Want to know what’s really driving votes? It’s our collective sour mood.
The results of November 5 were not surprising. From the moment Florida reported early, and Rick Scott and Donald Trump outpaced polls by almost double, we knew Latinos were flocking to Trump far more than predicted. It only took a matter of two more hours before North Carolina made it clear that black men and young people, in particular young men, were doing the same, and the election was over. The question is not how Harris lost, but why. And now, gallons of ink will be spilled by people who have spent their careers getting it wrong, all analyzing their version of “why.” Sorry, but I’m not signing up for that echo chamber.
It’s time to look at the underlying data about Americans’ true feelings to reveal the real reasons the Trump movement has endured for so long in spite of his toxicity, and why hard facts have had such a difficult time breaking through for all sides.
Let’s start simply. For the last several decades, pollsters have lived and died by one question: do you feel the country is on the wrong track or the right track?
Before 2000, this question had material relevance in elections, and bounced between up and down in tandem with economic development and concrete policy achievements. It varied from 20% to 70%, but it had real meaning.
Since 2000, however, the number of Americans who are satisfied with the country’s direction has declined steadily from a “high water” mark of 40% to the current high-teens/low-20s as measured by Gallup, regardless of the economy, policy, war, or who’s in the White House.
Gallup really should scrap the question, unless they’re willing to ask a follow up: why do you feel that way? Because half the people would say they feel the country’s going in the wrong direction because they’re out of power, and the other half would say it’s because the other side is stopping them from real progress. That’s a useless standoff masking what’s really going on.
Let’s look at this from another angle. For years, pundits have pondered why no amount of facts or negative events could “break through” Trump’s floor of support. They wrongly assume he’s a once a generation personality. Democrats have been asking themselves how someone could vote for a convicted felon, a man found liable for sexual assault, a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel? How can a large portion of his supporters supposedly vote against their own interests, if he were indeed to carry out the policies he spoke about: mass deportations (Latinos); broader immunity for police (black men); tariffs (everyone, especially those at the economic bottom)?
The answer is not, as James Carville would say, it’s the economy, stupid. The answer is, it’s not about the candidate, stupid.
Why did I start at Gallup polls and then turn to Trump’s baseline support? Because the same thing distorting Gallup is the same thing driving Trump’s floor. The fundamental reshaping of American society is not about “America first,” misogyny, racism, immigration, or economic performance, although all were legitimately at play for some minority of voters, and all are very real challenges we must address. Rather, for most people, these issues were referenced solely as proxies in the absence of self-understanding. There are indeed a minority of true believers for what little exists of a Trump governing philosophy, but that’s not who I’m talking about, and that’s certainly not enough to win an election.
Come on, why do you think when everyday Trump voters were approached by infamous liberal Tiktokkers about policy, that they were so often stumped, or bypassed the questions? Because it’s not about the policy. Why do you think no amount of first-time down payments, inflation reduction, or job creation was going to save Harris—even when the facts were indeed in her favor? Because it’s also not about the facts.
So then, you might ask, what is it all about?
Today, almost every decision Americans make is driven in part or in whole by how they emotionally feel about life.
Yes, facts on the ground—how hard it is to make rent, the idea that you may never own a home, how expensive groceries are—will impact your stress level and how you feel, but the root of our people’s individual moods goes far deeper than this laundry list of voter grievances they hope a President will solve. Otherwise, they would have voted for Harris, whose policies economists agreed would have helped more people. And yes, before you even say it, I’m aware that many voters did indeed vote because they wanted a strongman, or out of racism, or to try to restore Roe. But they are not the vast majority of Americans, and even they are influenced by their moods and emotional feelings. All these factors are layers on one influence larger than all others when it comes to voting and other decisions.
The primary motivating factor in our national mood—a mood that dictated how so many millions voted—is that, as we’ve moved deeper into the Internet era (no coincidence that the shift in Gallup exactly matches), the very fabric that brought Americans together for decades has dissipated and been replaced by an isolating, overbearing, inferiority-inducing, digital-led existence. Which has, in turn, made everyone sour: sad, angry, lonely, depressed, choose your poison.
Business is not inherently bad, but business must be checked by government. Such has always been the case. Labor rules stopped people from dying in factories, the SEC ensures fair trading, and so on. But no regulation has come forward to arrest the dehumanization of Americans by businesses in favor of profit in the digital era, leaving people powerless and increasingly alone.
