Philippa Kaur

Donald Trump has a particular formula he uses to convey messages to his supporters and opponents alike: He highlights others’ wrongdoings even though he has committed similar acts himself.

On Oct. 3, 2024, Trump accused the Biden administration of spending Federal Emergency Management Agency funds – money meant for disaster relief – on services for immigrants. Biden did no such thing, but Trump did during his time in the White House, including to pay for additional detention space.

This is not the first time he has accused someone of something he had done or would do in the future. In 2016, Trump criticized opponent Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured personal email server while secretary of state as “extreme carelessness with classified material.” But once he was elected, Trump continued to use his unsecured personal cellphone while in office. And he has been criminally charged with illegally keeping classified government documents after he left office and storing them in his bedroom, bathroom and other places at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

After complaining about how Hillary Clinton handled classified documents, Donald Trump stored national secrets in a bathroom.
Justice Department via AP

More recently, the Secret Service arrested a man with a rifle who was allegedly planning to shoot Trump during a round of golf. In the wake of this event, Trump accused Democrats of using “inflammatory language” that stokes the fires of political violence. Meanwhile, Trump himself has a long history of making inflammatory remarks that could potentially incite violence.

As a scholar of both politics and psychology, I’m familiar with the psychological strategies candidates use to persuade the public to support them and to cast their rivals in a negative light. This strategy Trump has used repeatedly is called “projection.” It’s a tactic people use to lessen their own faults by calling out these faults in others.

Projection abounds

There are plenty of examples. During his Sept. 10, 2024, debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump claimed that Democrats were responsible for the July 13 assassination attempt against him. “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” he declared.

Earlier in the debate he had falsely accused immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating other people’s pets – a statement that sparked bomb threats and prompted the city’s mayor to declare a state of emergency.

Similarly, congressional investigators and federal prosecutors have found that Trump’s remarks called thousands of people to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, encouraging them to violently storm the Capitol in order to stop the counting of electoral votes.

Trump isn’t the only politician who uses projection. His running mate, JD Vance, claimed “the rejection of the American family is perhaps the most pernicious and the most evil thing the left has done in this country.” Critics quickly pointed out that his own family has a history of dysfunction and drug addiction.

Projection happens on both sides of the political aisle. In reference to Trump’s proposed 10% tariff on all imported goods, the Harris campaign launched social media efforts to condemn the so-called “Trump tequila tax.” While Harris frames this proposal as a sales tax that would devastate middle-class families, she deflects from the fact that inflation has made middle-class life more expensive since she and President Joe Biden took office.

How it works

Projection is one example of unconscious psychological processes called defense mechanisms. Some people find it hard to accept criticism or believe information that they wish were not true. So they seek – and then provide – another explanation for the difference between what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in their minds.

In general, this is called “motivated reasoning,” which is an umbrella phrase used to describe the array of mental gymnastics people use to reconcile their views with reality.

Some examples include seeking out information that confirms their beliefs, dismissing factual claims or creating alternate explanations. For example, a smoker might downplay or simply avoid information related to the link between smoking and lung cancer, or perhaps tell themselves that they don’t smoke as much as they actually do.

Motivated reasoning is not unique to politics. It can be a challenging concept to consider because people tend to think they are fully in control of their decision-making abilities and that they are capable of objectively processing political information. The evidence is clear, however, that there are unconscious thought processes at work, too.

Influencing the audience

Audiences are also susceptible to unconscious psychological dynamics. Research has found that over time, people’s minds subconsciously attach emotions to concepts, names or phrases. So someone might have a particular emotional reaction to the words “gun control,” “Ron DeSantis” or “tax relief.”

And people’s minds also unconsciously create defenses for those seemingly automatic emotions. When a person’s emotions and defenses are questioned, a phenomenon called the “backfire effect” can occur, in which the process of controlling, correcting or counteracting mistaken beliefs ends up reinforcing the person’s beliefs rather than changing them.

For instance, some people may find it hard to believe that the candidate they prefer – whom they believe to be the best person for the job – truly lost an election. So they seek another explanation and accept explanations that justify their beliefs. Perhaps they choose to believe, even in the absence of evidence, that the race was rigged or that many fraudulent votes were cast. And when evidence to the contrary is offered, they insist their views are correct.

Vice President Kamala Harris has campaigned with Liz Cheney, right, a prominent Republican who formerly served in Congress.
AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

A way out

Fortunately, research shows specific ways to reduce people’s reliance on these automatic psychological processes, including reiterating and providing details of objective facts and – importantly – attempting to correct untruths via a trusted source from the same political party.

For instance, challenges to Democrats’ belief that the Trump-affiliated conservative agenda called Project 2025 is “dangerous” would be more effective coming from a Democrat than from a Republican.

Similarly, a counter to Trump’s claim that the international community is headed toward World War III with Democrats in the White House would be stronger coming from one of Trump’s fellow Republicans. And certainly, statements that Trump “can never be trusted with power again” carries more weight when it comes from the lips of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney than from any member of the Democratic Party.

