whites without college degrees:

                W          NCW   
Trump          2.38      2.51
Carson         3.17      3.20
Fiorina        2.70      2.69
Clinton        2.21      2.12
Sanders        2.81      2.67
Biden          2.72      2.61


Ben Carson stands out here.  I'm not sure why--maybe it was having grown up in poverty, maybe it was his calm demeanor, maybe people associate doctors with caring.  But for my purposes, the important thing is that Trump ranks fifth, ahead of only Hillary Clinton.  He did somewhat better among people without college degrees, but still ranked only fifth.

The survey also asked people if they expected to vote in a Democratic primary, a Republican primary, or didn't expect to vote in a primary.  Trump won over some non-college-educated Democrats and independents in the general election, so their perceptions are of particular interest.

                 R            D            N
Trump           2.96       1.92         2.32
Carson          3.42       2.97         2.98
Fiorina         2.87       2.41         2.36
Clinton         1.65       2.92         2.17
Sanders         2.31       3.27         2.64
Biden           2.28       3.24         2.56

Once again, Trump didn't do well--he got substantially lower scores than Carson or Fiorina among both Democrats and people who didn't support a party, although he did a little better than Fiorina among non-college-educated whites who intended to vote in a Republican primary.

What was Trump's appeal?  The survey also asked if candidates had "strong qualities of leadership," and Trump did well there.  Non-college-educated whites who didn't intend to vote in a primary rated him higher that all three Democrats and Fiorina.  Carson was equal to Trump among people who had an opinion, but had more don't knows.

It's true that voters didn't think that Hillary Clinton cared about them that much, but they didn't think that Trump cared about them that much either.  This raises the question of why many commentators think that they did.  I have no evidence on this, but I'll offer some speculations in a later post.

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]