The phenomenon of a “shy” Trump voter who kept their support for President Trump a secret exists, according to a post-election survey.
Nineteen percent of Trump voters said they fit the description of someone unwilling to disclose their preferred pick, even to friends, shows a newly released poll of 2020 voters by the conservative-leaning polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. Just 8% of Biden voters said the same.
The poll surveyed 1,600 voters and had a 2.45 percentage-point margin of error.
This group of “shy” Trump voters, hidden by the polls, loomed large after the president’s surprise election victory in 2016.
Because most polls were viewed as projecting a decisive victory for Hillary Clinton, this “shy” vote was assumed to have fooled pollsters who thought Clinton would win.
The Trump campaign said this week that they hoped to draw voters who didn’t cast a ballot for the president in the last cycle off “the sidelines” this year but disputed the notion that their voters were “shy.”
“There is, I shouldn’t say, a ‘shy’ Trump voter because I don’t think any Trump voter is truly shy, but these are folks who sat on the sidelines in 2016,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters on a Tuesday call.
According to Public Opinion Strategies’ poll, Trump also scored a 26-point advantage over Biden among the 30% of voters who cast a ballot on Election Day, 59% to 33%.
Late deciders, defined as voters who settle on a candidate in October or later and who make up 11% of the electorate, broke heavily for Trump, 51% to 35% for Biden. Fourteen percent of survey respondents said they voted to elect a third-party candidate.
As in 2016, Trump carried non-college-educated white men by 40 points, 67% to 27% for Biden.
