Lynn Schmidt: Why so many Trump voters are sticking with the devil they know
The 2024 election is shaping up to be a "Better the devil you know than the devil you don't know" kind of contest.
That saying is rooted in ambiguity aversion bias. Even if a situation is bad, individuals would rather stay with what they know rather than face uncertainty.
So it goes with our presidential nominees, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. Not liking Trump the man may not be enough for Harris to beat the former president.
Behavioral economists describe ambiguity aversion, or uncertainty aversion, as the tendency to favor the known over the unknown, including known risks over unknown or incalculable risks. In a professional situation, one would prefer to have contact with or do business with a person they already know, even though they don't like them, than with a person they hardly know. This principle also seems to apply to political candidates and voter behavior.
Voters make choices based on their own information set. This is true regardless of the truth, accuracy or reliability of their information. Their own data set drives their choices, which they believe will result in the best expected outcome.
A recent New York Times/Siena poll illustrated this fallacy in action. The poll shows Trump with a 52% unfavorability rating. The poll also has Trump ahead of Harris nationally by 2 percentage points: 46% to 44%.
Of course, the poll has a margin of error, but something has to account for the estimated 6% of voters who view Trump as unfavorable while also saying they'll vote for him.
Some voters certainly will cast their ballots for the former president because they prefer his leadership or policies. But a majority of the electorate find Trump distasteful, whether it was his actions surrounding the 2020 election, the events around Jan. 6, 2021, his felony indictments, his status as an adjudicated sexual abuser, or even just his obnoxious social media posts. Yet despite all of that, a majority of voters may just pull the lever for a Trump/Vance ticket because they are unsure about Harris/Walz.
The same poll asked the following: Do you feel like you still need to learn more about Harris, or do you pretty much already know what you need to know? Just more than a quarter (28%) of respondents said they needed to know more about her. Of that group, 66% said they would like to learn her policies and plans.
Only 12% said they needed to learn more about Trump.
While Americans got to see Harris on the debate stage Sept. 10, she did not give many details on her administration's plans. To date, Harris has not taken questions from the press pool nor granted many interviews.
Trump indicated Sept. 12 he would not do another debate, which would deny voters an opportunity to learn more about Harris.
Many observers and pundits thought Trump seemed crazy during the ABC News debate when he falsely claimed that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing people's dogs and cats and eating them. Then again, this type of behavior might be baked into the cake after watching and listening to him for the last 10 years.
The dominant media narrative is missing the ambiguity aversion by assuming that Americans will be so turned off by Trump's antics. But many Americans think back nostalgically on the pre-pandemic economy and absence of wars while Trump was president. While they might not like Trump's character or behaviors, they felt more prosperous and safer.
So Harris needs to move beyond her strategic ambiguity. Voters want to know more about her policies and agenda. Sweeping statements may not cut it.
Unless voters get to know Harris better and like what they see and hear, they might just default to the devil they know in November.
Schmidt is a columnist for The St. Louis Post-Dispatch: .
