How credible is the "Shy Trump voter" theory

[Pessimistic Antineutrino]

I don't see how a "shy Hillary" effect has any basis in reality. I doubt a large number of people are afraid to voice their support for her out of fear of being ripped to shreds by rabid Trump supporters, as tempting it may be to assume that. It's far more likely, especially in urban or more well-off areas to shy away from voicing support for Trump. Especially considering that in many circles Trump (and by extension his supporters) is equated to racism and xenophobia, it makes more sense for a Trump supporter to not want to be associated with such him than it does for anyone to be "shy Hillary".

[Mr. Morden]

As far as I can tell, everyone who thinks there's some kind of shy Trump voter effect is basing the theory on hunches.  Does anyone want to point to any actual evidence that something like this exists?  Perhaps using recent statewide elections in the USA with "controversial" candidates as examples?  You can't just jump on a theory like this based on a hunch.  Ideally, if you think something like this is going on, you should explain other cases where it manifested itself, and then explain why it applies in this election as well.

[ag]

you have even 16 year olds on Twitter just ripping anything related to Trump .

I mean, you cannot blame them for wanting to live to be at least 20.

[Maxwell]

You can not compare this effect with Romney.

People are genuinely afraid to support him in fear of backlash or voice their opinion in the slightest. This has not happened in previous cycles, because the only serious backlash for GOP support was always from some left-wing nuts, blatant liberal hacks, or MSNBC lol. This cycle you have even 16 year olds on Twitter just ripping anything related to Trump to join the wave.

well i mean Trump supporters have actually killed a dog of a Clinton supporting family all because they put a sign up.

I think it's much worse if you're a Clinton supporter. You get fire from two very vocal sides.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

My grandma told no one that she was going to vote for Trump until after she did (she says that she decided in the voting booth).  I could see the same type of thing happening in November.  Also, in the vast majority of recent elections, such as the midterms, the UK election, the Israel election, and Brexit, the polls were very biased against the right.

[Maxwell]

My grandma told no one that she was going to vote for Trump until after she did (she says that she decided in the voting booth).  I could see the same type of thing happening in November.  Also, in the vast majority of recent elections, such as the midterms, the UK election, the Israel election, and Brexit, the polls were very biased against the right.

trash polls in other countries do not equal trash polls in this country. please try again.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

As far as I can tell, everyone who thinks there's some kind of shy Trump voter effect is basing the theory on hunches.  Does anyone want to point to any actual evidence that something like this exists?  Perhaps using recent statewide elections in the USA with "controversial" candidates as examples?  You can't just jump on a theory like this based on a hunch.  Ideally, if you think something like this is going on, you should explain other cases where it manifested itself, and then explain why it applies in this election as well.

We're talking about President of United States of America. Every f**king newspaper, every TV-canal have been talking about Trump's "controversial" statements in more than 1 year. The "old" establishment in whole world is against him. F**king Pope condemned Trump and accused him not being Christian. He didn't disavow David f**king Duke once. On f**king CNN. He owns news cycles. With his statements. Only Brexit got the similar (but not on the same level) amount of attention (in UK) and condemnation.

I don't know much about US local (state) politics, but I'd guess that Trump is unique. In many ways.

About evidence? Final part of primaries, when Trump goes to getting >50% voters, i.e. when not only his truly hardcore supporters started to vote for him. As I said, if Shy Trump effect exists, it will not be will be among those who "enjoy" Trump's "The wall just got TEN FEET HIGHER!" stuff.

It does not need to be Shy Trump effect, but it might very well be. But even then it might be canceled out by for example underestimation of Hispanics or something else.

[DC Al Fine]

My grandma told no one that she was going to vote for Trump until after she did (she says that she decided in the voting booth).  I could see the same type of thing happening in November.  Also, in the vast majority of recent elections, such as the midterms, the UK election, the Israel election, and Brexit, the polls were very biased against the right.

trash polls in other countries do not equal trash polls in this country. please try again.

Why? If a phenomenon is being observed across the West, it's not that outrageous to think it might have a counterpart in America.

[MasterJedi]

Generally Trump's voters are very proud of their racist orange moron. The ones that are quietly supporting him don't want to be known for supporting the racist but they're a big minority of his supporters.

Clinton's supporters are generally quieter because they got torn apart by Berniebros in the primaries and now get torn apart by Trumpers now.

[Cruzcrew]

Back when I was a Trump supporter, I kept that type of thing mostly quiet since where I am, people shun you for being a Trump supporter. I can imagine there being a decent amount of shy trump voters in urban, diverse areas that are very, very hostile to Trump, especially among college educated whites.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

Today we've got a very intersting article from Harry Enten, 538
Live Polls And Online Polls Tell Different Stories About The Election

Clinton gets 2.3% more in live polls. Where did she get those extra voters from compared to online polls? Yes, from Johnson.

