I’ve definitely seen a lot of backfire effect going on. If you voted for Trump because, for example, you thought that a political outsider would fix everything and you ignored all the bad shit in hopes that it would work out, then it’s hard now to admit that you were wrong. Admitting that Trump sucks is also, for those people, admitting that they were foolish to ever believe in him, which is a difficult and intolerable admission. Better to just ignore evidence and move forward blindly in support.

At least, I’ve seen a lot of that in my mostly purple area where the divide is only getting worse and stronger.