I always permit myself a smile at the whole concept of a "shy" Trump supporter! I mean, have seen or heard these people?
The 'shy' Tory, if my recollection is right, goes back to 1992, and I'm not really sure 'shy' is the right word. It was more commonly suggested that 'selfish' or 'greedy' was a better description at the time. The difference between the expressed preference (an opinion poll) and the revealed preference (a secret ballot) isn't new, and it's particularly prevalent in areas like environmental policy. Basically for a few years earlier the pollsters had been finding that people were prepared to pay an extra penny in tax if they could have a better education system or other public services. What people really meant is that they supported everyone else paying an extra penny on income tax, but not them. This is where the Tories scored with their 'double whammy' and 'Labours tax bombshell'. There were other areas of perceived greed against the greater public good too which subsequent research discovered had impacted on decisions. Council house sales, Utility privatisations (the windfall share issue) and the carpet bagging of Building Socieities all contributed to people giving the socially responsible answer to surveys, and then doing something different under the protection of secrecy
To some extent the same thing might have surfaced again in 2015, but I'm not so convinced that the modelling failed to allocate the undecideds myself. I just have a feeling that a lot of those people who made a decision on the day broke very heavily for Cameron (undecideds were in the polls but largely overlooked in favour of the headline figure). I was pretty well spot on with my own prediction (2 seats wrong) but it was based on 80% of undecideds looking at Ed Miliband and saying 'no thanks'
Now whether or not Trump is picking up any ashamed support is questionable. The only straw he might have to clutch at are automated polls (like the one the LA Times have been running that's continually given him high support) and to a lesser extent tracking polls. Are people more inclined to give an honest answer to an anomynous internet poll? I don't see why? America monitors its internet to the point where it wouldn't be secret anyway, albeit the rank and file public wouldn't know obviously. Also insurance companies will tell you that people filling out information on-line are actually more inclined to lie than if they had a voice asking the questions.
The polls in America have also shown violent swings. Differences of 10pts between the two candidates over the same sample period aren't unheard of by any stretch. I think some of this owes a lot however to the larger and more respected pollsters increasingly taking private commissions and cutting back their public polling in the last month in particular. Basically they don't get the exposure they're used to, if their poll is just being rolled up into the RCP average. The vacuum has also been filled by a lot of universities and smaller market research firms desperate to make a name for themselves, and this has created a lot of noise. I suspect Nate's model has probably cut through this better than most.
The shy Tory was really associated with concealed greed I'd suggest. I'm not sure that applies to shy Trumpsters. The more likely galvanising factor there would shy hate, which is why I wouldn't be shocked to see NH fall, as they've had a bit of a history in this area (admittedly in Republican primaries, and this is a wider constituency)
