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Why do you think people care about Iran so much? I don't think anyone besides my dad has said a word about it in my IRL hearing in 6 months. I catch occasional gripes about gas, but less than a 10th as many as four years ago. No polling I've seen places it anywhere near the top of the list of issues voters care about. Why do you think this topic is going to drive millions of votes as opposed to, say, the economy or immigration?
The political problem with Iran for Trump is not just that the war affects the economy. It is also that Trump is perceived as devoting energy to waging the war rather than focusing on domestic issues such as the economy. This will tend to cause a reduction in Trump's popularity without being directly captured in polls that ask how important people think foreign policy is relative to other issues.
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People generally do not care about Iran a lot, but they do care about the second and third order effects of the Iran war and it's easy to attribute or convince them to attribute those things to the Iran war and the Trump admin.
Significant portions of Trump's coalition and supporters specifically do care significantly about being taken to another foreign war after Trump promised for many years to not engage in more foreign wars and stop the ones we were currently fighting. Many of them supported Trump in a big part for this reason. It's those people who were driving the enthusiasm and culture creation. Instead, the Iran war caused a rift in the coalition which has spilled out all over the place from the Tucker Carlson people to the podcast bros, both of which are important in driving engagement and voter turnout. Midterm elections are about voter turnout and when you do things which significant portions of your coalition think of as being betrayed, you're going to nuke your own turnout which is what we're seeing.
Then wouldn't we expect that to show up in the issue polling, instead of seeing things like "Foreign Policy/Ukraine" ranked in the double digits? Iran doesn't even get a specific slot. It's barely a war.
to be frank, I'm not convinced you read my entire comment
To be frank, I'm not convinced you are arguing sincerely. Am I intended to infer that your justification for your belief is "Tucker Carlson and podcast bros are making this a huge issue that will drive millions of votes, but that slides beneath the notice of all the polling which is otherwise accurate and useful"? Or are they lying to the pollsters about which issues animate their turn against the GOP? Or is this hidden in "economy" instead of "foreign affairs"?
Again, if "Donald Trump betrayed us by bombing Iran" were a driving issue, I would expect it to show up higher in polls ranking what issues people care about. The discrepancy seems much bigger than thinking the regular polls are off by 4%, and you otherwise seem to be operating on the assumption that the main polls are functionally correct.
Glad we cleared that up.
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