Do secret Donald Trump voters exist?



With their signature red caps and rally cries of “Lock her up!” Donald Trump supporters are typically hard to miss.

But is there another kind of Trump voter, one invisible to the polls and silent in the face of family, co-workers and friends? And are there enough secret or shy Trump voters to make a difference on Tuesday?

Probably not, according to a recent study. And there would have to be a large number of them in swing states like North Carolina and Ohio to make a difference, said John Johnson, a data analyst, author and CEO of Edgeworth Economics.

If they’re hidden in California, they’re probably burrowed deep. The latest voter registration numbers show the state with an all-time record of 19.4 million voters, with the percentage of GOP voters falling to 26 percent from almost 30 percent a few years ago.

The latest polls show a tightening race between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The general consensus is that Clinton is leading, but that her victory by no means is a given.

The silent majority concept goes back to 1969, when President Richard Nixon first used the term in a speech to describe Americans who supported his plan for ending the Vietnam War. The term appears on Trump campaign signs as the reality TV star and businessman spreads an economic populist message aimed at voters, especially blue-collar whites, who feel ignored by Washington and victimized by free trade.

According to the hidden Trump voter theory, a significant number of Trump backers aren’t picked up by polling firms that screen respondents based on their likeliness to vote, excluding Trump voters who lack solid voting histories. Other arguments are that Trump voters are less willing to be polled when there’s bad news for him or because they don’t trust the media.

Another part of the theory is that some voters are afraid or embarrassed to tell others about their support for Trump, especially to women or minorities angered by Trump’s comments.

“One group would be middle- and upper-class white people,” said Harold Clarke, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, whose focus includes public opinion, voting and elections. “A lot of people (their peers) are liberal and supporting Hillary.”

Thumbs to fingers

John Berry, a cabinet member of the Redlands Tea Party Patriots, believes there are lots of hidden Trump voters. Berry, who has a pro-Trump bumper sticker on his vehicle, said he constantly gets thumbs-up and horn honks as he drives around, along with a few middle fingers.

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“It’s a 10-to-1 ratio (in favor of) thumbs-up to middle fingers,” he said. Redlands has a plurality of GOP voters, but San Bernardino County as a whole is more Democratic than Republican.

There is precedent for polls to underestimate a candidate’s support. In 1982, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley lost his bid for California governor despite leading in the polls.

The miss gave birth to “the Bradley effect” — the idea that polls and election outcomes might differ when minority candidates run against white candidates. It’s tied to what social scientists call social desirability bias, or the inclination by those polled to give answers viewed favorably by others, including support for Bradley, an African-American who ran against a white candidate, George Deukmejian, in 1982.

Last week, the polling firm Morning Consult, in partnership with the political news website Politico, published a study involving 2,075 likely voters to learn why Trump did better in online polls than telephone polls.

Participants responded to a few background questions online before being assigned to a live telephone interviewer or a similar online interview. The study conducted in late October found that while Clinton led by five points among those interviewed by phone and three points in the online poll, the results weren’t statistically significant, meaning secret Trump voters aren’t likely to swing the election.

Voters with a bachelor’s or postgraduate degree and those in households earning more than $50,000 annually tended to back Trump in higher numbers online, the study found.

As Trump’s poll numbers improve, Loren Collingwood, a UC Riverside assistant political science professor, doesn’t see much room for secret Trump voters. “What I see is a general consolidation of right-leaning voters — voters who would normally vote Republican — behind Trump, as a result of the (recent) FBI statements,” he said.

The FBI late last week said it is probing new emails related to Hillary Clinton. Those emails were found on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who has been caught up in an alleged sexting scandal. The FBI did not release the content of those emails.

“Most polls do not have a very large undecided vote at this point — this is where the ‘Bradley effect’ voters would most likely come from,” he added. “In addition, (Libertarian presidential candidate Gary) Johnson is seen as a reasonable alternative for Republican-leaning voters, so closet Trump supporters in a poll would have the alternative of going for Johnson, not Clinton.”

If there’s any polling error, Collingwood said, it might be in underestimating the minority vote. That could bode well for Clinton, who does much better than Trump with non-whites.

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