Critiques from within a candidate’s own party are not out of the question. But they are certainly improbable given the hotly charged climate that is election season 2024. More

Political operatives on the far right have long spoken about their ambition to shift the “Overton window”. The aim is to “mainstream” ideas long considered unthinkable, through gradual, step-by-step radicalisation and repetition – especially on hot-button issues such as immigration, sexuality, race and identity.

If challenged, commentators respond by appealing to “free speech”, accusing their critics of denying this basic liberal right.

The career of former Fox News celebrity Tucker Carlson represents a case study in the success of this political strategy in the United States. As his recent interview with Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper highlights, the Overton window seems to have shifted so far that it now includes the extreme right in ways that were unthinkable as recently as a decade ago.

The interview on Carlson’s YouTube channel raises unsettling questions about the visions of history and politics all of this “free speech” is opening us towards, and how democratic debate could possibly be benefited by this process.

Careering free speech

Carlson has a history of promoting baseless claims. In late 2021, he exercised his freedom of speech by producing a three-part documentary alleging that the riot of Trump followers at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 was a “false flag” FBI operation, the true aim of which was to vilify the MAGA movement.

He has pushed COVID vaccine conspiracy theories and promoted the “great replacement” conspiracy theory on more than 400 shows. Long restricted to the extreme right fringe in Europe, this “theory” suggests that progressive elites in Western nations promote non-European immigration for their own political advantage, with the sinister ambition to “replace” the “white race”.

Carlson was ousted from Fox News in 2023, shortly after the cable network’s $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems for spreading disinformation about the 2020 election. His own emails admitting Fox’s dishonesty were used as evidence in the case.

Then came 2024. In February, Carlson visited Russia, becoming the first Western journalist to interview President Vladimir Putin since the start of the Ukraine war. Carlson allowed Putin to air his rationalisations for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, without any real challenge.

Aleksandr Dugin.
Duma.gov.ru via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Carlson then sat down for his YouTube channel with Russian neofascist Aleksandr Dugin. Dugin is a pro-Putin intellectual who was once fired from his academic position for urging his countrymen to “kill, kill, kill” their Ukrainian neighbours. He has expressed admiration for the Waffen SS – the most radical military arm of the Nazi SS – and decried the “Jewish elite”, which he proposes runs the US. In 1996, Dugin called for “an authentic, real, radically revolutionary and consistent fascism” in Russia, “borderless as our lands, and red as our blood”.

Shortly after his interview with Dugin, Carlson hosted Cooper, who proposed that British prime minister Winston Churchill, not Adolf Hitler, was the “chief villain” of World War II.

As for the Holocaust? Cooper challenged almost everything “mainstream” historians agree about Nazi atrocities. He claimed the Nazis’ hands were tied due to food shortages after Hitler invaded Soviet Russia. Since Churchill had refused to admit defeat after the fall of France in 1940, the Nazis were effectively blockaded. This left them with a choice between slowly starving the millions of “prisoners” their invasions bequeathed them and the more “humane” measure of “finishing them off quickly”.

These views, which have long circulated in neo-Nazi circles, are demonstrably false. They transparently serve to sanitise Hitler’s atrocities.

Bipartisan concerns

With his interview with Cooper, Carlson’s journey to the farthest reaches of the political right finally seems to have sparked bipartisan concern. Alongside condemnation from the White House, criticism came from some conservative lawmakers, including New York Republican Mike Lawler, who commented:

Platforming known Holocaust revisionists is deeply disturbing. During my time in the State Assembly, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to ensure all students in New York received proper education on the Holocaust, something Mr Cooper clearly never had.

Conservative political theorist Leo Strauss once opined that Weimar Germany collapsed because its liberal freedoms allowed Nazism, with its craven appeals to base hatreds, to proliferate. The shift of the Overton window in the US to include the far-right makes his warning newly unsettling.

Conservative theorist Leo Strauss in 1939.
Monozigote, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

We have slowly arrived at a place where a commentator of enormous influence, who is close to a presidential candidate, is platforming a fan of Heinrich Himmler’s SS and neo-Nazi talking points.

The problem here is arguably not only that Carlson is hosting extremists such as Dugin and Cooper, but that he presents them to his many followers as courageous truth-tellers, whose views have been “forbidden” by censorious elites. He extolled Cooper as “the best and most honest popular historian in the United States”. Elon Musk posted on X in praise of Carlson’s interview, before quietly removing the post.

The same wide-eyed sympathy characterised Carlson’s exchanges with Putin and Dugin. Little wonder the latter celebrated his interview as a great tactical victory. Carlson had, in effect, given Dugin’s ideas an entrée into the US, from which Dugin himself remains banned.

To what end?

The pressing question all this raises is just what good can possibly come from opening the Overton window to ideas which generations of people since World War II have known to be toxic and incompatible with the political values of nations such as the US and Australia, which Carlson visited earlier this year.

