WHO IS THE LEAST TRUSTWORTHY?

(Trump -or-  Clinton -or- Weiner -or- Lotche)

We hold two truths to be self-evident in American politics.

First, a candidate for President should be trustworthy.  After all, if the American people are going to elect a person to the most powerful office in the free world, we must feel confident that we know what to expect from that person. No one seeks unpredictability and inconsistency in their President.

Second, elections look more like popularity contests every year. Pundits have long foreseen a world where celebrities cruise into office on pure popularity while life-long politicians, long on public service, scratch their heads and wonder about a second career in academia. Professional wrestlers and famous actors have already won gubernatorial races, and, a famous dead gorilla is currently polling ahead of third party candidates. With Kanye West threatening to run for President in 2020, anything seems possible.

With this in mind, researchers at Unanimous AI wanted to know how the two major candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, would fare against two famous people who made headlines recently for all the wrong reasons. Ryan Lochte is one of the most decorated Olympians in US history and the star of his own reality TV show, but seems more likely to be remembered for fabricating a story about being robbed in Rio. Anthony Weiner was once a star in the Democratic party and a candidate for mayor of NY, before compulsive sexting derailed both his career and his marriage.

So, the researchers wanted to know, who is the least trustworthy among these four public figures? To find out, they gathered 40 potential American voters in the Swarm Intelligence platform UNU.  By thinking together as a swarm, the participants converged on answers that reveal public perceptions of trustworthiness at this crucial time in American politics. The whole process takes just a few seconds, but the results can be rather remarkable.

For perhaps the first time in his life, Ryan Lochte has been deemed the most trustworthy person in a group of four. I’m not sure what it means when a man dubbed “the purest form of the chemical element ‘BRO’” by John Oliver is seen as more trustworthy than both major candidates for the Presidency and a man who was well on his way to being mayor of New York, but, jeah, there you have it. Let’s keep going.

Despite record-low favorability, Hillary Clinton still edges Trump and Weiner in trustworthiness, according to the Swarm. The replay above condenses the question down to just a few seconds, but the timer in the lower right-hand corner shows just how much debate really occurred in the course of this decision. But, in the end, the Swarm did reach consensus. Now, Trump and Weiner face-off for the title of least trustworthy in this inglorious quartet.

So, there you have it — the swarm (of randomly selected Americans, from both parties) trusts Trump less than Anthony Weiner, less than Hillary Clinton, and somewhat incredibly, far less than Ryan Lochte.  We may never know whether or not Lochte would beat Trump at the polls, but we’ll soon find out whether the public is still reluctant to vote for politicians they don’t trust.  Of course, this year seems not to be about who we trust, but who we mistrust less.

If you want to join the Swarm and make your voice heard in UNU, just drop by the site at anytime: UNU.

Or, sign up for the UNU Beta here: