SEATTLE — The "nothing matters" theory of politics is on my mind again today. It wasn't put there just by the tumultuous events in national politics, but by a local poll.
The theory says we live in an age where actions have no consequences, where truth is little different than lies. It further finds that no wind blowing through politics, no matter how strong, can pierce the partisan haze.
So it was on Monday when a new poll came out on the presidential race in Washington state. It showed the incumbent Democratic president, Joe Biden, leading the GOP front-runner, ex-president Donald Trump, by 17 percentage points — 53% to 36%.
So what, you may say? We're a blue state, ho-hum.
But what's remarkable about this poll is what it says about the right side of politics in this state. It shows Washingtonians giving Trump the same share of the vote that he got here back in the election of 2016, and also that he got again in 2020. If you divvy up the 11% of this poll who are undecided, it shows that the Washington state electorate sits in precisely the same position today as it has ever since Trump rode down the golden escalator.
Nobody's budged an inch.
"With all that's gone on, the impeachments, the insurrection, now these indictments, Donald Trump's support is untouched," says Andrew Villeneuve, head of the Northwest Progressive Institute that paid for the poll. (The poll of 773 likely Washington voters was done by Public Policy Polling, a well-rated pollster, and was in the field on the day last week that news of Trump's second indictment broke.)
"Some people thought that after he left office, this dynamic where nothing sticks to Trump might change," Villeneuve said. "It didn't. People are still locked into him, rock solid."
A national poll by CBS found that 80% of Republicans say Trump should be able to be president even if he's convicted of the charges he was arraigned for on Tuesday. The party's with him even if he ends up in prison.
"Indictment does nothing to dampen GOP support for Trump," read one headline about that poll.
I don't want to believe in the "nothing matters" theory. I wouldn't do this job if I didn't think that facts matter, for instance. But how else to explain results like this?
Trump has now been arrested more times than he's been elected. He pushed democracy right up to the breaking point. Even a stalwart Republican like Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Sunnyside, voted to impeach him over the Capitol riot because, in Newhouse's words, "we had a domestic enemy at the door, and he did not respond."
We all saw these things happen. Still none of it has moved Trump's support here so much as a percentage point. Steady for seven crazy years.
The best explanation I've heard for how GOP voters can stand by their man so doggedly despite his gargantuan flaws was in a book by a former friend of Trump's wife Melania (as recounted in the L.A. Times). The friend had asked Melania how she copes with Trump's marital infidelities, and the first lady said: "I know who I married."
In other words: Trump voters went in eyes-wide-open, too. They knew what they were getting. They stick with him, I guess, because by him they feel seen.
It should be noted that as solid as Trump's rock is, it's also slight. In our state it's a ledge not even big enough for a political party to stand on. Since he came on the scene, the GOP here has lost half its congressional seats, the secretary of state's office, five state Senate seats along with control of that body, as well as eight state House seats.
"That 36%, 38% figure is his floor," Villeneuve says. "But it's also been his ceiling."
The only sign of any shift in the poll centers around elitism and education. Trump has a huge 21 percentage point lead among Washington voters with only a high school degree (57% to 36%). But Biden leads among college grads by an enormous 44 points (65% to 21%). This means the "diploma gap" — already the driving force in sorting politics — is only widening.
The less educated are going MAGA stronger than ever. The college-educated go Democrat in droves. The two sides though remain stuck — with the same vote shares, the same prospects, even the same old candidates.
It's the story of our time that politics can be in this much upheaval, and also be so stable that absolutely nothing changes. Sometime, someday, something will surely matter with Trump. But today is not yet that day.
