Scott Adams in the WSJ
The Mystery of Trump’s Lousy Polls
If he’s so persuasive, why is his approval so low? Well, Michael Jordan missed a lot of baskets.
Scott AdamsJan. 30, 2018 6:41 p.m. ET
For years I’ve been arguing that Donald Trump is a world-class persuader. So why is his job-approval rating so low? The short answer is that the old rules about presidential approval no longer apply.
Do you remember a few decades ago when one of the main complaints about politics was that Democrats and Republicans were not so different? Not anymore. The news industry has found that polarization is a strong business model. The first group of pundits claim many times a day that Republicans are right about nearly everything and Democrats are stupid and evil, while the second group do the reverse. Voters tend to consume news that agrees with their opinions, thus reinforcing them. In this environment, you can’t reasonably expect the folks who voted for the losing candidate to warm up easily to the winner. In the past the differences between victor and vanquished in the political arena were mostly questions of policy. To partisans today, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump are a lying, cheating murderer and a crazy, impulsive, lying, racist, homophobic, sexist narcissist. That’s a big gap.
And it’s not as if Mr. Trump’s opponents are eager to close it. Michael Jordan missed about half of the shots he attempted. That isn’t because he lacked skill, but because the opposing players were highly capable at defending. Likewise, the political and media professionals who oppose the president are playing unusually strong defense, and that works against his job-approval ratings.
Example: Anti-Trumpers take it as a given that this president is a racist. As evidence, they point to a series of news stories and quotes that seem to support that position. Your common sense tells you that even if some of the claims are exaggerated or taken out of context, there are so many of them that they can’t all be wrong.
Confirmation bias looks exactly like a mountain of evidence. Illustration: Scott Adams
But as any cognitive scientist will tell you, they can all be wrong, and that wouldn’t be unusual. Confirmation bias looks exactly like a mountain of evidence. If that sounds crazy, consider how much solid evidence the press gave us in 2016 that Mr. Trump could never get elected. Let’s consider three bits of so-called evidence about Mr. Trump’s alleged racism to illustrate my point:
• Birtherism. Critics of Mr. Trump point to his questioning of President Obama’s birth certificate as obvious evidence of racism. But imagine if Hillary Clinton’s birth certificate had been questionable in any way. Do you seriously think Candidate Trump would have ignored that easy line of attack because she was white? In 2016 he did make an issue of Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth.
Mr. Trump has attacked every white male who opposed him, including Republicans, on a daily basis, using every persuasion tool at his disposal. But the birther issue still feels racist because you see it in the context of all the other evidence of his alleged racism.
• Charlottesville. Critics believe Mr. Trump took sides with the torch-carrying racists who were chanting anti-Semitic slogans in Charlottesville, Va., and called them “fine people.” The implication is that he publicly betrayed his Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren—while also inexplicably recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That doesn’t make sense.
The more ordinary explanation is that Mr. Trump spoke about the protests without having all the details about who attended and why. It was reasonable for him to assume some people were there because they agreed with his position that toppling Confederate statues is more about political correctness than racism. (For the record, I regard those statues as offensive decorations we can live without.) In any event, Mr. Trump later disavowed the Charlottesville racists in clear terms.
• “S—hole countries.” If you don’t think Mr. Trump is a racist, you probably interpreted his scatological reference as applying to Third World countries that are not producing as many educated citizens as economically advanced places like Norway. If you think he is a racist, you probably believe he was calling the people in those countries a nasty word.
Now consider these three bits of evidence combined. I just offered compelling rebuttals to each, but when partisans weave them together in a quilt of confirmation bias, they feel deeply persuasive.
Candidate Trump offered his own explanation for his offensive statements. “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said in the first Republican debate in August 2015. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness.” When he proves it time and again, critics cleverly reframe his offensiveness to “he’s a racist!” With that sort of persuasion working against him, even his supporters are likely to be wary of admitting it to pollsters.
Moreover, much of the public understands “job approval” to include liking Mr. Trump’s style in addition to his accomplishments. A better measure of presidential approval might be the National Federation of Independent Business’s Small Business Optimism Index. That captures a lot of variables: growth, jobs, foreign policy, domestic risks. The NFIB index’s monthly average hit an all-time high in 2017, even as Mr. Trump’s job-approval ratings hovered around 40%.
Anyway, 40% is better than the press’s approval rating, and a lot better than Congress’s. That sounds about right for the best persuader in the world. He’s very talented, but he isn’t magic—and the other team is playing too.
Mr. Adams is the creator of the comic strip Dilbert and author of “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.”
