When discussing the Affordable Care Act care during Tuesday night’s debate, Donald Trump portrayed himself as a supporter of the health insurance program, going so far as to say, “I saved it.” This was an extraordinary claim, given that Trump tried to repeal the act several times during his presidency. But it was perhaps not surprising for a politician who has taken contrasting positions on a wide range of issues throughout his political career.
Trump’s shape-shifting reflects an effort to court voters who themselves aren’t ideologues. And some political science research finds that candidates who take ambiguous positions may benefit electorally. But data over the last eight years suggests that Trump will have a harder time distancing himself from his conservative policy position than he did when he first ran for president.
In 2016, Trump’s conflicting position-taking clearly confused many voters. One in five respondents to the Cooperative Election Study (CES) in October that year said they couldn’t place Trump on the ideological spectrum. In other words, they were unsure whether to categorize him as liberal, moderate, or conservative. To put that in context, since 2008, no other candidate has seen more than 11% of voters unable to place them ideologically.
Trump’s presidency offered voters more clarity
While ideological ambiguity defined Trump’s 2016 campaign, four years as president helped to clarify for many voters where he stood. The CES surveys from 2018 through 2022 illustrate this shift clearly. As the figure below shows, the number of voters who are unsure about Trump’s ideological position has gradually declined. And, more voters now place Trump firmly on the conservative side of the spectrum.
While 19% of voters couldn’t place Trump ideologically in 2016, this number decreased to 12% in 2020 and 11% in 2022. For comparison, only about 5% of voters were unsure about Joe Biden’s ideological position in 2020. The share of voters identifying Trump as “middle of the road” also dropped from almost 15% in 2016 to just 5% in 2022.
Not only did voters become more certain about Trump’s ideology, but the share of voters saying Trump is very conservative has more than doubled. Despite his rhetoric, Trump behaved as a typical conservative president during his time in office, attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, successfully cutting corporate tax rates, and appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Voters quickly learned from these moves that Trump was indeed a conservative president.
To put this shift in perspective, consider the average ideological placement of all presidential candidates the CES has asked about over time. Voters in these surveys have had a fairly consistent view of each presidential candidate’s ideology since the 2008 election – but Trump is the exception. For example, voters ranked Barack Obama between somewhat liberal and liberal for the entirety of his presidency. Further, voters’ views of Joe Biden have likewise not shifted markedly since he was first elected to the presidency. Yet Trump’s average placement shifted by nearly a full point on the 7-point ideological scale over the 2016 to 2022 period.
Will this matter in 2024?
Conventional wisdom suggests that being ideologically closer to the average voter improves a candidate’s chances of winning. In 2016, voters saw Trump as more moderate than he is now, and he won the election. By 2020, voters placed Trump farther from the center than they had placed the two previous Republican nominees, Mitt Romney and John McCain.
Whether this will matter in 2024 is open for debate. Scholars and pundits often think centrism appeals to a broader swath of voters, but it’s not clear that ideology carries that much weight. Voters may prioritize other factors such as personality, economic performance, or cultural issues over ideological positioning. Barack Obama won in both 2008 and 2012 – despite survey data that people perceived him as further from the average voter than his Republican opponents. Since 2008, about 5% of voters have consistently chosen candidates they perceive as ideologically further from them than their opponents.
What might this mean for November? The latest polls are sending mixed signals. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found that likely voters are more likely to see Harris as “too liberal” than they are to see Trump as “too conservative.” However, in an August 2024 poll from Florida Atlantic University, survey participants saw Kamala Harris as more centrist than Trump. This likely reflects the fact that voters are still learning about Harris and making judgments about where she stands ideologically. Trump’s record, by now, is much more established.
So will U.S. voters dismiss Trump as too conservative? The evolving perceptions of Trump’s ideology since 2016 suggest that Trump’s term as president helped clarify his politics in a way that could prove detrimental to his current bid to retake the White House. Trump may continue to promote contrasting positions on issues in an attempt to sow seeds of ambiguity among voters about where he really stands. But during the debate it was clear that Harris’ strategy was to remind voters that actions Trump took as president solidify the perception that he is a very conservative Republican. Which version of Trump voters ultimately see – the ideological chameleon or the conservative ideologue – may play an essential role in deciding this close contest.
Brian Schaffner is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the Department of Political Science and Tisch College at Tufts University. He also serves as a co-director for the Cooperative Election Study.
Caroline Soler is a senior at Tufts University majoring in political science and mathematics and is a research associate for the Cooperative Election Study.
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