From Daily Mail
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Donald Trump’s campaign manager says there’s a hidden reservoir of Trump supporters who only show their preferences anonymously
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One study from the GOP primaries showed Trump got a six-point ‘bump’ when people didn’t have to tell another human being how they would vote
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Even one prominent Democratic pollster frets about a ‘Trump Effect’ similar to the 1982 ‘Bradley Effect’ election in California
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In that year a black mayor led polls in the governor’s race but lost, likely because white voters didn’t want to tell pollsters that they opposed him
Donald Trump’s campaign manager said in a British broadcast airing this week that ‘undercover’ Trump voters, invisible to traditional pollsters, will help the Republican win the White House in November.
‘The hidden Trump vote in this country is a very significant proposition,’ Kellyanne Conway told the UK’s Channel 4 in a special broadcast titled ‘President Trump: Can He Really Win?’
‘I call it the “undercover Trump voter,” but it’s real,’ she said.
‘Donald Trump performs consistently better in online polling where a human being is not talking to another human being about what he or she may do in the election,’ Conway explained.
‘It’s because it’s become socially desirable, if you’re a college-educated person in the United States of America, to say that you’re against Donald Trump.’There’s evidence to support her view.
Trump has performed better this year against Hillary Clinton in online and telephone push-button polls than he has in surveys that use live interviewers.A study published last December by Morning Consult, a nonpartisan digital research company, found that at that point in the GOP primary process, Trump performed ‘about six percentage points better online than via live telephone interviewing.’
Morning Consult sampled 2,500 people and compared what they told pollsters with what they told their computers – a scenario that more closely resembles the privacy of a voting booth.
The study also determined that the six-point difference was driven largely ‘by adults with higher levels of education.’That suggests college-educated voters may be more tuned-in to the social acceptability of preferring one candidate over the other, making them more wary about declaring their support for Trump to another person.
Ultimately, Trump underperformed many primary-season polls, leading some to believe talk of hidden voters and silent majorities is all smoke and mirrors.But Conway made similar comments two weeks ago on NBC’s ‘Today’ show, comparing the size of Clinton’s leads in various polls – including one conducted exclusively online by the Reuters news agency.
‘When you have online polls as opposed to telephone polls, Mr. Trump tends to do better,’ she said then, ‘and that’s because the online polls approximate the ballot box, where you’re issuing your vote privately.’
‘We think there’s a big hidden Trump vote in this country,” Conway told NBC.
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