Voters’ Perceptions of Trust in Donald Trump in 2016 and 2019: Implications for Presidential Leadership in the Crises of 2020

Abstract

This study explored voters’ perceptions of Donald Trump regarding their general trust in his presidential leadership. In 2019, a little over 2 years into Trump’s first term, Shockley-Zalabak and Morreale administered an online census-representative survey to 1,500 registered voters in all 50 states, examining their trust perceptions of Trump. The purpose of the survey was to explore voters’ perceptions of President Donald Trump in three regards: (a) in what ways, if at all, did voters’ perceptions change in 2019 by comparison to a similar survey conducted by these researchers in 2016; (b) in what ways might any changes in voters’ perceptions be a function of voter demographics; and (c) in what ways might any changes in voters’ perceptions be related to five critical drivers that underlie trust? The findings of this study support other polls and the more popular press conclusions that Donald Trump is a divisive individual who has retained a generally low-trust evaluation throughout his political career. The demographic divides evidenced in 2016 remained in 2019 and shifted to more polarized and more extreme positions. In other words, those who in 2016 had evaluated Trump most favorably increased their favorability ratings, while those distrusting Trump increased in that distrust. Finally, because of the unpreceded crises of the global pandemic, economic crisis, and racial tensions of 2020, this study’s findings are used to postulate about the implications of presidential trust or the lack therefore during the first half of 2020.