After the 2016 election, America was introduced to the concept of the ‘hidden’ voter.
Polls dramatically underestimated public support for Donald Trump – then he shocked the world by becoming the 45th President.
Pollsters had blundered by inadvertently overlooking tens of thousands of Americans who were casting their ballots for Trump. And now, nearly a decade later, there is evidence that the ‘hidden’ Trump voter is back.
A ‘hidden’ voter is someone who hasn’t cast a ballot in a recent presidential or midterm election or perhaps ever. And, by design, political survey-takers only seek out those people who are the most likely to vote.
These ‘hidden voters’ may also be actively dodging pollsters. Some may be worried about identity theft or they’re careful about being stuck on some dreadful mailing list. (Check your clogged inbox and tell me that you don’t sympathize.)
To be sure, these citizens exist – and in large numbers.
So, what happens when the ‘hidden voter’ finally decides to join the political fray and cast a ballot?
Nearly a decade later, there is evidence that the ‘hidden’ Trump voter is back.
Craig Keshishian was a project director on President Reagan’s polling team and later served in Reagan’s Presidential Speechwriting and Research Office.
Well, just ask Hillary Clinton.
Polls in the run-up to the 2016 election showed Trump trailing Clinton by significant margins in most of the swing states. We know what happened next. Trump swept nearly all of the battlegrounds – winning in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida.
Many were stunned by the outcome. But I wasn’t, nor were Matt Towery of Insider Advantage or Robert Cahaly of Trafalgar Group, who are among the most accurate and influential pollsters in the country.
In 2016, the three of us saw signs of a rebellious Trump voter flying under the radar. He or she was someone who wanted change but wasn’t particularly vocal about their outrage.
And they were hiding in plain sight. If you knew what to look for.
As a young member of President Ronald Reagan’s political strategy team, I became aware of voters who suffered in silence under the bone-crushing inflation of the Jimmy Carter years and quietly resented the politicians who eroded their rights.
As I’ve written previously, these were the Americans, later known as the ‘Silent Majority,’ who came out in force in 1980 to oust Carter in an unexpected landslide.
I foresaw this phenomenon again in 1982 as a project director for Reagan’s polling team. I was assigned to follow the California gubernatorial race between the black Democratic mayor of Los Angeles, Tom Bradley, and the white Republican Attorney General George Deukmejian.
On the eve of the election, polls and the media anointed Bradley the prohibitive favorite. Then, he lost.
Some, to this very day, attribute that surprise result to ‘hidden’ racism in the electorate. But my bosses and I knew better.
There was a gun control proposition on the ballot that year that alarmed rural Californians, mostly farmers, growers and ranchers clustered in the San Joaquin Valley.
They couldn’t care less whether the Democratic or Republican was white, black or green. They were worried that the government would infringe on their constitutional rights if the proposition passed.
These voters rushed to the polls to tick ‘no’ on the gun control measure and – while they were at it – voted ‘yes’ for the Republican Candidate for governor.
As I’ve written previously, these were the Americans, later known as the ‘Silent Majority,’ who came out in force in 1980 to oust Carter in an unexpected landslide.
A deeper dive into the data revealed that many of these voters were crossover Democrats and independents, with some of them last voting for John F Kennedy back in 1960 – 22 years prior!
It can be argued that the Democrats had their own ‘hidden voter’ success in the 2022 midterm elections. In that cycle, Democratic turnout unexpectedly blunted the ‘Red Wave’ that was widely forecast to sweep Republicans into power in Congress.
The Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, which had guaranteed a constitutional right to an abortion, motivated women, moderates and independents to vote in numbers that caught nearly everyone off guard.
Much to the chagrin of heavyweights in the Republican Party, I anticipated this ‘Blue Backlash’ and shared my concerns on national television before the vote.
Now, I see evidence of a ‘hidden voter’ movement once again – and it may be just as consequential.
Astute pollsters use a so-called ‘affinity’ question to root out overlooked opinions in the electorate.
The query is worded like the following: ‘Knowing what you know, who do you think your neighbor is voting for?’
While the ‘affinity’ question doesn’t solve the problem of the ‘hidden’ voter who hangs up the phone on the pollster, it does tap into the respondent’s sense of the mood in their community.
In late October, the polling firm Redfield and Wilton asked a variant of this question. The survey among 1,400 likely voters in the swing counties found that 47 percent backed Trump and 46 percent for Harris.
But when asked, ‘Who your neighbor is voting for,’ Trump’s support surged to 51 percent and Harris dropped to 44. That’s a seven-point swing.
If this differential materializes on Election Day, Trump will win convincingly.
Then there is the empirical evidence of a ‘hidden’ voter.
In Nevada, a state that backed Biden by less than 34,000 votes in 2020, the early vote from registered Republicans vote is overwhelming.
Of the more than 1.1 million early ballots cast (including in-person voter and mail-in ballots), 38 percent were from Republican voters and 34 percent from Democrats – creating a sizeable 43,000 advantage.
These early ballots have not yet been opened, so we don’t know for certain which candidate they favor. But it is a safe assumption that most registered Republicans are Trump supporters – and Democrats have historically held an advantage in the early vote.
Additionally, there is a surge of early voting out of rural Nevada, which tends to lean conservative. Fifty-seven percent of those ballots are from Republicans. There’s also a significant turnout from independent voters.
This pattern is being repeated in nearly every battleground state.
In Arizona, where Biden won by less than 10,500 votes, Republicans had a 188,000 lead in the early ballot count, as of Friday.
Plus, there’s evidence of new male voters registering as Republicans and new Republican female voters slightly outnumbering new Democratic female voters.
Record-breaking early voting turnout in Georgia is not coming from Democratic strongholds, as it usually does, but from conservative rural counties like Towns, Oconee and Rabun.
And, finally, in Pennsylvania, the picture continues to be muddled but intriguing.
Democrats hold a significant lead in early ballots returned (more than 400,000 as of Monday) but Republican voter registration in the state has exploded.
There are now more Republicans in the state than ever before (3,710,290) and the traditional Democratic-lead in registered voters in the Keystone State is now smaller than it’s been at any time since 1970.
Does all this mean that Trump has a lock on these battlegrounds?
No, nothing is guaranteed in life, especially in the political world. The abortion issue may stir up left-leaning women and moderate voters again. There could be, heaven forbid, a ‘Black Swan’ event overseas that turns everything on its head.
As things stand today, there’s evidence of a unique cohort of voters making their voices heard – perhaps for the first time. And they appear to be Republicans.
