As election season rolls around, more and more Americans are asking themselves the same dreaded question: Trump or Biden? Painfully, our democratic system may serve us an all too familiar political matchup — one that the vast majority of Americans disapprove of. In addition to a highly exhausting news cycle, another election between President Joe Biden and twice impeached, four-times indicted former President Donald Trump should result in a strong win for the Democrats, right? Wrong.
Although Trump is facing high disapproval and all kinds of legal trouble, he continues to lead in Republican Party primary polls. In fact, most general election polls now show Trump and Biden neck and neck in a rematch. Why is that? Simply put, the former president (intentionally or not) elicits various psychological phenomena — including confirmation bias, belief perseverance and more — that secure him millions of loyal supporters.
With Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican Party turned to the president for answers. Trump and his campaign responded with the Big Lie: voter fraud. Even though their claim of a stolen election has been repeatedly disproven, the president and his legal team continue to push it anyway. Subsequently, nearly 70% of Republican voters still believe the 2020 election was illegitimate, according to a recent CNN poll. To maintain this fantasy despite the clear reality, Trump and his supporters utilize misinformation, pushing misrepresented videos, articles and statistics that affirm their claims.
This creates a dangerous echo chamber fueled by confirmation bias, the tendency of people to seek out only information that favors their beliefs. According to Cindy Elmore, a professor at East Carolina University, people are more likely to believe what confirms their preferred views. This means that many right-wing pundits like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity are quick to spread anything that can reinforce their narrative about the election. As a result of this flaw in human psychology, they continue to disseminate false information to other like-minded people, twisting anything for their political benefit and narrative.
Additionally, our political identities have a strong influence on what we choose to believe. This is true for both sides of the aisle.
In an interview with Psychology Today, Jay Van Bavel, a professor of psychology at New York University, commented on the impact identity has on our beliefs. Van Bavel argues that conforming to our ideological identity can be more important than having evidence-based beliefs.
A perfect embodiment of this trait is Tucker Carlson’s leaked text messages regarding Donald Trump. Although Carlson is an avid advocate of the former president on air, his private messages have revealed his disdain for Trump, proving the reporter to be a mere performer. This contrast between public and private support underscores the obligation many Republicans feel to endorse their party, beliefs and the person they voted for.
However, we have seen some prominent members of the GOP contradict this trend for the good of the country. Former U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois both committed political suicide as they defied Trump’s lies and spoke out against his dangerous actions. The two were active members of the January 6th Select Committee, tasked with investigating the attack on the nation’s Capitol and Donald Trump’s involvement in it.
Being fierce critics of their party’s president and staunch defenders of American democracy made Cheney and Kinzinger pariahs in the GOP, and predictably, they both lost their seats in Congress. To most, sticking with their political identity — no matter how far one must go to maintain allegiance — is far more appealing than losing whatever power they may hold.
In more recent news, the former president’s criminal misconduct has come back to haunt him. For his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Trump is now facing two criminal indictments, one federal and one state. Through it all, Trump stands by his innocence and continues to argue he has done nothing illegal. Testimony from close advisors, however, proves Trump was made well aware his behavior was against the law. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, former Vice President Mike Pence, Brad Raffensperger, Georgia secretary of state, and many others informed the president that his claims were inaccurate and his actions reckless.
However, Trump was not swayed. He believes he had every legal right to head a criminal syndicate designed to secure him a second term, to pressure Pence into not certifying the 2020 election results and to undermine the integrity of our elections. Trump evokes the psychological tendency of belief perseverance, in which a person is unable to change their belief even when given contradictory information. It is unclear whether or not Trump truly believes what he says is true, yet it is almost certain that his lawyers will argue that he does, absolving him of knowingly spreading lies.
Trump, his political henchman and his die-hard supporters have proven far too destructive to be put back in power. Their rejection of facts and reality, representative of actual pathological traits, can no longer be tolerated by our democratic institutions. Trump was able to create a powerful and manipulative base, and over the past seven years, we’ve unfortunately seen what he can do with that power. When it comes to the 2024 presidential race, the answer should be clear. Aside from his legislative accomplishments, Biden has shown he respects the rule of law and that he will do everything he can to fight for the American people, not himself. Unfortunately, the majority of the American public does not agree. While he faces hurdles to reelection, from a low approval rating to an impeachment inquiry from the Republican-led House of Representatives, a Biden victory next year would be significantly better for the American people than another Trump term.
Zach Ajluni is an Opinion Columnist and can be reached at zajluni@umich.edu.