What unites Trump voters?

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As recent research by economists Fatih Guvenen, Greg Kaplan, Jae Song, and Justin Weidner shows, lifetime income for most American men has been declining for decades; only by sending women into the formal labor force en masse have most American families managed to improve their material situation. Other researchshows that economic mobility and opportunity are declining as well -- most Americans are making less than their parents did, and those in the lower ends of the distribution tend to be stuck there. 

Rising inequality, stagnating income and reduced mobility seem like a toxic brew. And in the U.K., low income did indeed predict a vote for Britain’s exit from the European Union. But interestingly, the people suffering most from these trends in the U.S. don’t seem to be joining the supposedly populist revolt represented by Trump. Lower-income voters broke for Hillary Clinton in 2016, not Trump. More recent surveys also show that, all else equal, economic anxiety tended to push voters -- including white voters -- into the Clinton camp. 

That suggests that there are other ways to think about class in the U.S. The most obvious alternative definition is education. Many polls and surveys find that the college/non-college distinction played a major role in determining who voted for Trump.

Looking at a variety of other indicators, it makes sense to think of a college degree as the essential marker of class in today’s U.S. A college degree is an increasingly strong predictor of who gets married, who stays married, who is politically and socially engaged, and even who goes to church. Research also shows that especially among white people, college education is an increasingly important predictor of mortality. This is why the term “white working class” is often used as a short-hand not for poor whites, but for those who didn’t attend college.

Another class demarcation could be occupation. Much of the populist anger in the U.S. seems to center on the decline of manufacturing employment

Working Class Has the Blues, and Elites Lack Answers - Bloomberg

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At one time or another, many people have received a letter purported to be from a lawyer somewhere in Africa representing a deceased client who died leaving a large sum of money in his bank account. The lawyer wants you to help him steal that money. All he needs is your bank account number, so that he could transfer to you a few million bucks.

These letters are all very similar to one another and they are remarkably transparent. The normal reaction is to laugh at them and shake one’s head in disbelief. Indeed, who would ever fall for such an obvious scam? Yet, it may come as a surprise that the scammers know exactly what they are doing and that the letters “earn” them billions of dollars every year.  

You see, it’s a big effort to get people to part with their money. Those sloppy letters written in bad English and proposing an obviously cockamamie schemes serve a purpose. They immediately identify the small percentage of the population that are the most gullible. Once these folks have been identified by reacting to the initial email, the scammers go to work on them. This way, they don’t waste any of their time and effort on people who are even a little more skeptical and who might have been inclined to check out the scheme had it been presented in a more plausible way.

This is exactly how Donald Trump operates as well. He has made lying and false representations of reality his trademark in politics, and his lies are easily checked. The Washington Post keeps a running tally of his lies and as of August 1 it computed that he made 4,229 “false statements” (lies) in 558 days in office.

It may seem like madness but, as with Nigerian scammers, there is method to it. Blatant lies help him separate true believers from the skeptics and to bolster their loyalty. Speaking at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention recently, Trump told his followers: “Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” The added irony of this is that the convention was held in Kansas City. Missouri proudly calls itself the Show-Me State, meaning that Missourians need to see everything for themselves before they would believe it.

By lying, Trump is proposing a different reality — the one the Great Leader is creating. Reality for the Trump base is not what they see, hear and read about in “Fake News” outlets, but what Trump presents them with. No wonder conspiracy theories such as the notorious QAnon flourish among his supporters. Like all cults, the Trumpists are actually proud of possessing this “true” reality, which is open only to them and which no one else sees. They are the Chosen, while everyone else is rotting in the cesspool of Fake News. 

Donald Trump, the Nigerian scammer | Salon.com

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Decades of right-wing policies have exploded inequality and produced stagnating wages in the heartland as all the gains of economic growth go to the top. The result: despair, a falling life expectancy (unique among rich countries) and... Trump, praying on the fear and despair..

A study of voting patterns across the US from 2008 to 2016 revealed that in counties where Donald Trump picked up swing votes, death rates were 15% higher than in counties where Democrats made gains. Researchers believe that hopelessness and fear impacted voter preferences in counties where more people are dying "deaths of despair" from causes like suicide, drugs, and alcohol. The finding aligns with other research about the psychology of conservative voters, which shows fear can be a motivator.

