No, "shy Trump voter" specifically means someone who says they are not voting for Trump (or undecided) then does so, because they're afraid to "admit" voting for him.
Not quite, it's a subtle nuance. The concept of a shy Trump supporter is that they're afraid of a stigma associated with admitting support for Trump.
That is different than someone who just doesn't want to take a poll but may be perfectly happy to tell you their views if you struck up a conversation. My own observation is that over the last 4 years, Trump supporters have become ever more loud and proud of that support, not more shy.
> Now, do people like me lean one way? "Get out of my face and leave me alone" people might plausibly lean toward Trump, but I wouldn't be dogmatic about it. Even more, I wouldn't claim that it's statistically significant.
The "shy Trump voter" hypothesis is not that there are lots of people who won't answer polls, but that there's a bias in the response rate and truthfulness of the responses received, and that pollsters are not able to accurately correct for that bias. So whether or not you answer polls doesn't speak to the validity or plausibility of that hypothesis. What is relevant is only the bit you say "might plausibly lean toward Trump"; clearly, your a priori opinion of that hypothesis is also fairly low.
> We've had four years of the media relentlessly telling us how stupid, evil, and wrong Trump is, and how stupid and racist all his supporters are. We've seen the media twist the facts to support this narrative.
You're talking specifically about the media that Trump supporters largely avoid watching and do not give any credence to. There's plenty of other evidence that Trump voters aren't ashamed of publicly expressing their support, and not much reason to believe that they would be much more shy about it when answering polls than when going about their daily lives.
It's clear now that Shy Trump Voters existed. Some opinion pages trafficked in arguments against their existence.
I think of them in terms that our Austrian friend described.
Some pollsters were better at accounting for them.
I avoid "most media outlets" language and try to look at the data.
I have seen this argument most often from vocal, proud Trump supporters trying to explain away Trump's consistently low approval ratings. Why would someone so enthusiastically for Trump that they're willing to shout it to the world suddenly be circumspect about indicating their support in an anonymous poll with no human on the other side?
Of course, you can argue that those people are not the same groups of people. But there's no evidence that this thing exists, even when people have looked for it in the past (see "shy Tory effect").
Anecdotal, but I have never met a Trump supporter that was shy about who they were voting for, this year or in 2016.
If anything, Trump supporters have been extremely vocal about who they were supporting, to the extent that they frequently violate social norms and try to takeover events and gatherings to make their political affiliations known, like this week with Among Us.
I think it's clear that people being polled are not representative of those who are voting. Trump has eother managed to appeal to people resistant to being polled or has managed to disengage people that are being polled. Whatever your views on the man, it's remarkable.
What's more surprising to me is that he can do it consistently and that no one has seemingly appealed to these people before. Given that these are almost election winning demographics, it's odd that no one has spent more time on understanding these people.
By the way. 29.9% of eligible voters didn't vote last November. I think it's dubious to assume they approve of Trump. It's more likely they just see him as the same stupidity they see in all politics.
But I have this crazy hope that Trump will awaken some of these voters to progressive politics.
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