BERKELEY – Three days after Donald Trump’s victory in this year’s US presidential election, my friend Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research tweeted: “Hate to put a lot of well-paid pundits out of business, but look- look at that f* *the king chart.” The accompanying image was an Ipsos infographic with the headline: “Misinformed views on immigration, crime, economy correlated with vote choice.”

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in early October, potential voters who knew or assumed violent crime was not at or near historic highs favored Kamala Harris by a margin of 65 percentage points, while those who were misinformed broke for Donald Trump. by a margin of 26 points. Also, among those who understood that inflation had fallen in the past year, Harris rose 53 points, while Trump rose 19 points among the misinformed. Among those who knew the stock market was at a record high, Harris was up 20; and among those who knew southern border crossings were down, Harris was up 59.

What are we dealing with here? Are Trump voters expressing misinformed beliefs about violent crime rates, the inflation rate, the stock market, and border crossings because they are Trump voters, or are they Trump voters because they truly believe these lies and truly fear for the future of the country their? If it is the latter, we have to wonder how they came to hold these false beliefs. And once we understand that, we have to figure out what to do with an information ecosystem that has fooled millions and turned our politics into a clown show.

At this point, people who want to misinform you will appear and shout, “But there were many border crossings! There was a violent crime spree!” (Never mind that it started under Trump). “Inflation was high!” (Actually, it was moderate: the peak annual rate was 9% in the year ending June 2022, but 3% in the year ending June 2023 and 2.4% in the year ending September 2024.) “Okay, but people get confused when asked about complex economic matters! What they really meant was that prices went up, not down!” (As if deflation would help anyone.)

Of course, those same people will be quiet about the stock market, because everyone knows it’s at or near record highs. Stock indices are how the mainstream media keeps score when it comes to reporting on the economy. News of new records is frequent and ubiquitous.

These same people will also be silent if you probe their beliefs. I will admit that people may not know how quickly things have changed or know the difference between high inflation and higher prices. But everyone knows you can always pan around to find a few examples of almost anything in the world, depending on what you’re looking for. At the same time, most Americans looking around their neighborhoods or checking their retirement accounts will know that they and their friends and colleagues in the real world are doing just fine. Their 401(k)s are way bigger and no Haitians are grilling cats.

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This brings us back to the question of whether people are misinformed because they want to be. If Trump asks his supporters if they will believe him or their lying eyes, will they vote for him? Or are we dealing with the work of bad actors who have gone to great lengths to produce this state of affairs?

If the answer is that more than half of the electorate wants to be misinformed, America—and indeed human civilization—is in serious trouble. This would assume that what tens of millions of Americans really want gets the green light to hate their fellow citizens. But if we’re dealing with the work of cynical bad actors, at least that gives us some hope for the future. It would mean that most Trump supporters are good-hearted, well-intentioned people who worry that the country is headed in the wrong direction, even if they themselves are doing well. They voted for Trump more out of love than hate.

In this case, the task for Americans who want healthier politics and a better society is clear. Unfortunately for Democrats, however, it is a task that must be carried out by Republicans. In our broken information ecosystem, nothing the Democrats say will be believed by those who need to hear it. Well-meaning patriotic republicans must look to themselves and adopt the project that Viscount Sherbrooke articulated after the extension of the franchise to Britain in 1867: We—or rather you—must educate our masters. THE PROJECT UNION

The writer, a former deputy assistant secretary of the US Treasury, is a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of “Slouching to Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century‘ (Basic Books, 2022).