www.pewresearch.org - Pew: Beyond Red vs Blue - 2026-06-10

www.newsweek.com - Summary of Beyond Red vs Blue - 2026-06-11


Last 40 years had 7 presidents, including Bushes and Biden who clearly wouldn't make it to the top of polls. Clinton had a troubled presidency, huge dot-com bubble market crash in his last year and was part of Hillary's "baggage" in 2016, so another scratch off the list.

That leaves Reagan who won Cold War and caused demise of Soviet Union and communist block ideology, Obama and Trump.

So Democrats' choices are essentially down to one, a no-brainer.

Trump's current standing can be explained by several factors, the main of which are the Recency Bias (en.wikipedia.org), self-selective (FoxNews) and algorithmic- / "influencers"-driven digital 'news channels' consumption that favor him and sing his praises, people generally poorly educated in economics, history and politics, and also younger audience who don't have the reference (again, a subset of both Recency Bias and education/knowledge) and are much more influenced by zeitgeist's "marketing / slogans" and "causes / movements".

So, in light of all those factors, 19 percent overall is not that high - about the size of his base plus voters who can't (yet?) admit they made a mistake voting for him.

Would be interesting to see the percentage of people one year before 2024 elections who would give Trump same number as now, or thought Biden's presidency was the best, because of "great economy" and "lower inflation" - pretty sure it would be much higher for Biden than it is now. Even a week before elections there were posters here (some of whom are no longer posting) that were looking at the "good" employment/unemployment numbers and predicted victory, totally oblivious to what the real economy was for > 65% of voters. Harris' campaign was apparently blind to that, too: "I would not change anything", utter failure to take campaign seriously and choose competent VP, pay attention to swing states and "woke" issues, and hit Trump on his atrocious actual "business" and "dealmaking" record.


Most recent generic poll of "red"/"blue" states:

www.newsweek.com - Map Shows Donald Trump's Approval Rating in Every State After 17 Months - June 20, 2026
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In Nuremberg (2025) (at 00:55:30), there is an interesting conversation between psychiatrist Douglas Kelley (www.history.com, www.forbes.com) and Herman Goering about what drew him to Hitler, which can shine some light on what drew/draws some to Trump:

[K] Let's talk about Hitler.

[G] It is interesting you have not asked me this directly before.

[K] I'm curious what the attraction was. He was a failed painter, right? Not a very good soldier, yet he's worshipped and revered.

[G] He made us feel German again.

[K] How?

[G] Well, the war had seen Germany crushed. And along comes a man who says... We can reclaim our former glory. Would you not follow a man like this?

[K] Depends what else he wanted to do.

[G] The first time I saw Hitler talk was... 1922. Upstairs of a coffee shop. For maybe 30 people. This was peacetime, but it was a peace without food, jobs, shoes. And he stood up. And he said "French bellies are being filled with German pain." And then... "If you make threats, you need bayonets. Rearm! Down with Versailles!" So that night... I became a National Socialist.

[K] Off of... One speech?

[G] Well, I could tell he would appeal to the old soldiers. If they have the old soldiers, they have the manpower. Even with his antisemitism, it served a practical purpose. It brought towards us men who needed something else to focus their emotions. Something else to blame.

[K] And the camps?

[G] They were to be work camps for our political opponents. Nothing more.
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