The Mystery of Trump’s Lousy Polls
If he’s so persuasive, why is his approval so low? Well, Michael Jordan missed a lot of baskets.
Scott AdamsJan. 30, 2018 6:41 p.m. ET
For years I’ve been arguing that Donald Trump is a world-class persuader. So why is his job-approval rating so low? The short answer is that the old rules about presidential approval no longer apply.
Do you remember a few decades ago when one of the main complaints about politics was that Democrats and Republicans were not so different? Not anymore. The news industry has found that polarization is a strong business model. The first group of pundits claim many times a day that Republicans are right about nearly everything and Democrats are stupid and evil, while the second group do the reverse. Voters tend to consume news that agrees with their opinions, thus reinforcing them. In this environment, you can’t reasonably expect the folks who voted for the losing candidate to warm up easily to the winner. In the past the differences between victor and vanquished in the political arena were mostly questions of policy. To partisans today, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump are a lying, cheating murderer and a crazy, impulsive, lying, racist, homophobic, sexist narcissist. That’s a big gap.
And it’s not as if Mr. Trump’s opponents are eager to close it. Michael Jordan missed about half of the shots he attempted. That isn’t because he lacked skill, but because the opposing players were highly capable at defending. Likewise, the political and media professionals who oppose the president are playing unusually strong defense, and that works against his job-approval ratings.
Example: Anti-Trumpers take it as a given that this president is a racist. As evidence, they point to a series of news stories and quotes that seem to support that position. Your common sense tells you that even if some of the claims are exaggerated or taken out of context, there are so many of them that they can’t all be wrong.
Confirmation bias looks exactly like a mountain of evidence. Illustration: Scott Adams
But as any cognitive scientist will tell you, they can all be wrong, and that wouldn’t be unusual. Confirmation bias looks exactly like a mountain of evidence. If that sounds crazy, consider how much solid evidence the press gave us in 2016 that Mr. Trump could never get elected. Let’s consider three bits of so-called evidence about Mr. Trump’s alleged racism to illustrate my point:
• Birtherism. Critics of Mr. Trump point to his questioning of President Obama’s birth certificate as obvious evidence of racism. But imagine if Hillary Clinton’s birth certificate had been questionable in any way. Do you seriously think Candidate Trump would have ignored that easy line of attack because she was white? In 2016 he did make an issue of Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth.
Mr. Trump has attacked every white male who opposed him, including Republicans, on a daily basis, using every persuasion tool at his disposal. But the birther issue still feels racist because you see it in the context of all the other evidence of his alleged racism.
• Charlottesville. Critics believe Mr. Trump took sides with the torch-carrying racists who were chanting anti-Semitic slogans in Charlottesville, Va., and called them “fine people.” The implication is that he publicly betrayed his Jewish daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren—while also inexplicably recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. That doesn’t make sense.
The more ordinary explanation is that Mr. Trump spoke about the protests without having all the details about who attended and why. It was reasonable for him to assume some people were there because they agreed with his position that toppling Confederate statues is more about political correctness than racism. (For the record, I regard those statues as offensive decorations we can live without.) In any event, Mr. Trump later disavowed the Charlottesville racists in clear terms.
• “S—hole countries.” If you don’t think Mr. Trump is a racist, you probably interpreted his scatological reference as applying to Third World countries that are not producing as many educated citizens as economically advanced places like Norway. If you think he is a racist, you probably believe he was calling the people in those countries a nasty word.
Now consider these three bits of evidence combined. I just offered compelling rebuttals to each, but when partisans weave them together in a quilt of confirmation bias, they feel deeply persuasive.
Candidate Trump offered his own explanation for his offensive statements. “I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” he said in the first Republican debate in August 2015. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness.” When he proves it time and again, critics cleverly reframe his offensiveness to “he’s a racist!” With that sort of persuasion working against him, even his supporters are likely to be wary of admitting it to pollsters.
Moreover, much of the public understands “job approval” to include liking Mr. Trump’s style in addition to his accomplishments. A better measure of presidential approval might be the National Federation of Independent Business’s Small Business Optimism Index. That captures a lot of variables: growth, jobs, foreign policy, domestic risks. The NFIB index’s monthly average hit an all-time high in 2017, even as Mr. Trump’s job-approval ratings hovered around 40%.
Anyway, 40% is better than the press’s approval rating, and a lot better than Congress’s. That sounds about right for the best persuader in the world. He’s very talented, but he isn’t magic—and the other team is playing too.
Mr. Adams is the creator of the comic strip Dilbert and author of “Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter.”