Counties with higher death rates cast more votes for Trump: study - Business Insider

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Analysing hundreds of hunter-gatherer groups, as well as nation-states including the Aztecs and Incas, we found that cultures that experienced existential threats, such as famine and warfare, favoured strong norms and autocratic leaders. Our computer models show a similar effect: threat leads to the evolution of tightness. This tight-loose logic also applies to regional differences within countries. We’ve shown that US states with histories punctuated by high threat, including more natural disasters, higher pathogen prevalence and food instability, are much tighter than those that enjoyed relative safety. Similarly, communities that face financial danger – hunger, poverty, bankruptcy – and higher occupational hazards, are substantially tighter. This helps explain why those on low incomes have consistently told us they desire strong rules and leaders. In fact, when we ask respondents to free-associate from the word “rules”, low-income subjects consistently write positive words such as “good”, “safe” and “structure”, while wealthier ones write down words such as “bad”, “frustrating”, and “constricting”. These preferences arise early: in our lab, three-year-olds from low-income families were more visibly upset than peers from wealthier homes when they saw puppets violate clear rules.

Here’s the science behind the Brexit vote and Trump’s rise | Michele Gelfand | Opinion | The Guardian

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Despite all of the disproved narratives about the “white working class,” it has been repeatedly and conclusively shown that Donald Trump in fact won the White House because of racism and nativism. But sexism was a key element in Trump’s victory as well. These values, beliefs, and behaviors interact with one another. New research by University of Kansas sociologists David Smith and Eric Hanley demonstrates how a socially combustible mix of racism and sexism, in combination with anger and bullying, put the United States on a path to authoritarianism.

Writing in “The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?”, which appeared in a recent issue of the journal Critical Sociology, Smith and Hanley summarize their new research:

We find that Trump’s supporters voted for him mainly because they share his prejudices, not because they’re financially stressed. It’s true, as exit polls showed, that voters without four-year college degrees were likelier than average to support Trump. But millions of these voters — who are often stereotyped as “the white working class” — opposed Trump because they oppose his prejudices. These prejudices, meanwhile, have a definite structure, which we argue should be called authoritarian: negatively, they target minorities and women; and positively, they favor domineering and intolerant leaders who are uninhibited about their biases.

Furthermore, the authors report, what unified Trump’s voters was not “economic anxiety” but prejudice and intolerance. What they define as authoritarian views were “strongly associated with support for Donald Trump.” Political polarization, although it definitely exists, is not strictly a “class phenomenon,” in their view. Trump voters came “from many strata and milieus” and “the effects of class are mediated … through biases and other attitudes.” They continue:

Trump’s white base is more readily found among voters who want domineering and intolerant leaders than among voters of any particular class background. Whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female, college or non-college educated, white voters supported Trump in 2016 when they shared his prejudices, and very seldom otherwise. … The decisive reason that white, male, older and less educated voters were disproportionately pro-Trump is that they shared his prejudices and wanted domineering, aggressive leaders more often than other voters did.

Smith and Hanley identified eight attitudes that interacted with each other and strongly predicted support for Trump: identifying as conservative; support for a “domineering” leader; Christian fundamentalism, prejudice against immigrants, African-Americans, Muslims and women; and “pessimism about the economy.” then demonstrate how racism and sexism reinforce each other:

Overall, what we see is that a spectrum of attitudes inspired pro-Trump voting, and that many of these attitudes are particularly common among older, less educated, and male voters. Central among these attitudes is the wish for domineering presidential action against line-cutters and rotten apples.
Smith and Hanley conclude with a warning for liberals and others who believe that Trump’s supporters are likely to abandon him, disillusioned by his failed promises to improve their lives:

Most Trump voters cast their ballots for him with their eyes open, not despite his prejudices but because of them. Their partisanship, whether positive (toward Trump and the Republicans) or negative (against Clinton and the Democrats), is intense. This partisanship is anchored in anger and resentment among mild as well as strong Trump voters. Anger, not fear, was the emotional key to the Tea Party, and that seems to be true for Trumpism as well. If so, the challenge for progressives is greater than many people have imagined. Hostility to minorities and women cannot be wished away; nor can the wish for domineering leaders. The anger games are far from over... 