In response to this question, formulaic outrage about the right to freely express any and all ideas, including the most hateful and patently false, really doesn’t cut it. In political scientist Robert O. Paxton’s definition, fascism is characterised by:

obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by
compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

There is nothing in such a militant perspective consistent with the basic principles of democratic countries: social pluralism, the rule of law, multiparty politics with the peaceful transition of power, and the protected liberties of citizens – including freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech and its enemies

John Stuart Mill argued for freedom of speech on the grounds that the contest of opinions is needed to discover and share the truth. This classic liberal defence of free expression faces inescapable challenges, however, when it comes to the opinions of avowed enemies of “liberalism” such as Dugin and Cooper.

They are people who deride concerns about individual rights and protections. They assert the demands of the mythologised “ethnic community”. They conceive of politics as a war or struggle for domination.

Proponents of far-right views have, at best, a conditional interest in seeking the truth. Mill’s conception of a pluralistic public sphere of competing voices is anathema to them, if they attain power. They have no interest in fostering an independent-minded population capable of holding leaders to informed account.

The far right accepts the need to lie, suppress information and “strategically” present its position to different audiences. Such dishonesty is an instrument in the existential struggle. Its shameless deployment is a sign of strength and fidelity to the higher “truth” of the cause.

German philosopher Rainer Forst has studied the issues of free speech and toleration.
www.stephan-roehl.de, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

All of this suggests deep “free speech” reasons for scepticism about the formulaic appeal to this liberal value being used to mainstream the ideas of Dugin and Cooper. Liberal democracies champion toleration. Yet as philosopher Rainer Forst has shown in a classic study, this toleration necessarily requires the clear-sightedness to identify, and the forthrightness to oppose, principled intolerance and the promotion of group hatred.

The time is surely past for the postwar complacency that far-right politics “could never happen again” in new forms. This is a time when a US vice-presidential candidate has happily shared a stage with Carlson after his Cooper interview.

The same candidate now owns his willingness to “create” stories about immigrants to spread fear and division before a national election whose results his party has again committed to challenging should they lose.

It is time to outspokenly defend democratic values and institutions against their foes, rather than let the disingenuous appeal to “free speech” be used to undermine them. More

It might seem surprising today in the era of Donald Trump, but Republicans in the United States once championed immigration and supported pathways to citizenship for undocumented Americans.

In January 1989, Ronald Reagan’s final speech as president was an impassioned ode to the immigrants who made America “a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas”.

Contrast this with Trump, who has normalised dehumanising rhetoric and policies against immigrants. In this year’s presidential campaign, for instance, he has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Both Trump and his vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, also repeated a false story about Haitian “illegal aliens” eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Perhaps most troubling, Trump has pledged to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”, if he’s elected.

Immigration policies throughout history

Nativism, or anti-immigrant sentiment, has a long history in American politics.

In 1924, a highly restrictive immigration quota system based on racial and national origins was introduced. This law envisaged America as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation.

However, there was no restriction on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. The agricultural and railroad sectors relied heavily on workers from Mexico.

In 1965, the quota system was replaced by visa preference categories for family and employment-based migrants, along with refugee and asylum slots.

Then, as violence and economic instability spread across Central America in the 1970s, there was a surge in undocumented immigration to the US.

Scholar Leo Chavez argues that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an alarmist “Latino threat narrative” became the dominant motif in media discussions of immigration.

This narrative was frequently driven by Republican politicians in states on the US-Mexico border, who derived electoral advantage from amplifying voter anxieties.

The growing popularity of this negative discourse coincided with a significant increase in income inequality – a byproduct of neo-liberal policies championed by Reagan and other Republicans.

Read more:
Before Trump, there was a long history of race-baiting, fear-mongering and building walls on the US-Mexico border

A dramatic shift in Republican rhetoric

In the early-to-mid 20th century, Democrats were often the party that supported restrictive immigration and border policies.

However, most Republicans at the national level – strongly supported by business – tended to endorse policies that encouraged the easy flow of workers across the border and increased levels of legal immigration.

Prominent conservative Republicans also rejected vilifying rhetoric towards undocumented Americans. They presented all immigrants as pursuing opportunities for their families, a framing that emphasised a shared vision of the American dream. In this telling, their labour contributed to the economy and America’s growth and prosperity.

George H. W. Bush And Ronald Reagan debate immigration in a Republican primary debate in 1980.

Reagan, the most influential conservative of the late 20th century, opposed erecting a border wall and supported amnesty over deportation.

Reagan also strongly supported bipartisan immigration reform. In 1986, Congress passed an immigration act that increased border security funding, but also ensured 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, primarily of Latino background, were able to gain legal status.

Twenty years later, President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain lobbied for a bipartisan bill that would have tightened border enforcement while simultaneously “legalising” an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. It was narrowly defeated.

This vocal support for immigrants by leading Republicans was striking because for much of the period between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, a majority of Americans actually wanted immigration levels reduced.

Then, around 2009, a dramatic shift in political rhetoric took place. The Tea Party movement brought border security and “racial resentment” towards immigrants centre stage, challenging conservative Republicans from the populist right.

Supporters of a controversial new law in Arizona in 2010 that made it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally.
Ross D. Franklin/AP

As a result, more and more Republicans began to voice restrictionist and xenophobic rhetoric and support legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

What’s surprising, though, is the number of undocumented immigrants in the US was actually declining at this time, from 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016.

