The new Trump era of politics shows that voters crave a compelling story or narrative that relates to the emotional realm.
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What motivates people when they go to the voting booth: Reason or passion? As fateful elections head our way in Canada in 2025, and in America in November this year, this question is worth considering.
Our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, became a political figure based on two emotional factors: His surname connection to one of Canada’s most admired political giants, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and his good looks, charisma, youthfulness, and easy-going manner.
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Donald Trump, of all people, rose to the highest office in America on charisma, emotional appeal, stage control, and the ability to appeal to people’s fears, hidden desires and values.
“Recognizing the primacy of passion in everything we do has profound implications for politics,” wrote psychology professor Drew Westen.
“Reason is the middle manager in decision-making, not the CEO. Policies are nothing but the frontline for values,” Westen wrote in his article. “You listen to the information’s ‘pitch,’ but you go straight to the top when it’s time to choose. You go, in other words, to your emotions — particularly your moral emotions — when you pull a lever in the voting booth.”
Facts, statistics, charts, numbers, and graphs are useless if not connected to a compelling story or narrative that relates to the emotional realm of human beings, to the heart of emotional intelligence and storytelling. Religious, cultural, and business icons all share one thing in common. They tell captivating stories that capture the human imagination.
Trump is a supreme storyteller. Simple, memorable and values-oriented. Fictional or not, it does not matter to many as long as it is an exciting story line with emotional pull. The building of a wall, the immigration file, the crime lines, the business success stories are all emotionally charged with little connection to reality or evidence.
Ronald Reagan was another example.
“When you hear a pollster or strategist say, ‘We’ve got ’em beat on the issues,’ you know you’re on the dispassionate river, and you know you’re going under. By my account, voters disagreed with Roland Reagan on about 75 per cent of ‘the issues. But they liked him,” Westen wrote.
“They believed he would restore America’s greatness. They voted with their values.”
For many decades the political kingmakers and gurus emphasized the supremacy of the economy over any other variable. Recently, that went out the window.
During the Obama administration, and the Biden administration, the economic numbers were great, with full employment, excellent growth, a stock market boom, and business expansion. Yet, the political dividends were limited, if any, as the culture wars replaced the economic paradigm.
For years, focus groups and data collection, pointed to four major factors that determined how most people vote.
How do I feel about the candidates’ parties and their principles?
How does this candidate make me feel?
How do I feel about this candidate’s personal characteristics, such as integrity, leadership, and empathy?
How do I feel about this candidate’s stands on issues that matter to me?
In many ways, the new Trump era of politics deleted most of these elements. Many voters are changing their perceptions about the candidate’s personal integrity, values, parties’ principles, empathy, and replacing them with cultural, racial and class variables that are hard to decipher.
Trump’s legal troubles and criminal trials are not yet affecting his political standing among his base. Previously, that would have meant a sure political death for any candidate.
Historians will be hard at work for decades to understand this shift in the political landscape as the November elections in America will determine the existential state of America, North America, and the world order.
Elie Mikhael Nasrallah is the author of most recently Gates and Walls: Stories of Migration in Modern Times, lives in Ottawa, Canada.
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