(Axios)
"Secret" Trump voters are "coming out of the closet" after having a major impact on the 2024 presidential election, according to a report from Axios. Are writers Mike Allen and Erica Pandey on target with their article? I'm not sure about that. In fact, we are working on a number of posts about information that could provide an alternative explanation for some of the peculiar voting data, most of which wound up favoring Trump. I invite readers to check out the Axios piece below, and we would like to know what you think of their conclusions. We welcome your input, either in the comments section of this post or on my Facebook page.
Under the headline "Secret Trump voters have post-election coming out party," Allen and Pandey write:
They're donning MAGA hats in cafes, celebrating on social media and flying Trump flags: Supporters of President-elect Trump in deep blue cities and states are no longer keeping it to themselves, Axios' Erica Pandey writes.
- Why it matters: Trump improved on his 2016 and 2020 margins in almost every state and in most big, blue cities — even New York, L.A. and Chicago.
Many Trump voters in those cities saw his victory as validation, and are acting accordingly. Some residents of liberal enclaves tell Axios they've seen more Trump yard signs go up after the election than before it.
- Many supporters of Vice President Harris are grappling with the fact that their neighbors might not have voted the way they did.
The "secret" Trump vote is not new to this year's election. It has happened before, Allen and Pandey write:
Flashback: The "secret" Trump vote has been a phenomenon for the past few election cycles.
- A study from Columbia Business School found that among those who kept their choice a secret leading up to the 2016 election, two out of three went for Trump.
- "I think people recognize there is some kind of reputational cost of supporting Trump," says Columbia's Michael Slepian, who co-authored the study.
Zoom in: According to Slepian's research, people primarily keep their votes secret because they're concerned about their reputation, about conflicts with family and friends, and about feeling like they don't belong in their neighborhood or city.
- And while many people who supported Trump will continue to keep mum due to those concerns, others are seeing the rightward shift in blue cities and the broader support for Trump and deciding to go public.
- "There's such a stigma still with being a Trump supporter ... I'm not sure it's gonna be like that anymore," says Jonathan Alpert, a Manhattan-based psychotherapist who says patients told him they were keeping their support for the former president quiet before the election.
It sounds like some of the "private" Trumpers are embarrassed about their choice of a presidential candidate. Given the reckless manner in which Trump is filling out his cabinet and staff, plus dire predictions many experts have made about a second Trump term -- and those experts include historian Allan Lichtman, who has become known as America's "Nostradamus" after correctly picking nine of 10 presidential elections, until Trump broke that streak this year -- "private" Trumpers might want to be deliberate about coming out of hiding to take credit for the president they helped create -- and the messes he already is creating.
Write Allen and Pandey:
On TikTok, Instagram and beyond, some influencers who'd kept their political preferences hidden are going full MAGA, The Cut reports.
My advice? Cool your jets and chill a bit before going "full MAGA." My sense is that events are coming that you might not want to be associated it. Trump is known for creating chaos, and that is likely what we are going to get early in a second term.You might decide that being a "secret" Trump supporter wasn't such a bad idea after all.
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