It’s not just you. Most US voters say Trump uses Twitter too much.
Sad!
Donald Trump has repeatedly gotten into trouble over the years for his tweets, from baseless claims about voter fraud to perpetuating feuds with celebrities to randomly insulting people.
Now a new poll of more than 1,400 registered voters, from Morning Consult and Politico, has found most voters are in agreement: Trump should stop tweeting so much. According to the poll, 56 percent of Americans said Trump uses Twitter “too much,” while 16 percent say he uses it “about the right amount” and 5 percent say he doesn’t use it enough.
There was some partisan breakdown: Only 37 percent of Trump voters said Trump uses Twitter too much, compared with 79 percent of Clinton voters. Although even a plurality of Trump voters said that Trump tweets too much: 35 percent say he uses Twitter too little or just the right amount, versus the 37 percent who said he uses it too much. The rest had no opinion or didn’t know.
For some voters, this apparently came down not just to quantity but to quality. About 49 percent of respondents said Trump’s use of Twitter is “a bad thing,” and just 23 percent said it’s “a good thing.” Once again, Trump supporters were more likely to stand behind their candidate’s Twitter use: 41 percent said his Twitter use is a good thing, while just 9 percent of Clinton voters agreed.
Let me push back on this: It is true that Trump has said a lot of offensive things on Twitter — at some points even running the risk of damaging international relations. But his willingness to tweet has been very useful to voters: For better or worse, his tweets have revealed a lot about his character — his bad temperament, how he can’t drop even the most ridiculous feuds, and how he’s willing to insult and backstab people to get into power. We might know less about all of these problems in Trump’s character had he not been so willing to take to Twitter every time he had a thought.
Still, if Trump wants to change the fact that he has the lowest approval ratings of any president-elect in modern history, this new poll suggests that Twitter isn’t the right platform.