Something new

 Most of my recent posts have involved the Supreme Court and/or abortion.  I'm sure I'll return to those topics, but this post will be on Social Security.  It's prompted by a blog post from Mark Palko, who notes that many observers think that the traditional Republican disadvantage on Social Security has disappeared.  The idea is that in 2016 Donald Trump pledged not to cut Social Security and Medicare and the party has followed him, as it has on many issues.  Mark questioned this account, but didn't have any data that directly addressed it, so I looked and found some.  

In most presidential elections starting in 1984, there were questions about which candidate would be better on Social Security.  They were not all by the same organization, so the wording varied.  Most of the variations were minor (e. g.  "handling" vs. "dealing with"), but in 1988 and 1992 they asked about "protecting the Social Security system" and in 2016 they asked about "Social Security and Medicare."   I calculated the difference between the percent naming the Democratic candidate and the percent naming the Republican.  The Democrat was always ahead, which is why I call the figure "Republican disadvantage."

In 2016, Trump trailed Clinton by 50-42%, giving an 8% gap, which was just about average--unfortunately the question wasn't asked in 2020.   Reagan in 1984 stands out as an unusually large gap, which is plausible because in one of his Presidential campaigns (I think it was his first, in 1976) he suggested that maybe Social Security should be privatized and got a lot of negative publicity.     Aside from that, there's no trend, and the ups and downs don't show any obvious pattern and are small enough so that they could be sampling error.  So there's not evidence that Trump changed anything--the Democrats consistently have an advantage on the issue.   This isn't really surprising--even someone who doesn't pay much attention to politics can tell that if forced to make a choice between tax increases and spending cuts, Republicans would be more likely to go for spending cuts and Democrats would be more likely to go for tax increases.  

So why do many observers continue to say that Trump changed perceptions?  I think that it's partly because of surveys showing that in 2016 Trump was regarded as less conservative than other Republican candidates, and partly because he did well among the "working class" (less educated people).  The idea that he positioned himself to the left on economic issues is appealing because it seems to explain both of those points.  However, I don't think that they actually had a common cause--the perception of him as less conservative probably involved social issues, while his appeal to less educated voters involved a combination of immigration and trade and personal style (blunt, not worried about offending people). 

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]