READING TIME: 5 minutes
SUMMARY: Even though support for Trump has dwindle fast and is at its lowest point and widest margin of disapproval, there is still about a third of the electorate that support him. Recent psychological findings make the inexplicable explicable as we apply them to the 77 million voters who voted for him in 2024.
KEY TERMS: Identity, Trump, Trump Voters, Election 2024, Social Relationships, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Personality Characteristics, Social Characteristics, Race, Gender, Age, Trustworthiness
COMMENT: Is there any explanation for Trump support that does not involve preferences for racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism?
Trump’s Inexplicable Support
It’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week in America, AGAIN. We started out last week with Republican primary voters rejecting Bill Cassidy as a Senate candidate in Louisiana and Thomas Massie as a House candidate in Kentucky. Then we moved on to the Trump’s horrific slush fund of grift and paying for his Brown Shirts to terrorize Americans for trying to vote in November — betcha, that’s the plan; just wait for the “stand back and stand by” command. And we finished up with the spectacle of the House adjourning rather than voting on the Iran War Powers Act, which was likely to be passed and limit Trump’s ability to make war in Iran. There were other horrific things, too, but I don’t think anything is gained by going through them in detail, do you? If there is something particularly egregious to you, please bring it up in the comments.
In addition to all of the corruption and political strong-arming, the Grifter-in-Chief held a political rally in Pennsylvania where he asked whether the crowd liked the nickname of “Sleepy Joe” or “Corrupt Joe” to wild applause for both. For me it was the final nail in the camel’s back. I wondered how anyone could get worked up about an insulting nickname for Joe Biden? Who are these die-hard Trump supporters, the dwindling 37% of us approving of the Orange Buffoon? And that buggars the question of who were the seventy-seven million real live Americans who voted for the Insurrectionist-in-Chief in 2024 (I know I keep asking this question, but it truly baffles me)?
Trump didn’t just win the 2024 election, he led in the polls from December 2023!?! And widened his lead after the July 2025 debate. So, what was going on in people’s minds — don’t give me that economic angst nonsense, we knew this is what Trump was going to do; this is what everyone of those 77 million voted for.
Identity Characteristics, Social Relationships, and Presidential Candidates
Luckily, science has an answer for us. As it turns out, there is evidence that we create our social relationships based on the identity characteristics of others. We evaluate all of these traits and if even one of them comes up negative, we don’t associate with them. While your presidential candidate of choice may or may not be a direct member of your social circle, like a celebrity falling out of favor when a gross interpersonal scandal surfaces, it is my conjecture that the folks we use to form part of our identity, like the candidate we vote for for president, do actually form part of our social circle, and the same criteria is used.
The Characteristics that Define Us
Let’s pause here for some boring but important definitions:
- IDENTITY CHARACTERISTICS are traits that we use to define who we are. These traits can be the roles we play and the groups we belong to. Identity characteristics subdivide into personality and social identity traits.
- PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS are the traits that we develop relatively early in life and use throughout our lifetime to define ourselves. The traits typically include the way we respond to situations emotionally, moral codes that guide our behavior, and the story we tell ourselves about who we are. These remain relatively stable over our lives.
- SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS are the traits that form our identity based on our group memberships and social relationships. These includes the institutions we are connected to, our identity based on ethnicity and other cultural aspects of our heritage, gender norms, sexual identity, social expectations. These can change from one situation to another.
The Study of Social Relationships
Okay, then, one more foray into academia before we get back to scratching our collective asses over Trump voters and MAGA. So, deep breath! The researchers used a statistical analysis to determine how personality identity factors influenced the development of our social relationships. Specifically, they analyzed the marriages and friendships of over 40,000 Americans in fifty large cities using data from an Add Health study on friendship networks. The statistical analysis part is important because it makes the analysis objective and eliminates any researcher biases that might creep in, you know, like political affiliation and preferences.
They found that BEFORE we selected the person we married or a friend, we evaluated ALL of their identity characteristics, and if even one of them came out negatively, we didn’t choose them! This finding conforms with findings from behavioral economics that Ye Olde Blogge has reported on before, we make simple emotional decisions based on a like-dislike dichotomy and use our thinking brains to rationalize our choices.
Back to our regularly scheduled snarky sarcasticky profaney analysis. In the 2024 presidential race, several identity characteristics were at play.
The Identity Characteristics of the 2024 Presidential Candidates
Race, Gender, and Age
What’s the single most identifiable identity trait that any of us have? Race.
Any liberal who tells you they don’t see race is just lying and afraid to examine their own racial prejudices. The first things we evaluate upon meeting someone is their appearance, and skin, last I checked, was (a) the easiest thing to see about someone and (b) our largest organ. If you evaluate a race or even racial characteristics negatively, then you’re not likely to include someone from that racial group in your social relationships. It is that simple.
