Michigan Ross Professor Jerry Davis Joins KCBS San Francisco to Address Diverging Realities of Americans
Announced in October 2023, Michigan Ross and the Financial Times are partnering on a monthly poll to track how American voters perceive financial and economic issues in the lead-up to the 2024 US presidential election. The poll will run for 12 months leading up to the election.
Jerry Davis joined Dan Mitchinson of KCBS San Francisco on Feb. 17 to discuss the results of February's Financial Times-Michigan Ross poll. As Davis puts it, supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump "live in alternative realities."
"One of the things that becomes really clear from the polls is that if you ask Biden and Trump voters about basic facts about the economy, they come up with really different views on things. It's not just that they have different opinions; it's that they have different understandings of basic facts - has unemployment gone up or down, has the stock market gone up or down. They really seem to be living different realities."
"One possibility is that they're just really following different news sources. It could also be that when pollsters ask questions, Trump voters want to say negative things and Biden voters want to say positive things. It's a little bit tricky to tell exactly why, but they seem to be following different news sources and having really different views."