Donald Trump and the new nativism

In this worsening anti-immigrant climate, Trump descended a golden escalator in mid-2015 to launch his presidential campaign.

In his speech that day, immigration was front and centre. Trump vowed to “build a great wall” and accused Mexico of sending “rapists” and “criminals” to America.

His speeches during the presidential campaign were marked by frequent anti-Mexican assertions and calls for Islamophobic visa policies. This hostile stance on immigration was central to his victory in both the Republican primaries and the general election against Hillary Clinton.

Once in office, Trump then adopted a “zero tolerance” stance towards undocumented immigration. His administration pursued a heartrending family separation policy that split children and their undocumented parents at the border. This approach was celebrated on conservative media outlets such as Fox News.

During his presidency, he also reduced legal immigration by almost half, drastically cut America’s refugee intake, and introduced bans on people from Muslim-majority countries.

Policy expert David Bier concluded the goal of Republican lawmakers had shifted:

It really looks like the entire debate about illegality is not the main issue anymore for Republicans in both chambers of Congress. The main goal seems to be to reduce the number of foreigners in the United States to the greatest extent possible.

Indeed, Trump’s vision of the nation had overtly racial overtones.

In one 2018 meeting, he asked why America should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador or the African continent. His preference was for Norwegian migrants.

Immigration as a major election theme

From 2021–2023, undocumented US-Mexico border crossings surged due to natural disasters, economic downturns and violence in many Latin American and Caribbean nations. Many of the recent arrivals are asylum seekers.

Though the numbers have fallen sharply in 2024, immigration and the border are still one of the top issues for voters across the political spectrum. The issue is particularly important in the key swing state of Arizona.

In 2024, Trump’s central immigration promise was encapsulated by the beaming delegates waving signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now” at the Republican National Convention.

The Trump-Vance ticket has blamed undocumented immigrants for almost every economic and social problem imaginable. The two candidates present them as a dangerous and subversive “other” that cannot be assimilated into mainstream American culture.

Yet Trump, as both president and candidate, has worked to prevent the passage of border security legislation. Turmoil on the border benefits him.

And his nativism now encompasses all forms of immigration – he has pledged to curb legal channels for people to enter the country, as well.

All of this rhetoric has had a dramatic impact on public opinion. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of people supporting the deportation of undocumented immigrants jumped from 32% to 47%.

In July 2024, 55% of Americans also said they wanted to see immigration levels decrease, a 14-point increase in one year.

Many Americans do not perceive immigration as a source of vitality and renewal as they had in the past. Instead, reflecting Trump’s language, they are viewing immigrants as an existential threat to the country’s future. More

It might seem surprising today in the era of Donald Trump, but Republicans in the United States once championed immigration and supported pathways to citizenship for undocumented Americans.

In January 1989, Ronald Reagan’s final speech as president was an impassioned ode to the immigrants who made America “a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas”.

Contrast this with Trump, who has normalised dehumanising rhetoric and policies against immigrants. In this year’s presidential campaign, for instance, he has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Both Trump and his vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, also repeated a false story about Haitian “illegal aliens” eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Perhaps most troubling, Trump has pledged to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”, if he’s elected.

Immigration policies throughout history

Nativism, or anti-immigrant sentiment, has a long history in American politics.

In 1924, a highly restrictive immigration quota system based on racial and national origins was introduced. This law envisaged America as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation.

However, there was no restriction on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. The agricultural and railroad sectors relied heavily on workers from Mexico.

In 1965, the quota system was replaced by visa preference categories for family and employment-based migrants, along with refugee and asylum slots.

Then, as violence and economic instability spread across Central America in the 1970s, there was a surge in undocumented immigration to the US.

Scholar Leo Chavez argues that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an alarmist “Latino threat narrative” became the dominant motif in media discussions of immigration.

This narrative was frequently driven by Republican politicians in states on the US-Mexico border, who derived electoral advantage from amplifying voter anxieties.

The growing popularity of this negative discourse coincided with a significant increase in income inequality – a byproduct of neo-liberal policies championed by Reagan and other Republicans.

Read more:
Before Trump, there was a long history of race-baiting, fear-mongering and building walls on the US-Mexico border

A dramatic shift in Republican rhetoric

In the early-to-mid 20th century, Democrats were often the party that supported restrictive immigration and border policies.

However, most Republicans at the national level – strongly supported by business – tended to endorse policies that encouraged the easy flow of workers across the border and increased levels of legal immigration.

Prominent conservative Republicans also rejected vilifying rhetoric towards undocumented Americans. They presented all immigrants as pursuing opportunities for their families, a framing that emphasised a shared vision of the American dream. In this telling, their labour contributed to the economy and America’s growth and prosperity.

George H. W. Bush And Ronald Reagan debate immigration in a Republican primary debate in 1980.

Reagan, the most influential conservative of the late 20th century, opposed erecting a border wall and supported amnesty over deportation.

Reagan also strongly supported bipartisan immigration reform. In 1986, Congress passed an immigration act that increased border security funding, but also ensured 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, primarily of Latino background, were able to gain legal status.