We didn’t have a choice but to evaluate the candidates based on their race either positively or negatively. We can see how that shook out because, remember, if even one characteristic comes out negatively, then that person is rejected.
Another immediately obvious characteristic is gender. Given the blurring of gender roles and norms — I still can’t continence men wearing nail polish, hair bands, and make up; I’m just that old — it may not be as obvious, but with our three presidential candidates it was. Again, given the outcome of two elections featuring female candidates, we can see how that turned out in the evaluation of inclusion.
The third salient characteristics is age. The media narrative had the most influence here, I think. The almost exclusive focus on Biden so old, why he have to be so old stories to the exclusion of Trump’s rapid age related decline is a mystery, but something got the media to evaluate these two that way. And, given that Harris was a spry 59 years old during the campaign, we can see how much age mattered between Trump and Biden and how little it did between Trump and Harris.
Trustworthiness or Duplicitous Corrupt Venal Ways
And the last salient characteristics is trustworthiness (We’re using trust and honesty as a stand in for all of Trump’s duplicitous corrupt venal ways). Trump is the fellow who publicly lied approximately 21 times per day. Who knows how many times he lied in private away from cameras and official recordings? Just for comparison’s sake, most people lie between zero and two times per day. And, Trump’s lies were painfully obvious. Everyone knew he was lying in real time. So, his voters liked his lies in spite of what they’d tell the MSM reporters about not liking what he did but liking his policies. You remember the 2016, the Republican Party platforms, don’t you? Whatever the fuck Trump wants is fine with us. And, the 2020 and 2024 platforms were whitening American and enriching oligarchs while taking away healthcare. You can see from what he’s done in since being elected and what the party has gone along with that it didn’t matter what they told us they wanted. It is whatever the fuck Trump wants.
For Trump voters, the dishonesty, racism, misogyny, and classism was not evaluated as a negative; it was a positive. It wasn’t the bad apple that spoiled the barrel, it was the shit that caught the fly! He got three million MORE votes in 2024 than in 2022 while the percentage of eligible voters casting ballots shrank by three percent and the number of people voting declined by the million people.
Where Do We Go From Here?
I know the predominate narrative is that it was the economy that sank the Harris candidacy and promoted Trump’s. Just for arguments sake, let’s say that’s true — it ain’t, but go with me here — Trump’s dishonesty, racism, misogyny, and classism were still evaluated as net gains because if they weren’t, if both candidates had negative qualities that voters couldn’t countenance, then they woulda stayed home. Instead, Trump expanded his coalition.
We can’t let folks off the hook by crying the economy. As a country we voted for Trump. We knew what he was like and what he would do. We have to look in the mirror and accept that for about thirty percent of the eligible voters, MAGA and authoritarianism is what they want and about thirty percent just aren’t engaged enough to vote. We have to accept that 77 million people liked what they saw in Trump and didn’t like what they saw in Harris.
Seventy-seven million real live Americans evaluated Trump’s identity characteristics and they all came up positive. Seventy-seven million real live Americans invited Trump into the social circles. That’s our reality. Where do we go from here?
Image Attribution
This image was found on Progressive Policy Institute and has a Creative Commons license.
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If I think about the words those people use when talking about Trump to news interviewers, the one that stands out is “strong”. It is virtually always there.
There is also the apparent confidence that, however difficult the current situation may appear, he will ultimately win because he is a winner.
Another feature of those conversations is the consistent impression I get that they actually believe he has accomplished and done everything he says he has, both in his career before politics and in office.
Among those who have abandoned him (like MTG), the dominant feeling is of having been betrayed.
Howdy Bob!
MAGA is a testament of the accuracy of the biases and heuristics approach to human nature. Confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, myopia. And it aligns with what Trump has said about war with Iran, “It will work out. It always does.” In that Trump is still standing and now getting richer than he had ever hoped for, I guess he’s right. As long as you limit your scope of consideration and only focus on surviving to the next day, it will always be true. It didn’t work out for a lot of dead Iranians, Palestinians, and Lebanese. It isn’t working out for about 85% of the Americans or most of the rest of the world, either.
Perhaps the real problem is that for most of white America gratisfaction comes vicariously by watching other white people succeed at the expense of Black people and almost all Black people be oppressed. That, it seems to me, is the attraction of Trump for them. He has beaten the system as they would like to, but they assume that the system he beat will continue indefinitely into the future. They assume that it will work out because it always has before.
Huzzah!
