Unmasking partisanship, and why Trump can still win
Protective gear has increasingly become a touchstone for political identity.
WASHINGTON — How can President Trump hold on to the support of his followers amid a pandemic that has so far killed about 92,000 Americans and an economic collapse that rivals the Great Depression?
Roughly 1 in 5 people who had jobs in February lost them in March, a study by Federal Reserve economists has found. The last president to preside over job losses like that was Herbert Hoover, who lost reelection in a landslide. Why doesn’t Trump seem to be headed for Hoover’s fate?
That’s a question a lot of Democrats ask these days, with a belief among many that Trump has some Svengali-like power over his voters.
That gives the president more credit than he’s due.
The real answer is as plain as the mask on your face — or not on, depending on the partisan tribe to which you belong.
Masks have become the most visible symbol of the coronavirus pandemic. Around the world, the use of face coverings has dramatically expanded. Uniquely in the United States, however, they’ve become a touchstone for political identity.
Republicans, increasingly, refuse to wear masks, even where public health officials say they should. Democrats wear them even in cases where there’s no need, as illustrated by Sen.
Tim Kaine of Virginia, who wore a bandanna that made him look like a stagecoach robber in an old western at a Senate hearing last week in which no one else sat within three yards of his chair.
Last week, three political scientists — Tom Pepinsky of Cornell University, Shana Gadarian of Syracuse University and Sara Goodman of UC Irvine — released an analysis of polling data about which Americans say they wear masks in public. They found a gap of more than 20 points along partisan lines: 75% of Democrats said they did, compared with 53% of Republicans.
The partisan gap was greatest among city dwellers — people in rural areas are less likely to wear masks regardless of party — and held true in most cases when researchers factored in the effects of income and education. (There was little partisan gap among those who didn’t graduate from high school, they found.)
That’s consistent with other surveys. Early in the pandemic, polls showed little difference in the behavior of Democrats and Republicans, even though they had widely different views of the illness and its causes. But as the political battling over the coronavirus has intensified, that has changed.
For both sides, masks have become a symbol: of trust in scientific and medical expertise on the part of Democrats, and of rejection of experts who tell others what to do on the part of Republicans.
If the question of whether to cover one’s face can be so strongly shaped by politics in the midst of an outbreak of a potentially deadly communicable disease, then don’t be surprised that partisanship even more stubbornly affects people’s choice of a president.
Partisanship has almost always played a major role in American politics, but we’re currently in an era of hyperpartisan division in which the gap between the two major parties looms wider than it has in more than a century.
Partisan lines now coincide with many other overlapping lines of identity, reinforcing the division. The partisan split by race and education, with the Republicans becoming almost exclusively a party of white people, carries particular force.
For evidence of how stubborn partisanship can be, consider the latest results from the highly regarded, nonpartisan Marquette University survey of voters in Wisconsin, a key swing state in presidential politics.
The poll, released last week, found voters in the state had soured in their view of Trump’s response to the virus. By a 7-point margin, 44% to 51%, they disapproved of what Trump has done. That’s a 12-point swing against him since March, when his response to the virus got 51% to 46% approval. Voters who say they only “lean Republican” showed the biggest shift.
Just under one-third of Wisconsin’s voters approved of recent protests that have demanded that Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, lift orders that the state imposed to restrict business and slow the spread of the illness. Just short of two-thirds of voters sided with Evers. (The state Supreme Court ruled last week that the orders exceeded Evers’ authority.)
Despite all that, however, Wisconsin polling numbers on the presidential race have not budged in months. Former Vice President Joe Biden edges Trump by 46% to 43%, the poll found, the same margin the survey found in March and pretty much the same as in December.
The survey joins other high-quality, independent polls that have shown Trump trailing, but by narrow margins, in states he would need to win in order to gain a second term.
Most of the polls share two key findings — one that should be very troubling to Trump, and the other pointing to a potential way forward for him.
Charles Franklin, the political scientist who directs the Marquette poll, aggregated results from the four polls the university has conducted this year. Most voters have either a favorable view of Biden or a favorable view of Trump and plan to vote accordingly, the numbers show. But among the relatively small group that dislikes both candidates, Biden leads 62% to 15%.
Other polls have shown a similar split, and that’s a potentially big problem for
Trump. In 2016, he won heavily among voters with a negative view of both him and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
Almost the entirety of Trump’s campaign strategy at this point depends on getting more voters to view Biden negatively. How much he can achieve on that remains to be seen. But worsening the Democrat’s reputation won’t help Trump if it doesn’t lead voters to move into his column.
The other finding, however, indicates part of why Trump remains viable.
Typically, an incumbent president’s standing in hypothetical election matchups very closely tracks the president’s job approval. That stands to reason: If you think a president is doing a good job, you’ll probably lean toward reelecting him.
Trump’s an exception. His standing in polls has often lagged behind his job approval by a few points. In the Wisconsin poll, for example, Trump had 43% of the vote against Biden, but 47% of the state’s voters approve of him.
That small but persistent gap suggests that a slice of the electorate is OK with the job Trump has done overall, but is so turned off by other factors, such as his personal behavior, that they won’t vote for him. For Trump, that could point to a way forward — controlling his behavior in public and emphasizing his work.
In 2016, he largely maintained that sort of self-control during the crucial final weeks of the campaign. Since his inauguration, however, he has repeatedly bridled at any efforts by aides to instill similar discipline in the Oval Office.