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Donald Trump and Conspiracy Theories: What a Poll in 2011 Signaled
Donald Trump has dominated polling among Republicans for the better part of a year, as he has delighted in reminding people. But there’s one poll that you probably haven’t heard about and that he doesn’t talk about.

Not surprisingly, it shows him in the lead. But the twist is the time frame: It’s from April 2011, and it reveals a little bit about how we got here.

Heading into the 2012 campaign, Mr. Trump led a Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey of G.O.P. primary voters at 26 percent, with Mike Huckabee at 17 percent, Mitt Romney at 15 percent and Newt Gingrich at 11 percent. Similarly, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll that month showed Mr. Trump near the top as a “surprise contender.”

“A lot of G.O.P. voters have not been happy with their choice of candidates, and Trump is filling that void, at least for the moment,” the news release from PPP said.

The phrase “for the moment,” which in the light of today almost seems to be teasing us, was appropriately cautious in that campaign cycle. Mr. Trump had been riding the “birther” wave, the unsubstantiated belief that President Obama was not born in the United States.

PPP wrote that 23 percent of G.O.P. voters “say they would not be willing to vote for a candidate who stated clearly that Obama was born in the U.S.,” and among “the hardcore birthers, Trump leads with 37 percent, almost three times as much support as anyone else.”

What went wrong for Mr. Trump?

■ On April 27, President Obama released a copy of his long-form birth certificate to reporters.

■ On April 30, Mr. Obama mercilessly mocked Mr. Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

■ A night later, Mr. Obama announced that an American raid had killed Osama bin Laden.

■ Mr. Trump’s poll numbers collapsed. “As Trump got more and more exposure over the last month, Republicans didn’t just decide they weren’t interested in having him as their nominee — they also decided they flat don’t like him,” the PPP pollster Tom Jensen wrote at the time.

■ Two weeks later, Mr. Trump declared he would not run, citing his “passion” for business and a new contract with NBC for “Celebrity Apprentice.”

He was gone, but the anger from many G.O.P. voters remained. Rick Santorum, not Mr. Trump, wound up being the insurgent who gave the party establishment fits. He came a lot closer to beating Mr. Romney than a lot of people remember (and it’s not hard to imagine that Mr. Trump could have done even better).

In 2011, Mr. Trump gave his media strategy a test run. The New York Times article on his farewell from the race suggested that the most noteworthy element of his flirtation as a candidate was “a media culture that increasingly seems to give the spotlight to the loudest, most outrageous voices.” Stuart Spencer, a former political strategist for Ronald Reagan, was quoted as saying, “The media made him, the media kept him, the media kept promoting him.”

Mr. Trump also demonstrated his willingness and ability to mine anger and racial and ethnic resentment. In 2011, Mr. Trump said, “China is raping us.” Four years later, he said Mexico was sending rapists to the United States.

In the run-up to the Trump candidacy of 2016, Gabriel Sherman reported in New York magazine that an employee of Mr. Trump, Sam Nunberg, measure the base’s pulse.

But maybe more than anything, Mr. Trump showed in 2011 how he would deploy conspiracy theories, associating with conspiracy purveyors like Alex Jones, a syndicated radio host. Among many examples in the last year, The Times wrote in March, Mr. Trump “reposted information on Twitter from the website Infowars, hosted by Mr. Jones,” to support his unsubstantiated claim that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the Sept. 11 attacks.

The political scientists Joseph Uscinski and Joseph Parent, who wrote the book “American Conspiracy Theories,” say that those on the left and the right believe in conspiracies roughly equally. But education can matter: “Forty-two percent of those without a high school diploma are high in conspiratorial predispositions, compared with 23 percent with postgraduate degrees.”

Not having a high school degree is one of the highest correlates for Trump support. (And people with postgraduate degrees are increasinglyleaning to the left.)

Mr. Uscinski and Mr. Parent found that high-stress situations like job uncertainty “prompt people to concoct, embrace and repeat conspiracy theories.” Other research shows that conspiracy theories can be a coping mechanism for uncertainty and powerlessness.

One study found that conservatives who believe in conspiracy theories know more about politics than conservatives who don’t. This correlation was not found for liberals. Presumably, these politically engaged conservatives would be more likely to vote in primaries.

Last week, Public Policy Polling revisited Mr. Trump’s attraction to conspiracy theories. Among voters who viewed him favorably, PPP found that 65 percent think President Obama is a Muslim; 59 percent think he was not born in the United States; 27 percent think vaccines cause autism; 24 percent think Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered; and 7 percent think Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. (We should probably allow for the possibility that some survey-takers wanted to poke or provoke with their responses.)

A big source of conspiracy theories is elections. Many Americans believe they’re often decided by cheating. In The Los Angeles Times in 2014, Mr. Uscinski and Mr. Parent wrote:

The birther movement, which gave life to Mr. Trump’s political career, fits the pattern. It argues that President Obama did not actually win his elections because he was ineligible to be president.

That way of thinking suggests a possible out for Mr. Trump if he loses in November: accusations of cheating by the other side. Those wishing for him to be humbled may be disappointed. Could he really lose if he never accepts the loss?

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The New York Times
By TONI MONKOVIC