Understanding Trump Support: How Cognitive Biases Distort Reality for Many Voters

1. Focus Group Findings: Post-Debate Insights from Undecided Voters
2. The Science Behind the Madness: Understanding Heuristics and Biases
   1. Nostalgia Bias: The Myth of the “Good Old Days”
   2. Optimism Bias
   3. Proportionality Bias: Distorting Reality
3. Understanding the Independent Voter’s Support for Trump
4. Image Attribution

Why have we, as a nation, seemingly forgotten the unmitigated disaster that was Trump’s presidency? The Old Felonious Authoritarian Rapist Traitor’s handling of the #COVID19 pandemic should have disqualified him from ever seeking office again. The 6 January Insurrection should have been enough for him to have been banished from any public venue and completely shunned a la Nixon after Watergate. Yet here we are, collectively accepting Trump as an inevitable candidate and, until Harris entered the race, a likely winner. What explains this?

Focus Group Findings: Post-Debate Insights from Undecided Voters

After the debate, focus groups of REAL undecided uncommitted independent voters sprang up like weeds across nearly every network. Honestly, I’m surprised there was anybody left who could be in the viewing audience.

Two key takeaways emerged: (1) Very few Trump voters were swayed by his performance, and (2) those who remained “undecided” all seemed to echo, “I need to know more about Harris before I can commit.” Are you SERIOUS? What other options do you have? The Old FART? It’s a binary choice: vote for Harris or help Trump win by abstaining, voting third party, or—heaven forbid—voting for Trump himself!

How can anybody in the country be on the fence? For that matter, how can anyone take Trump seriously as a candidate? Luckily, there is some science to rely on to explain it.

The Science Behind the Madness: Understanding Heuristics and Biases

We’re going to look at some heuristics and biases that have been developed by behavioral economists and other psychologists that help explain how voters can still entertain Trump’s candidacy after his shambolic tenure. He did everything from losing a carrier strike group to allegedly paying pee-hookers to piss on the Constitution, the American people, and the Resolute Desk to causing the unnecessary deaths of over a million real live now dead Americans during the pandemic to refusing to honor the outcome of an election (Spoiler: the surest way to destroy a democracy).

Heuristics and biases are cognitive shortcuts that simplify decision-making processes and help explain—and often predict—behavior and beliefs in certain conditions. These frameworks reveal the psychological, linguistic, and mathematical underpinnings of human errors in judgment, illustrating how our reasoning can falter in the face of logic and probability.

Nostalgia Bias: The Myth of the “Good Old Days”

Let’s delve into the puzzling acceptance of Trump, starting with nostalgia bias, which helps explain why some voters remember his years in office as better than the disaster they truly were. Nostalgia bias is the psychological tendency to remember the past as better than it actually was—those mythical “good old days” that never really existed.

For instance, recent polls indicated that many believe Trump would handle the economy better than Biden or Harris, a sentiment likely fueled by the inflation spikes we’ve seen. In contrast, the Trump years are remembered as a halcyon time of low prices and full employment.

However, this rosy retrospection conveniently overlooks the significant issues during Trump’s tenure. His tax cuts for billionaires ballooned the deficit, and the tariffs imposed cost American households about $800 annually, stifling economic growth.

This nostalgia bias not only affects voters but may also lead some reporters to view the Trump years through a lens of rosy retrospection. The classic presidential election question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” should be answered with a resounding no. Four years ago, we were in the throes of the worst pandemic in a century, which tragically shortened American life expectancy by a full year. Yet, this glaring reality seems to get lost in the afterglow of Trump’s deficit-exploding spending spree, allowing the myth of a better past to persist.

Nostalgia bias isn’t enough to explain the current level of Trump’s support. Like Maya Angelou said, When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Hasn’t Trump told us who he is? Shouldn’t we be wary of giving the scorpion a ride across the river on our backs? Won’t he just try to steal the election, again, refuse a peaceful transfer of power, again, in 2028, and ratchet up the debt further, while enriching himself on emoluments, again, and leaving us to fend for ourselves no matter how dire the situation, again. Why aren’t more of us predicting that future under Trump?