Twenty years later, President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain lobbied for a bipartisan bill that would have tightened border enforcement while simultaneously “legalising” an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. It was narrowly defeated.

This vocal support for immigrants by leading Republicans was striking because for much of the period between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, a majority of Americans actually wanted immigration levels reduced.

Then, around 2009, a dramatic shift in political rhetoric took place. The Tea Party movement brought border security and “racial resentment” towards immigrants centre stage, challenging conservative Republicans from the populist right.

Supporters of a controversial new law in Arizona in 2010 that made it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally.
Ross D. Franklin/AP

As a result, more and more Republicans began to voice restrictionist and xenophobic rhetoric and support legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

What’s surprising, though, is the number of undocumented immigrants in the US was actually declining at this time, from 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016.

Donald Trump and the new nativism

In this worsening anti-immigrant climate, Trump descended a golden escalator in mid-2015 to launch his presidential campaign.

In his speech that day, immigration was front and centre. Trump vowed to “build a great wall” and accused Mexico of sending “rapists” and “criminals” to America.

His speeches during the presidential campaign were marked by frequent anti-Mexican assertions and calls for Islamophobic visa policies. This hostile stance on immigration was central to his victory in both the Republican primaries and the general election against Hillary Clinton.

Once in office, Trump then adopted a “zero tolerance” stance towards undocumented immigration. His administration pursued a heartrending family separation policy that split children and their undocumented parents at the border. This approach was celebrated on conservative media outlets such as Fox News.

During his presidency, he also reduced legal immigration by almost half, drastically cut America’s refugee intake, and introduced bans on people from Muslim-majority countries.

Policy expert David Bier concluded the goal of Republican lawmakers had shifted:

It really looks like the entire debate about illegality is not the main issue anymore for Republicans in both chambers of Congress. The main goal seems to be to reduce the number of foreigners in the United States to the greatest extent possible.

Indeed, Trump’s vision of the nation had overtly racial overtones.

In one 2018 meeting, he asked why America should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador or the African continent. His preference was for Norwegian migrants.

Immigration as a major election theme

From 2021–2023, undocumented US-Mexico border crossings surged due to natural disasters, economic downturns and violence in many Latin American and Caribbean nations. Many of the recent arrivals are asylum seekers.

Though the numbers have fallen sharply in 2024, immigration and the border are still one of the top issues for voters across the political spectrum. The issue is particularly important in the key swing state of Arizona.

In 2024, Trump’s central immigration promise was encapsulated by the beaming delegates waving signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now” at the Republican National Convention.

The Trump-Vance ticket has blamed undocumented immigrants for almost every economic and social problem imaginable. The two candidates present them as a dangerous and subversive “other” that cannot be assimilated into mainstream American culture.

Yet Trump, as both president and candidate, has worked to prevent the passage of border security legislation. Turmoil on the border benefits him.

And his nativism now encompasses all forms of immigration – he has pledged to curb legal channels for people to enter the country, as well.

All of this rhetoric has had a dramatic impact on public opinion. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of people supporting the deportation of undocumented immigrants jumped from 32% to 47%.

In July 2024, 55% of Americans also said they wanted to see immigration levels decrease, a 14-point increase in one year.

Many Americans do not perceive immigration as a source of vitality and renewal as they had in the past. Instead, reflecting Trump’s language, they are viewing immigrants as an existential threat to the country’s future. More

In one of the most memorable moments of the current presidential campaign, Donald Trump in July 2024 contended that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris recently stopped identifying as Indian and “happened to turn Black.”

With these false remarks, Trump implied that Harris emphasized one part of her background to appeal to voters and then changed that to appeal to a different group of voters.

Lost within this controversy has been the underlying assumption in Trump’s comments, that people tend to vote for someone with a shared identity. But is that true? Are Asian Americans, for example, especially likely to vote for Harris because of their shared identity?

Asian Americans are a quickly growing political constituency that made a difference in 2020 in swing states such as Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, helping elect President Joe Biden. They are positioned to be influential again this November.

Taken as a whole, Asian Americans lean Democratic in 2024, with 62% favoring Harris, compared with 38% who support Trump. But for Harris, Asian Americans are not as strong a voting bloc as Black Americans, who poll at 77% supporting Harris, according to the Pew Research Center. Harris cannot take Asian Americans’ votes for granted.

Kamala Harris takes a photo with guests during a White House reception in May 2022 celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Associated Press

What guides identity politics and voting

Despite the assumption in Trump’s comments that voters gravitate toward a political candidate who shares parts of their identity, such as race or gender, that is not always the case.

Voters are more likely to vote for someone with a shared identity when they see a “linked fate.” with the candidate. So, people who have the same ethnicity or race may vote in a similar fashion because they expect to experience the effects of policy changes in the same way. Latinos could be more likely to vote for a Latino candidate because the candidate would prioritize issues that matter to them, such as immigration reform.

Politicians, for their part, can try to encourage people with whom they share an identity to believe in a linked fate to win their vote. In order to do this, candidates can play up issues that affect their identity group and then make the case that they are best equipped and more motivated to address those problems.

For instance, women rank abortion rights as a key issue and trust Harris to understand it.

