NEWS AND OPINION:
Former President Donald Trump continues to prompt political questions.
“Are there still shy Trump voters?” a Morning Consult analysis released Wednesday asks.
“Shy Trump voters” has been a group noticed since his poll-defying 2016 win over Hillary Clinton and bolstered by, among other things, a Public Opinion Strategies voter survey released Nov. 3, 2020, which found that 19% of Trump voters kept their vote a secret from their friends.
Does this voter shyness still exist? Maybe not.
“Trump has consistently outperformed his polling margins since he came onto the political scene, but this was especially the case in 2020, when both the 538 average and our own final national survey had him trailing by 8 percentage points, just as he was at this point in our polling four years ago,” wrote Cameron Easley, lead political analyst for the pollster.
“He ultimately lost the popular vote by 4 percentage points, and that’s reasonably caused quite a few political observers to scrutinize his margin against Kamala Harris now: If Trump is once again outperforming his polling margin by roughly the same amount, then he’s actually tied with Harris right now nationwide — and he’s ahead in the swing states,” he said.
“But while polling error has broken Trump’s way to date, that doesn’t mean it always will, especially if a heavily studied group — the voters who support Trump but are too shy to say so in surveys — are now actually being captured in public sentiment. There are two big reasons to think surveys are now capturing those voters better than they used to,” Mr. Easley continued.
“The first is that we and many other survey research firms are weighting surveys on recalled 2020 vote choice, so the sample reflects Trump’s level of popular-vote support from four years ago,” he said.
“The second is that, as our own tracking and the broader polling averages have shown, Trump has become more popular during the past year, especially as the Republican presidential primary heated up. He’s more popular than he was during the vast majority of his presidency, and he’s much more popular than he was at this time four years ago,” Mr. Easley said.
’AANHPI’ VOTERS EMERGE
The Democratic Party is now seeking the support of “AANHPI” voters — “Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander” voters — a group the party says is poised to play “a pivotal role” in the 2024 election.
The campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris released two new ads Wednesday, focused on health care and anti-Asian hate, in its first effort aimed at persuading these voters in battleground states, the campaign said in a statement.
“The ads will air in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin as part of a broader and historic $90 million paid media buy for the last three weeks of August,” said a written statement shared with Inside the Beltway.
“In addition to appearing on outlets including The Filipino Channel (TFC), Crossings TV, 3HmongTV, Nyob Zoo, SBS Television Korea, TVB USA, Hon Viet TV, GEO TV, ARY, SBTN, Zee TV, NTV, and ATN Bangla, the ads will run on Meta, Snap, YouTube, Connected TV, iHeart Radio, Pandora, and elsewhere online to reach these key voters,” the statement said.
“Following the launch of the campaign’s national AANHPI organizing and engagement program in early July, Team Harris-Walz has also hired additional staff dedicated to AANHPI voter outreach and is planning a number of culturally specific direct voter contact activities across the battleground states, including in-language canvassing and phone-banking,” it said.
MEANWHILE ON THE BAY
Let’s spend time with former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who is running for U.S. Senate in his state.
On Tuesday, he traveled to Tilghman Island to meet with watermen there and discuss their innovative and ongoing efforts to clean the Chesapeake Bay. Mr. Hogan is particularly interested in how he could build on their efforts if he wins the Senate seat.
“The Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure, and our administration was proud to invest over $8 billion — record high levels of funding — in restoration efforts,” he told the watermen, recalling his efforts to help the bay during his time in office.
Indeed, as governor, Mr. Hogan provided $344.5 million to preserve wetlands, streams and beloved regional critters such as blue crabs, oysters and striped bass.
“But the work’s not done. After meeting with watermen and hearing about everything they’re faced with, from the repercussions of climate change to overbearing federal regulations, I know there is so much more I can do,” he said in a statement shared with Inside the Beltway.
“As Maryland’s next United States senator, I’ll build on these efforts and enact my plan to ensure this storied piece of Maryland’s history is a part of our bright future as well,” Mr. Hogan said.
SCIENCE CORNER
“Legal documents are notoriously difficult to understand, even for lawyers. This raises the question: Why are these documents written in a style that makes them so impenetrable?” a new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology asks.
“Just as ‘magic spells’ use special rhymes and archaic terms to signal their power, the convoluted language of legalese acts to convey a sense of authority,” the study said.
“People seem to understand that there’s an implicit rule that this is how laws should sound, and they write them that way,” senior author Edward Gibson, professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the school, said in a statement.
The study was published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an academic journal.
POLL DU JOUR
• 59% of U.S. adults believe that democracy in the United States could be at risk depending on who wins the 2024 president election.
• 67% of Democrats, 58% of Republicans and 42% of independents agree.
• 21% overall believe that democracy in the U.S. is strong enough to withstand the outcome of the 2024 election no matter who wins;
• 20% of Democrats, 24% of Republicans and 19% of independents agree.
• 18% overall believe that the U.S. is already so “seriously broken” that it doesn’t matter who wins the 2024 election.
• 12% of Democrats, 17% of Republicans and 37% of independents agree.
SOURCE: An Associated Press-NORC poll of 1,143 U.S. adults conducted online and by telephone July 25-29 and released Aug. 8.
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• Jennifer Harper can be reached at jharper@washingtontimes.com.