The mirror image of nostalgia bias is optimism bias. While nostalgia paints a rosy picture of the past, optimism bias offers an equally unrealistic view of the future.

Optimism Bias

Optimism bias describes our tendency to overestimate the likelihood of experiencing positive events while underestimating the chances of negative ones in the future. In short, we’re fools—rose-colored glasses-wearing fools. Sure, bad things happen, but they’re bound to happen to “those people” over there, not to me!

We can see this effect in the surprise people express when bad things do happen to them or in their town. Mass shootings won’t happen in my town, not to me. Climate change won’t affect me. No one I know will ever need an abortion.

This bias is evident in the shock people express when misfortune strikes their lives or communities. “Mass shootings won’t happen in my town—certainly not to me!” “Climate change won’t affect me!” “No one I know will ever need an abortion!”

This kind of thinking fosters a dangerous complacency, particularly regarding the prospect of another Trump term. Much of his support seems rooted in a pollyannaish belief about what four more years would entail. Surely he won’t kill another million Americans, further shortening our life expectancy. He wouldn’t transfer even more wealth from the middle class to billionaires, pushing our debt and deficit into the stratosphere, would he? And even if he does withdraw from NATO, he’ll still protect our interests abroad—right? All the bad things are going to happen to those who deserve it, not to us, the good Americans. We’re going to be fine. Really, we are, or so they seem to think.

When we combine the halcyon view of our past with optimistic outlook on our future and the effects of proportionality bias, which discounts of the dire predictions that Trump’s critics are making, we get a real willingness to vote for Trump.

Proportionality Bias: Distorting Reality

Proportionality bias refers to our tendency to judge the severity of events based on their perceived scale relative to historical examples. This bias plays a significant role in how people interpret Trump’s first term and the potential consequences of a second.

On one hand, this bias allows many to dismiss serious accusations of fascism, authoritarianism, and anti-democratic tendencies. Supporters may think, “If Trump were truly authoritarian, wouldn’t we see Brown Shirts marching through the streets or a Reichstag Fire? I can still vote, after all, so we must still have a democracy.” This line of thinking discounts the subtle erosion of democratic norms, as if overt signs are the only indicators of danger.

On the other hand, proportionality bias can also lead supporters to minimize the gravity of criticisms leveled at Trump. Many might argue, “If things were as dire as critics claim, why am I still doing well?” For many white Americans, the current economic and social landscape appears stable and thriving, which feeds a belief that Trump’s first term wasn’t as catastrophic as portrayed. This bias creates a distortion where the absence of overt chaos leads to an underappreciation of the more insidious threats to democracy.

Understanding the Independent Voter’s Support for Trump

When taken together, these three biases—nostalgia bias, optimism bias, and proportionality bias—illuminate the psychological tendencies and logical errors that lead low-information independent voters to support Trump. Nostalgia and proportionality biases distort our collective memory of his first term, making it seem better than it was and prompting the question: if all the criticisms were true, wouldn’t we be worse off now? Meanwhile, optimism and proportionality biases combine to downplay the potential hardships of another Trump term, with optimism blunting predictions of personal adversity and proportionality suggesting that if he were truly gearing up for authoritarian actions, we’d see clear signs of it.

To combat these distortions in thinking, we must take action. First, we need to publicly highlight how devastating Trump’s presidency was, particularly during the #COVID19 pandemic. He utterly failed in his responsibilities to lead, leaving scars that we are still paying for today. His heavy-handed response to the BLM protests demonstrated a troubling disregard for our Constitutional rights, while his support for abortion bans reveals his willingness to strip away those rights. The cruelty with which he treated immigrants foreshadows how he will treat us.

Moreover, we should actively share what Trump says he plans to do. The impact of publicizing Project 2025 on his campaign has been significant. Now, we can continue this momentum by posting his confused, chaotic, and conflicting statements on social media, amplifying the message that he is in clear cognitive decline and actively trying to hide his true intentions from us.

There is ample evidence available about the failures of Trump’s first term and the dangers of his proposed second term. It is up to all of us to ensure that this information breaks through the firehose of propaganda that Trump and the MAGA Republicans use to manipulate our perceptions of the election.

Image Attribution

This image was found on J J’s Flickr page using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons license search.