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9.1 - 6.4 = 2.7

If there is Shy Trump effect, that'd be exactly it would look like , huh? Shy Trump voter would choose another candidate/be undecided/not vote.

But as I said, even Shy Hillary voters exist... in red states.

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For instance in Utah, Clinton is doing 17.1% better in nonlive polls than in live polls.
Indeed, you better not tell your Mormon dudes, you're voting for Hillary.

It does make things, even though we don't have evidence, so it does not need to be that way...

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There were some latent neverTrumpers who hoped, that Trump will be denied nomination

[Rand]

This is just another theory posited by the Trump camp to delegitimizate the vast number of polls that he is down in.  It's not in their nature to admit the possibility that he is a terrible candidate who has alienated large swathes of voters and thus is struggling at 38% or 40% in the polls.  It is in their nature to present these bogus ideas that polls are biased toward Clinton, phony, or that millions of voters are blushing in the shadows because they're just too embarrassed to publicly support Trump.  It's a transparent attempt to give Trump supporters a little bit of optimism in the morning when all they see is Clinton Clinton Clinton in the polls.  They're lying to themselves and they know it, but as long as it keeps hope alive in the Trump camp it will make it all the more sweeter to see their faces when they lose.

[Gustaf]

Even apart from the issues with comparing directly with xenophobic parties in Europe I'm also skeptical of the claim this is a big thing in Europe.

For example, AfD didn't overperform their polls in the last German national election. Hofer didn't overperform the polls in the 2nd round in the Austrian presidential election.

It isn't entirely clearcut that this is a natural law of politics IMO.

[Erich Maria Remarque]

Even apart from the issues with comparing directly with xenophobic parties in Europe I'm also skeptical of the claim this is a big thing in Europe.

For example, AfD didn't overperform their polls in the last German national election. Hofer didn't overperform the polls in the 2nd round in the Austrian presidential election.

It isn't entirely clearcut that this is a natural law of politics IMO.

What you just did is cherry picking. "in the 2nd round", "latest" etc.

Trumpish parties have been underestimated on average. Not always, no.

For example. Polls with RV have been underestimating Republicans on average. But in 2012 they didn't. In fact, they overestimated R with 2%. But on average they do. And it is plausible to assume that RV is more likely to underestimate R in 2016 as well.

[Gustaf]

Even apart from the issues with comparing directly with xenophobic parties in Europe I'm also skeptical of the claim this is a big thing in Europe.

For example, AfD didn't overperform their polls in the last German national election. Hofer didn't overperform the polls in the 2nd round in the Austrian presidential election.

It isn't entirely clearcut that this is a natural law of politics IMO.

What you just did is cherry picking. "in the 2nd round", "latest" etc.

Trumpish parties have been underestimated on average. Not always, no.

For example. Polls with RV have been underestimating Republicans on average. But in 2012 they didn't. In fact, they overestimated R with 2%. But on average they do. And it is plausible to assume that RV is more likely to underestimate R in 2016 as well.

The word "latest" never occurs in my post.

If you want to extrapolate from observations it matters how robust the correlation is. If it doesn't happen in many cases it is a lot less likely to suddenly happen in this case.

If you have a data analysis of the average (as opposed to your own cherrypicking of examples), go ahead and post it. It'd be interesting.

[dspNY]

Complete bunk

[NOVA Green]

Ok---- here's the 538 article that I was looking for regarding the "shy Trump" voter theory and basically saying there isn't any real evidence of it.

Granted it is from 5/20 at the end of the primary season.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-probably-arent-lying-to-pollsters/

Also, here's a Huffington Post article from 8/2 that also discusses this topic:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-embarrassed-voters_us_57a0dcdae4b08a8e8b5faf73

[Erich Maria Remarque]

Ok---- here's the 538 article that I was looking for regarding the "shy Trump" voter theory and basically saying there isn't any real evidence of it.

Granted it is from 5/20 at the end of the primary season.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-supporters-probably-arent-lying-to-pollsters/

Also, here's a Huffington Post article from 8/2 that also discusses this topic:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-embarrassed-voters_us_57a0dcdae4b08a8e8b5faf73

From 538

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Even though

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So as I said there are signs that might [but don't need to] indicate Shy Trumper effect.

[International Brotherhood of Bernard]

I imagine any kind of Shy Trump effect (which I doubt exists in a significant size regardless since his supporters are always the loudest it seems) will be offset easily by non-English voters who often aren't included in polls and the fact that the Democrats have the world's top tier ground game, while Trump has virtually none thus far.

[EliteLX]

You can not compare this effect with Romney.