In a quest to make money, Google has downplayed search relevance in favor of advertising. Facebook abandoned connecting people in favor of advertising. The news has abandoned educating people in favor of clickbait that drives eyeballs and advertising. And as a result, the average person is exposed to over 1,000 incoming ads a day, an impossible firehose of “you could have it better, you should have it better” that makes people think that they don’t already have it good. If that’s not enough to do you in, it gets much, much worse.
The digital economy’s pursuit of profit with no regulatory guardrails has not only assaulted every American with relentlessly detrimental ads, it has also displaced the meaningful physical connections that bound us for centuries with an isolating digital reality designed to keep you online, away from others, and, inadvertently, in a death spiral away from the happiness we derive from authentic human connection.
Think I’m exaggerating? Ask your local charity or civic organization. Girl Scouts membership has cratered. Church attendance is a fraction of its heyday, even with right-wing evangelicals on the rise. Your local “lodge” is stocked with men over 60, if anyone’s there at all. Even as people seek more offline experiences like homing pigeons subconsciously in search of a connection, those experiences are Instagram museums, or thousands of phones recording performances instead of enjoying them, or selfies to broadcast just how good your life is, even when it doesn’t feel that way to you. And that last one is the biggest problem.
We drove people and their lives online, and in the process, separated them from each other physically, yes. But at the same time, we introduced a freedom to bully behind the veil of anonymity, and made sure that every filter and falsely optimistic caption showed a better life than the one you had. This combination of isolation, negativity, and toxic positivity has led to unprecedented problems.
The New York Times recently reported that 40% of adult males identify as having zero friends. Social studies show that most Americans report feeling sometimes or always lonely. Every year, at least 10% of Americans have a major depressive episode, and that’s just what we know about. The Pew Center revealed that people flock to extreme movements—including MAGA—in search of a sense of belonging. Democratic identity politics and Republicans MAGA politics are just two halves of the same coin, groups of people in search of tribalism ingrained in our souls since evolution.
And let’s not even get to self-esteem. With two-thirds of Americans overweight or obese, endless filters to smooth out digital wrinkles, and a constant flood of perfectly-edited social videos from your neighbors, it’s no wonder McKinsey reports retail beauty sales alone were up 9% year over year. And don’t go thinking age brings perspective: the highest rates of antidepressant use are in those over 60, according to the CDC—and that’s just the severe minority who actually seek treatment.
The reality is that the vast majority of Americans are angry, disappointed, sad, upset, and emotionally riven.
Yes, the difficulty of making ends meet in the last few years didn’t help, but that was an added pressure, not the underlying source. COVID isolation didn’t cause it either; it only accelerated a trend already underway. The truth is the majority of Americans are lonely, have been for a long time.
When you look at the General Social Survey and all available statistics, there’s a direct correlation, for decades, between this “epidemic of malaise” induced by digital isolation and the way Americans feel about the direction of their country. And it’s that sadness that’s driving their vote, no matter how many corrective facts you throw at them. Donald Trump didn’t win the first majority since 2004 because of his non-existent “concept of” a policy. He won because he felt our people’s fundamental sadness and anger, tapped into it, and manipulated it for his own gain.
It didn’t matter how much things got better, people were still going to be sad. We have problems, but they’re nowhere near as bad as they used to be, nor as bad as they are everywhere else. Inflation was a necessary evil byproduct of saving our economy during COVID—and we recovered faster than any other nation on the planet, even bypassing a recession. Real wage growth is increasing for the first time in years. Fewer people die as a result of armed conflict than almost any period in history. No troops are deployed abroad for the first time in a generation. People are living longer, equal rights have spread to more individuals, and immigration is fueling our economy, not hurting it. But none of that matters to tens of millions of angry, lonely citizens.
This should come as no shock – “rose-colored glasses” emerged as a term almost 200 years ago. Why, then, would you not foresee “grey-colored glasses,” the opposite tendency to see everything that goes on around you as worse than it actually is? Nor should it come as a surprise that a cunning political leader capitalized on a trend already underway long before he came to power. That’s been happening since the dawn of time.