In order to earn voters’ support, candidates must also come across as likely to act in their supporters’ shared interests. This helps explain why people who care about so-called women’s issues, such as education or health care, are more likely to vote for a Democratic woman than a Republican woman. People generally think that Democrats represent women better than Republicans do – and they would not assume that a Republican female politician would champion women’s issues just because of her gender.

With this in mind, a candidate wanting to secure the vote of a group must first know what issues matter to them and then demonstrate that they understand the group well enough to earn their vote.

Asian Americans, like most Americans, list the economy, inflation, health care, crime, Social Security, the price of housing and immigration as their top issues in this election.

In order to effectively appeal to Asian American voters, Harris could demonstrate first that she identifies as Asian in order to invoke their shared identity. She could also show that she both understands the issues that Asian Americans care about and that she can be trusted to act in ways they favor on those issues.

To an extent, Harris has already worked to publicly identify with her South Asian heritage. She has referred to her mother’s immigrant background and has talked about her grandfather who lived in Chennai, in southern India. She has made references to her ethnic culture, such as when she mentioned coconut trees and cooked the traditional South Indian dish dosa in a video with fellow Indian American Mindy Kaling.

New Hampshire delegate Sumathi Madhure attends the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024.
Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Connecting to Asian Americans

Once solidifying that they share an identity with a group of voters, political candidates must demonstrate that they understand how the group experiences the issues that matter to them. The concerns of Asian Americans arise out of specific experiences they have – such as immigration.

Asian Americans, for example, often complain about the long wait to sponsor family members abroad for visas to the U.S. At the same time, Asian Americans represent 15% of immigrants living in the U.S. without a visa.

Asian Americans are also concerned about the growing government backlog of visas and smugglers whom immigrants pay to help them illegally cross the border.

Harris often speaks about immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, but not in personal terms – or about how this issue specifically relates to Asians.

While all U.S. residents are affected by inflation, small-business owners, in particular, feel the pinch. They must pay higher prices for goods but have limited capital with which to do so. They also must navigate higher interest rates.

While Asian Americans make up about 7% of the total U.S. population, they represent 10% of business owners and are the largest nonwhite group of small-business owners.

Harris talks about the economy and inflation, as well as the need to support small-business owners, but not about how these issues specifically affect Asian Americans. Her only ad targeting Asian Americans has focused on hate crimes against them.

And Asian Americans, like most voters, strongly support Social Security and other federal programs that aim to ensure stability for the elderly. Harris could speak of how Social Security is the sole income source for over a quarter of Asian Americans – and for a third of African Americans – compared with 18% of white Americans.

Harris seems poised to capture the majority of the Asian American vote, which leans Democratic. But to what extent they vote for her – and with how much enthusiasm – will depend on Harris’ ability to connect with them as Asian Americans and the issues they care about. More

The United States presidential election will be held on November 5. In analyst Nate Silver’s aggregate of national polls, Democrat Kamala Harris leads Republican Donald Trump by 49.3–46.2, a slight gain for Trump since last Monday, when Harris led Trump by 49.3–46.0.

Joe Biden’s final position before his withdrawal as Democratic candidate on July 21 was a national poll deficit against Trump of 45.2–41.2.

In economic data, the US added 254,000 jobs in September and the unemployment rate slid 0.1% to 4.1%. The unemployment rate had peaked at 4.3% in July.

The US president isn’t elected by the national popular vote, but by the Electoral College, in which each state receives electoral votes equal to its federal House seats (population based) and senators (always two). Almost all states award their electoral votes as winner-takes-all, and it takes 270 electoral votes to win (out of 538 total).

Relative to the national popular vote, the Electoral College is biased to Trump, with Harris needing at least a two-point popular vote win to be the Electoral College favourite in Silver’s model.

In the key states, Harris remains ahead in Silver’s poll aggregates by one to two points in Pennsylvania (19 electoral votes), Michigan (15), Wisconsin (ten) and Nevada (six). If Harris wins these four states, she probably wins the Electoral College by at least 276–262. Trump leads by 0.5 points in North Carolina (16 electoral votes), one point in Georgia (16) and 1.2 points in Arizona (11).

Read more:
Kamala Harris the slight favourite to win US election as she narrowly leads in key states

In Silver’s model, Harris has a 56% chance to win the Electoral College, unchanged since last Monday’s article. The FiveThirtyEight model was more favourable to Harris in September, but now gives her a 55% chance to win. It’s close to a 50–50 probability for either candidate, but Harris remains a slight favourite.

There are still more than four weeks to go until the election, so there’s time for the polls to change and for one candidate to have a decisive Electoral College advantage on election day. Or the polls could be understating either Harris or Trump, in which case the candidate that benefits from the poll error could have a decisive win.

Thumping lead for LNP in Queensland

The Queensland state election is on October 26. A Freshwater poll for The Financial Review, conducted September 26–29 from a sample of 1,067, gave the Liberal National Party (LNP) a 56–44 lead, a five-point gain for the LNP since the previous Freshwater poll in July 2023.

Primary votes were 43% LNP (up three), 30% Labor (down four), 12% Greens (up one), 8% One Nation (up one) and 7% for all Others (down one).