People are genuinely afraid to support him in fear of backlash or voice their opinion in the slightest. This has not happened in previous cycles, because the only serious backlash for GOP support was always from some left-wing nuts, blatant liberal hacks, or MSNBC lol. This cycle you have even 16 year olds on Twitter just ripping anything related to Trump to join the wave.

well i mean Trump supporters have actually killed a dog of a Clinton supporting family all because they put a sign up.

I think it's much worse if you're a Clinton supporter. You get fire from two very vocal sides.

And Donald's supporters have been spit on, harassed, houses vandalized, physically assaulted, and even shot. By no means did I mean there is not backlash to be a Clinton supporter because, after-all, both nominee's do have to fight to get above a 40% approval rating nationwide.

I simply disagree Clinton has it worse. To support Trump is to be stereotyped as an utter clown by the mainstream media, the highly educated, journalists, the youth, political junkies, so on and so forth. On the flip side, as a Hillary fan, you might take some heat from the white blue collar GM assembly line worker from Michigan, or the avid outdoors-man from Tennessee that always talks politics at the dinner table. Not much more.

[Wiz in Wis]

My grandma told no one that she was going to vote for Trump until after she did (she says that she decided in the voting booth).  I could see the same type of thing happening in November.  Also, in the vast majority of recent elections, such as the midterms, the UK election, the Israel election, and Brexit, the polls were very biased against the right.

trash polls in other countries do not equal trash polls in this country. please try again.

Why? If a phenomenon is being observed across the West, it's not that outrageous to think it might have a counterpart in America.

Can we please dispense with the idea that "Brexit" was always losing and "Remain" was always winning. It was close, and the polling was also always close. The lead flopped around a ton!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum

[Tender Branson]

The Trump campaign has been pushing a narrative of "the shy trump voter" who decides to cast his vote for Trump despite publicly not acknowledging so.

The same strategy was used by the Romney campaign to explain his deficit in the poll numbers and turned out to be totally bogus.

But since the 2016 campaign has been so unlike others in the last few presidential elections, could the polls really be underestimating Trump's vote share?

It worked for the far-right FPÖ in the 1990s, when they regularly underpolled by 5-10% in the polls, because people would not tell pollsters their real intentions over the phone.

But nowaways, pollsters have found ways to adjust for that factor but they are not totally safe so far. Just in April, during the 1st round of the Presidential election here, they underestimated the FPÖ candidate again by 10-11% ... (but they got the runoff right on the mark). But there have been other elections, like in Vienna last year, where they overestimated them by 5%.

In general, the polls are not bad here but there were 2 different factors at play: In Vienna, there was a tight race between the Social Dems and the FPÖ, and people came out in a massive turnout for the Social Dems. In the Presidential election, the refugee crisis propelled Hofer (FPÖ) to a record result (because people did not tell pollsters about their anger at the refugee influx).

A "shy voter effect" could be possible for Trump, but we have to wait and see. There are a lot of other factors at play in this race.

[Dutch Conservative]

My grandma told no one that she was going to vote for Trump until after she did (she says that she decided in the voting booth).  I could see the same type of thing happening in November.  Also, in the vast majority of recent elections, such as the midterms, the UK election, the Israel election, and Brexit, the polls were very biased against the right.

trash polls in other countries do not equal trash polls in this country. please try again.

Why? If a phenomenon is being observed across the West, it's not that outrageous to think it might have a counterpart in America.

Can we please dispense with the idea that "Brexit" was always losing and "Remain" was always winning. It was close, and the polling was also always close. The lead flopped around a ton!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum

No, definitely not. The polls really were biased against the leave-camp. Not only in the last two weeks, but during the whole campaign. In +100 polls there were only 4 polls that showed a 50+ lead for leave. They ended up with 52%.

[DavidB.]

My grandma told no one that she was going to vote for Trump until after she did (she says that she decided in the voting booth).  I could see the same type of thing happening in November.  Also, in the vast majority of recent elections, such as the midterms, the UK election, the Israel election, and Brexit, the polls were very biased against the right.

trash polls in other countries do not equal trash polls in this country. please try again.

Why? If a phenomenon is being observed across the West, it's not that outrageous to think it might have a counterpart in America.

Can we please dispense with the idea that "Brexit" was always losing and "Remain" was always winning. It was close, and the polling was also always close. The lead flopped around a ton!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum

No, definitely not. The polls really were biased against the leave-camp. Not only in the last two weeks, but during the whole campaign. In +100 polls there were only 4 polls that showed a 50+ lead for leave. They ended up with 52%.

To back this up: "Leave was always in the lead: why the polls got the referendum result wrong".

[RI]

The thing about "shy X voter" theories is that they're impossible to verify prior to an election being held. You can't really use empirical methods when the very process of applying an empirical method undermines its outcome.