Myth No. 1
Angry voters drove the results. Before and after the election, a dominant narrative held that the voters were angry. “Dissatisfaction, anger dominate year-end reviews of Washington,” reads a December 2015 CNN headline above an article reporting that 69 percent of voters were “at least somewhat angry” with the way things were going in America. Two years later, U.S. News & World Report observed that “furious Americans elected Donald Trump.”
But there is no evidence that Americans were any more angry in 2016 than they had been in 2012, when President Barack Obama won re-election. When CNN asked that same question in February 2012, 67 percent of voters said they were angry, only 2 percentage points less than in 2016, well within the margin of error. And other data suggested a rosier outlook: In early 2016, consumer confidence was rising among all income groups, and it was as high as it was at the same point in 1984, when Ronald Reagan won re-election under the “morning in America” banner. Throughout 2016, Obama’s approval rating increased, hitting 56 percent in December.
Of course, you could find angry people in the electorate — mainly Republicans who had lived for eight years with a Democrat in the White House. But those Republicans were not much more angry than Democrats were at the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. And of course, on Election Day, “angry” Americans gave Hillary Clinton nearly 3 million more votes than Trump.
The effects of specific controversies were often short-lived, but polling data show they did hurt Trump. During the primary campaign, Trump’s net favorability among Republicans dropped sharply — from +27 points to +11, according to YouGov/Economist polls — after he criticized John McCain’s record as a POW in Vietnam. It fell again after he made offensively critical comments about Megyn Kelly following the Aug. 6, 2015, primary debate (+27 points to +13) and after he skipped a January 2016 debate (+38 points to +22).
During the general election campaign, Trump’s standing in the polls suffered at multiple points, especially after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” video. It turns out that being recorded boasting about sexual assault can drive at least some voters away. arguments that Clinton should have spent more on digital ads, visited Michigan more often or had her field organizers focus on persuading voters rather than mobilizing the Democratic base. Again, research shows that such tactics have small, if any, effects — too small to shift the outcome even in a close election.