Labor Premier Steven Miles had a net approval of -5, while LNP leader David Crisafulli had a +15 net approval. Crisafulli led Miles by 46–38 as preferred premier.

The poll asked about the federal leaders’ Queensland ratings, with Anthony Albanese at net -17, while Peter Dutton was at net zero. Queensland is a Coalition-friendly state at federal elections relative to the national results.

Queensland Liberal National Party Leader David Crisafulli is leading in the polls.
Dan Peled/AAP

Federal Newspoll quarterly data

On September 30, The Australian released aggregate data for the four Newspolls taken from July to September, which had a combined sample size of 5,035. The Poll Bludger said the Coalition led in New South Wales by 51–49, unchanged on the June quarter.

In Victoria, Labor led by 52–48, a two-point gain for the Coalition. In Queensland, the Coalition led by an unchanged 54–46. In Western Australia, Labor led by an unchanged 52–48. In South Australia, Labor led by 54–46, a one-point gain for Labor.

The Poll Bludger’s BludgerTrack data shows the results by educational attainment. In the September quarter, Labor led by 53–47 among university-educated people, a one-point gain for Labor. With TAFE-educated people, there was a 50–50 tie, a one-point gain for the Coalition. Those with no tertiary education favoured the Coalition by 51–49, a one-point gain for the Coalition.

Coalition gains lead in Morgan poll

A national Morgan poll, conducted September 23–29 from a sample of 1,668, gave the Coalition a 51–49 lead, a 1.5-point gain for the Coalition since the September 16–22 Morgan poll.

Primary votes were 38% Coalition (up 0.5), 30% Labor (down two), 13.5% Greens (up one), 4.5% One Nation (down 0.5), 9.5% independents (steady) and 4.5% others (up one).

The headline figure uses respondent preferences. But if preferences were assigned using the 2022 election flows, Labor led by 51.5–48.5, a 0.5-point gain for the Coalition. There was an unusually large gap last week between the two measures.

Resolve poll on Middle East conflict

Voting intentions have not yet been released from a national Resolve poll for Nine newspapers that was conducted October 1–5 from a sample of 1,606. Regarding the political response in Australia to the Middle East conflict, 22% thought Dutton and the Liberals had responded best, 18% Albanese and Labor and 6% Adam Bandt and the Greens, while 55% said none had responded best or were unsure.

On Australia’s actions, 23% thought we should voice in-principle support for Israel, 12% Gaza and 65% both or none. On accepting refugees, 52% don’t want any refugees accepted, 24% would accept refugees from either Israel or Gaza, 13% Gaza only and 11% Israel only. More

Divisive political opinions are everywhere these days, but entrepreneurs might be wise to bite their tongues.

In a recent analysis of 19,898 Kickstarter campaigns, we found that budding businesses that expressed political views attracted less funding than ones that stayed apolitical.

As professors who study entrepreneurship, we wanted to understand the link between political expression and crowdfunding success. So we looked at thousands of campaigns launched over a two-year period.

We searched the campaigns for subtle expressions of conservative values – “Still remembering that all lives matter, regardless of color or religion and hoping to have made my idea of sandwich shop clear,” to name one example – and more overt ones, like “Drain the Swamp and Defend MAGA Country.”

We did the same thing with subtle liberal perspectives – like “I have become fed up and irritated by the lack of equality and diversity within media” – and overt ones, like “I believe that art matters + and the magic is real. Also: Black lives matter.”

In the end, we found that every percentage-point increase in political speech was associated with a 9% decline in funds raised for conservatives and a 17% decline for liberals.

Our theory, which our findings supported, is that people don’t expect to see anyone sharing political beliefs in a business context. When entrepreneurs violate this expectation, it leads people to view them as unprofessional and ultimately hurts their crowdfunding performance.

The backlash against political speech doesn’t seem to affect everyone equally. Campaigns with third-party endorsements, such as Kickstarter’s “Project We Love” badge, were punished less, we found. Having photos or videos on a campaign page also seemed to reduce the negative effect. An entrepreneur’s prior successful experience was effective when leaning into a conservative, but not liberal, voice.

Why it matters

As entrepreneurs become increasingly vocal about politics, they should understand the potential costs of speaking authentically. Our study shows that funders expect entrepreneurs to be apolitical in crowdfunding and penalize those who express their political values. Although we looked specifically at Kickstarter campaigns, the implications for established businesses, which also seek investment, are obvious.

To be fair, our work also finds evidence that entrepreneurs who come across as more credible – thanks to third-party endorsements, say, or their use of multimedia – are less penalized for political speech. But in general, entrepreneurs should at least consider keeping mum on politics in their funding pitches to ensure they don’t hurt their chances.

What still isn’t known

While we focused on the effect of entrepreneurs’ political speech, a natural follow-up question is whether funders’ political views affect whether they invest in a project. Researchers know that conservatives and liberals approach decision-making quite differently. So we think it’s crucial that researchers turn to this question next. These types of studies will start to provide a more holistic view of how political beliefs affect crowdfunding.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. More

For those trying to come to terms with a particularly tumultuous election year full of deep divisions, ideological invective and personal insults, guidance can come from a historical figure whose insights into American politics still prove useful.