Donald Trump won the Presidency a second time in spite of all his toxicity because tens of millions of Americans didn’t vote for a candidate or a policy. They voted their sour mood. The people who are saddest? Immigrants who are demonized; counties with significant Latino populations shifted 9.5% more to the right than those who didn’t, according to The New York Times. Black men and young white men, who have the highest rates of loneliness and sadness, shifted further to the right than any other group except Latinos according to exit polls. In fact, almost every demographic shifted towards the right—not because we’re a nation who supports a nativist, criminal con artist, but because we’re a nation so angry, so sour that we voted our emotions in spite of the facts.
Think I’m wrong? When was the last time you got angry and did something or said something you regretted?
So what to do? Just accept that angry Americans will vote angry, there’s nothing we can do to win them back? No. Wait until it’s Republicans’ turn, and toss them out in an endless tit-for-tat? No. In fact, voters are telling us the opposite…with their votes.
The mood is sour, but not yet all-consuming. The cancer hasn’t spread to the total political body. Tony Evers won re-election as Governor of Wisconsin the same year voters sent the extremist Ron Johnson back to the Senate. Gretchen Whitmer remains a popular Governor of Michigan, yet Harris failed to capture her state. Abortion referendums continue a (mostly) winning streak. Local elections and policy-making remain stubbornly personal and mostly fair throughout the country, in spite of the GOP’s attempt to claim otherwise. In fact, the more local, the more connected, the more personal people feel to the issue or person at hand, the more they are willing to set aside their anger and vote based on policy, facts, and reality.
I won’t lie, the cancer continues to spread. Local politics are not immune, and neighborhoods are falling. Studies show we’re continuing to self-isolate, and companies out there seeking to reconnect humans offline are few and far between. But they exist. The seeds are there. We just need to water them.
This is fixable. It is reversable.
In a slightly-infamous study, hundreds of voters were brought together from opposite sides, put in the same room repeatedly for weeks, and found common ground. Juries do it every day. And this transformation is not new. California finally brought about marriage equality for its state—and led the way for the country—when they stopped lecturing people and instead focused on helping voters connect with the real, personal LGBTQ individuals in their lives. “Equal rights” gave way to “love is love” for your brother, your sister, your cousin. Another California study showed the same re-humanization around trans individuals in 2016 through human-to-human connection and conversation, again reported in The New York Times.
In fact, time and again, studies have shown that conversation—human-to-human connections based on shared beliefs, common ground, and a civil dialogue even where you disagree—works. It not only changes minds; it makes people feel less lonely. In fact, it changes minds because it makes people less lonely. Freed from their grey-colored glasses, they are ready to hear out the facts, make their own rational decisions, and even agree to disagree, civilly.
I keep hoping we will learn our lessons. I don’t know if we will, but I know we can—when you take the time to connect with someone. It’s not immediate, it’s not quick, it’s not easy. People who are angry don’t want to listen at first. But YOU have to take the first step, and maybe even the second, and the tenth. Science proves, though, it works. It won’t work for everyone, but it doesn’t need to. It will work for most.
Talk with people, not at them. Show genuine care for their lives, their feelings, and yes, their anger. If you’re shouting at Trump supporters that they’re stupid for voting against their own interest, you’re part of the problem. You’re just adding to the cycle of anger and dehumanization. I get it, it’s tempting. If you are someone who is potentially going to find themselves on the wrong side of a Trump policy (and I am one), life can be scary, and the future harm very personal. But no one said because people are mean to you, you get to be mean in return. Stop focusing on election results, and start focusing on building a human connection. You can choose to perpetuate the cycle of sadness, anger, and dehumanization, or you can choose to do your part to arrest it. I choose the latter.
I’m not an influencer, I’m not a leader, I’m not a politician. I’m just one person who is obsessed with people and their behavior, and who wants to make the world a better place. This essay is just one salvo in a chaotic conversation dominated by talking heads who are paid millions to spout repetitive nonsense that also happens to keep them on air and ad dollars flowing. But this essay is my drop in that ocean. My effort. Part of my commitment to do my part to help us end the cycle of sadness and loneliness. I also check in on my friends, reach out to those I disagree with, throw dinner parties, join clubs. It’s actually pretty straightforward, even if that first step is very scary.
And every day, civic club or no club, dinner party or no dinner party, I try to find one person and do one thing that makes them feel a little bit better, a little less lonely, a little less angry.
Maybe, someday, we’ll have an election about candidates and policy as a result.
My usual caveat: this is my opinion, based in facts and data, but just mine. Have your own? That’s cool, too. But that’s why you can start your own blog!