Mr. Adams suspects Mr. Trump's poll numbers are depressed owing to "shy Trump supporters," who favor him but won't admit it to others because it is socially unacceptable--or perhaps who have decided to vote for Mr. Trump but haven't yet developed a rationalization, so they think of themselves as undecided.
In an indirect way Mr. Adams's experience illustrates the power of social-acceptability bias. In June he formally endorsed Mrs. Clinton, "for my personal safety." It sounds like a put-on, but Mr. Adams insists he's serious: It's "definitely funny," he allows, but "it's only a joke by coincidence."
He notes that detractors "have literally been comparing Trump to Hitler--an actual comparison to Hitler. . . . That is a call for assassination. There's no other way you can [expletive] interpret that. . . . And you've seen how many Trump people have been beaten by crowbars for wearing his shirt, or beaten up [outside a rally] in San Jose, my backyard."