As I chronicle in my new book, “Citizen Cowboy: Will Rogers And The American People,” Will Rogers stood as perhaps the most influential commentator on public affairs in the United States a century ago. Born in Oklahoma, he had risen to fame as a cowboy humorist in vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies, Broadway shows and silent movies, and he earned public acclaim with his shrewd, folksy and witty observations on American life and values.

By the 1920s, this led to a syndicated column Rogers wrote for over 300 newspapers, a stream of magazine articles and essays, and steady appearances on the national lecture circuit. He hosted a national radio program and had starring roles in several Hollywood “talkie” movies.

Rogers became the most beloved figure in America until his death in 1935. As I discovered in my research, a flood of eulogies appeared in newspapers and magazines following his passing. Typical was this one appearing in the Minneapolis Journal: “We all loved Will Rogers … . Poets we have had, and philosophers, and humorists of note; but not one among them all so endeared to the heart of the whole people. None was ever mourned with such genuine grief, none will be so missed from our common life.”

Especially fascinated by the nation’s politics, Rogers often trained his humor on its foibles and achievements alike. Three touchstones guided his commentary: a genial skepticism about politics as usual, a belief that politics must be subsumed within a broader perspective on life and, above all, an insistence that political discussants honor a code of civility.

Will Rogers sends up politics and politicians in this radio broadcast from 1924.

‘I just … report the facts’

Rogers got most of his laughs from skeptical jabs at the system. He gleefully skewered the “bunk” of American politics, his favorite word for politicians’ shameless hypocrisy, bombastic rhetoric, inflated egos and shady deal-making. Both Democrats and Republicans stood guilty of peddling bunk.

“You know, the more you read and observe about this politics thing, you’ve got to admit that each party is worse than the other,” Rogers said. “It is getting so that a Republican promise is not much more to be depended on than a Democratic one. And that has always been considered the lowest form of collateral in the world.”

The Oklahoman poked fun at the political system’s grandiose rituals and fumbling institutions. He wrote of a benumbing presidential convention in 1924 that took three weeks and 103 ballots to nominate a nonentity: “In number of population the convention is holding its own. The deaths from old age among the delegates is about offset by the birthrate.”

Rogers pilloried governmental ineptness in Washington, D.C. One year, when Congress reconvened after a round of egregious bickering and inaction, he joked, “Let us all pray: Oh Lord, give us strength to bear that which is about to be inflicted upon us. Be merciful with them, Oh Lord, for they know not what they do.”

He claimed a simple approach: “I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.”

‘Critical yet charitable’

Yet Rogers insisted that political disputation should be kept in perspective. He urged his fellow citizens to avoid politicizing every public issue and instead concentrate on more meaningful endeavors – family, friends, community and work.

Despite the dire warnings of political zealots, he said, “There is no less sickness, no less Earthquakes, no less Progress, no less inventions, no less morality, no less Christianity under one (president) than the other.”

But for Rogers, the ultimate guarantee of stability came from the mass of workaday American citizens seeking commonsense solutions to public problems. What Rogers called the “Big Honest Majority” lived simply and worked hard, wanted a good life for their families and pursued their own version of happiness.

The average citizen, Rogers believed, had solid judgment and “was not simple minded enough to believe that EVERYTHING is right and doesn’t appear to be cuckoo enough to believe that EVERYTHING is wrong.”

Finally, Rogers urged an approach to politics that was critical yet charitable, principled yet magnanimous. A connoisseur of civility, he insisted that political disputants were opponents, not enemies, and that contrary viewpoints deserved respect.

The humorist set the example: “I haven’t got it in for anybody or anything.”

Will Rogers dining with Oklahoma Gov. Bill Murray on Feb. 3, 1931, in Oklahoma City. Murray had his usual meal of hard-boiled eggs and milk; Rogers chose fried chicken.
Associated Press

Surviving overwrought partisanship

Even as he pilloried politicians’ shortcomings, he never made it personal. Despite their faults, Rogers wrote, “the Rascals, when you meet ’em face to face and know ’em, they are mighty nice fellows.” He declared famously, “I’ve joked about every prominent man in my time but I never met a man I didn’t like.”

Determinedly nonpartisan throughout most of his career, he leaned toward the party of Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression while jesting, “I don’t belong to any organized political faith; I’m a Democrat.” The cowboy humorist saw politics as an endeavor for genial discussion, not a blood sport.

Rogers’ political axioms of healthy skepticism, perspicacity and civility remain useful guides for surviving even the most sordid electioneering.

So when you hear overwrought partisans lamenting “the end of democracy” or “we won’t have a country left anymore,” take a deep breath and consider Will Rogers’ calmer, wiser approach to presidential elections a century ago. Remember his conclusion that America won’t be ruined “no matter who is elected, so the Politicians will have to wait four more years to tell us who will ruin us then.”

Then you can adopt his sage advice that when dealing with a political adversary, “don’t disagree with him looking at him; walk around behind him and see the way he’s looking.” More