Of the many strange and disturbing developments in the past few days, perhaps none is more strange or disturbing than this: according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Wednesday, Americans, by a significant margin, view Donald Trump as more honest than Hillary Clinton.

As has been amply documented, Trump’s relationship to the truth is on par with his relationships with women—opportunistic and abusive. Daniel Dale, a Washington correspondent for the Toronto Star_,_ who since mid-September has been publishing a more or less daily tally of Trump’s false claims, recently called the Republican candidate’s campaign rhetoric a veritable “avalanche of wrongness.” The Washington Post/ABC News pollsters were out in the field for two days, October 30th and 31st. On those days, Dale counted twenty-seven and nineteen Trump falsehoods, respectively. These ranged from the offhand (a misstatement about Frank Sinatra) to the egregious (fabrications about Clinton’s tax plan, about her immigration policies, and about the history of ISIS). The most falsehoods Trump uttered in one day, according to Dale, is thirty-seven, a height he reached on October 20th and then again on October 24th.

It’s hard to say, at this point, which is more astonishing: the volume of Trump’s trumped-up statements or their scale. Here’s a man who, more than anyone else on the planet, was responsible for perpetuating the myth that Barack Obama was not born in the United States, yet has the chutzpah to claim on national TV that he was the person to put the issue to rest. As Chris Cillizza put it, in the Post, even in the “quadrennial truth-stretching” contest that is an American Presidential campaign, “Trump has set records for fabrication.” Or, as Dara Lind put it, at Vox, “Donald Trump lies. It’s what he does.”

Nevertheless, according to the poll, forty-six per cent of voters believe Trump is the more “honest and trustworthy” of the two major-party candidates, while only thirty-eight per cent give the edge to Clinton. The survey, which was taken just after the F.B.I. director, James Comey, notified congressional leaders of a revival of the probe into Clinton’s e-mails, was doubtless inflected by this news. But this seems insufficient to explain the result. The same poll put the candidates in a dead heat in the race for the Presidency, which suggests that a substantial number of respondents who plan to vote for Clinton find her less forthright than her opponent. An issue that should have settled this election long ago—and not for Trump—seems to be playing in his favor.

One way to understand the up-is-down logic of this election is as an expression of what might be called American sentimentalism. What moves the electorate is not true facts but true feelings.

Donald Trump is the kind of jerk who authentically, genuinely, unabashedly inhabits his own jerkiness. The indifference to reality he’s displayed on the campaign trail is the same indifference he displayed as a businessman, a husband, a boss, and a taxpayer. His narcissism, petulance, and whatever other character flaw you care to choose aren’t under wraps; they’re on view for all to see and hear. In this sense, he truly is the real thing.

Clinton, meanwhile, is constantly role-playing. On the campaign trail, she displays an interest in people that, one can only assume, she doesn’t always feel. In her speeches, she invokes lofty ideals, when doubtless she’s often motivated by expedience. The high-minded, Presidential persona she’s committed to is constraining in many ways. It prevents her from lashing out, or publicly belittling blocs of voters she may, in private, consider “deplorable,” or expressing the frustration that she certainly must be experiencing right now. In this sense, she is not the real thing.

On almost any matter of fact, Clinton is, without doubt, more “honest and trustworthy” than Trump. This is understood by virtually everyone whose job it is to inquire into such matters—journalists, political scientists, and historians. In its endorsement of Clinton, the San Diego Union-Tribune, which had not previously backed a Democrat for President in its hundred and forty-eight years of existence, labelled Trump “dishonest and impulsive.” Even Republican politicians seem to get that their candidate has set a new standard for mendacity; though many have cravenly come around to supporting Trump, many have not. (On Tuesday, George P. Bush, the Texas land commissioner, who is a nephew of George W., suggested his uncle may vote for Clinton.) But what counts as honesty to the political class is apparently very different from what counts to many voters.

Trump’s disregard for propriety, for principles, and for anyone else’s view of the world is heartfelt. As a consequence, his lies have the emotional resonance of truth. And this is precisely what makes him so dangerous.