Jack
With the MAGA mob, attacking Trump (or Paxton) as corrupt won’t work. they are enjoying the show and it as beating the system, as you say, the way they wish they could. In fact, some of them are expecting to get a cut of the ill gotten gains from the slush fund. If you add in them seeing Black people getting hurt first and worst, it’s a real addictive high. Their relationship with Trump is more than an attraction. It’s an addiction and part of a codependent relationship.
Codependent is the right word for describing Trump and MAGA and the reason that there will be no Trump successor. Or only one found with difficulty and trauma. Without Trump, MAGA doesn’t turn out and vote. Without Trump and Charlie Kirk, there is no toxic male vote like in 2024. They’re already missing the Kirk side of the equation to expand the base into the seldom voting crowd. Maybe someone has quietly taken over his role. You don’t need a public charismatic person for that to happen. But, there will be too much fratercide and factional struggle for a successor to Trump to emerge.
Huzzah!
Jack
The odds are good that the sorting and maneuvering, the testing and promising, the enemies listing and knife sharpening are already well under way. After all, the guy could drop dead or get impeached and removed any time, or simply deteriorate beyond being presentable in public. And, there is nobody visible with anything like his combination of traits and “talents”, and you can;t build a cult of personality around a committee. But, those who have become truly addicted to cult membership will find someone or something,but not all of them the same someone or something.
I cannot imagine that the Republican Party and the conservative movement will not fall into factions as soon as Trump is out of the picture. Everyone has their own billionaire patrons and agendas that often are at odds with each other. And, everyone wants to sit on the throne. Without a clear charismatic leader like Trump there can be no unity. Charlie Kirk was the guy, and we know what happened to him. It’s hard to think of it as a conspiracy by one faction or the other to rid itself of a rival, but it is not beyond the pall.
The closest parallel to our current position is the US in the 1850’s as the Whigs fell apart and the abolitionist Republicans coalesced. Unfortunately, we don’t have an issue like slavery to organized around. Since the protest movements of the 1960’s the establishment has learned how to coopt any issue and distract the public at large. The Internet and social media which had looked like tools for the resistance are now being used and controlled by the establishment for oppression. AI won’t even have a brief stop on the resistance train before it will become another tool for oppression, I’m afraid.
Huzzah!
Jack
That’s pretty much how I see it. How Trump leaves the stage could make some difference. Any Republicans who voted to impeach (House) or remove (Senate) would be targets and at least expelled from the party, and a Vance White House would likely be snake pit. If he were to just die, many in MAGA would not believe it was anything but murder, with a great variety of conspiracy theories and suspects, or that he was not really dead and coming back. Every faction would have it’s own litmus tests and heretic hunters.
Howdy Bob!
However Trump leaves office, it is not going to be pretty or willingly. Impeachment, end of term, 25-th Amendment, resignation, or death, it is going to be nasty and likely violent. And, it is going to be the mother of all conspiracy theories.
Given his appearance recently, I Don’t think he makes it to the end of his term. I’d be surprised if he makes it to the end of the year. You and I both know from hard experience that no one goes in for six month check ups. Whatever is driving him to the hospital every six month must be pretty severe given his phobia about germs. Also, the WH has a complete urgent care facility. Just about any outpatient treatment can be done there. Basic imaging, minor surgery can also be done. They’re monitoring something pretty closely and probably treating it pretty aggressively.
All the secrecy and lies around his health are just going to add fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theories. The troubling thing is he has a cabinet that is motivated to keep him in office and carry on the grift with or without him. Vance is too much of a dumbass to be able to manage all of the intrigue that would come with a sudden succession. Unless the Vance team is preparing for succession — which they might be and should be, but probably aren’t — a la Project 2025, he will be overwhelmed by the job.
Huzzah!
Jack
Any succession planning (plotting?) would have to be kept tightly secret from Trump who would see it as disloyal. So, if such is happening, we will not know of it until the “tell all” books start coming out 10-20 years later.
Impeachment and removal would, I hope, come with a notice to Vance to clean the Trumpers out of the administration and WH staff, because, “What we have done once, we can do twice.”
I am just now remembering a report on the election in Peru which noted that that country has had 10 presidents in 10 years. We have already seen “get back” impeachment attempted on Clinton and discussed about Obama. If Trump is successfully impeached, desire for vengeance is to be expected on the part of some.
Morning Jack….to answer one of your questions….MAGA is driven by racism…..the one thing that has been buried but smoldering for many decades and Donny unleashed it and now it is main stream. chuq
Howdy Chuq!
Two things strike me about the racism that is driving our current authoritarian moment. First, it has been here since the inception of the county. Its virulence has gone unchanged. The only changes are cosmetic, how comfortable racists feel they can be in their racism. And, that it has been a pretty constant third of our population with a third being amenable to it while the other third is against it.
Huzzah!
Jack
An excellent point. chuq