It’s also relevant to note that Trump’s base was more insulated from global competition than the rest of the electorate, despite what people often guess about this. So your question is fundamental: Why does the anxiety myth linger, despite evidence to the contrary?

One key reason, I think, is that many liberals are reluctant to believe that large numbers of people are as mean-spirited as their words and actions might suggest. They want to think that fear, not vindictiveness, drives support for vindictive rhetoric and policy. That’s generous, but I think it’s also a special kind of blindness...

The bottom line is that bullying rhetoric won tens of millions of white votes in 2016. That, not financial worry, is the reality we face. We can’t explain away the fact that, after nearly two years of insults and abuses – children in cages, excuses for white supremacists, the Muslim travel ban and so much more – nearly 90 percent of Republicans support Donald Trump.

I see that as another aspect of what I was describing above, which I call “liberal denial.” Liberals in denial know that bullying happens. They see jeering and bad behavior, but they interpret it as a sign of immaturity, not meanness. They think that people misbehave mainly when they’re afraid or confused; that they lash out when they’re misinformed about the real cause of their troubles. So the liberal solution is education. Give people who talk like angry bigots the facts, they think – show them that their fears and hostilities are misplaced – and they’ll change their ways. In my opinion that’s very rarely true.

Sociologists Blow Up the Myth that Uneducated White Voters Support Trump Because of 'Economic Anxiety': 'They Share His Prejudices' | Alternet

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The targeting of good Samaritans for deportation, or blaming a refugee family for their seven-year-old daughter’s death in Border Patrol custody are features, not bugs, of the Christian nationalist worldview. Never mind what Matthew 25:35 says: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

This week, new exit-poll data from this year’s midterm elections re-emphasized how much the Trump-led GOP depends on evangelical voters, as opposed to the much more discussed “white working class.” Among white non-evangelicals, non-college-educated men voted for Republicans, 53 to 44 percent, while women voted Democratic by 57 to 41 percent. But among white evangelicals there was virtually no difference between college and non-college voters in their GOP support: 78 percent among men for both groups, and 73 and 71 percent, respectively, for women.

All this amounts to a flashing red light warning that Christian nationalism is the most important and most overlooked factor behind Donald Trump’s presidency and the political power of the GOP generally. But it’s not just a passive or latent force, as Trump’s border cruelty suggests.

Last April, I followed up Frederick Clarkson’s report at Religion Dispatches about a major Christian nationalist initiative called “Project Blitz,” intended to pass a wide range of discriminatory laws through state legislatures, from the seemingly innocuous to the blatantly discriminatory. It was based on his discovery of a 116-page evangelical playbook for the 2017-8 legislative cycle. Now Clarkson’s has uncovered their playbook for the 2019-20 cycle, and will be publishing another report at Religion Dispatches shortly.

'Project Blitz’: Here's the new plan Christian nationalists have to seize even more power | Alternet

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What unites Trump voters? Stupidity, at least for a quarter of them..

One-fourth of respondents in a new poll say they believe God wanted Donald Trump to become president. A Fox News poll of 1,004 registered voters found that 25 percent said “yes,” they believe God wanted Trump to be president, while a majority of 62 percent said “no.” Fourteen percent said they were unsure. The poll, released Wednesday, comes two weeks after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that God wanted Trump to be president. “I think God calls all of us to fill different roles at different times and I think that he wanted Donald Trump to become president," Sanders said in January. "And that’s why he’s there, and I think he has done a tremendous job in supporting a lot of the things that people of faith really care about.”

One quarter say they believe God wanted Trump to become president: poll | TheHill

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In the mid-2000s, a political scientist approached the neuroscientist Read Montague with a radical proposal. He and his colleagues had evidence, he said, that political orientation might be partly inherited, and might be revealed by our physiological reactivity to threats. To test their theory, they wanted Montague, who heads the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at Virginia Tech, to scan the brains of subjects as they looked at a variety of images—including ones displaying potential contaminants such as mutilated animals, filthy toilets, and faces covered with sores—to see whether neural responses showed any correlation with political ideology. Was he interested?

Conservatives React Differently to Disgusting Pictures - The Atlantic

Very interesting..

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An eye opening article:

Sadly, the American dream is dead.” After rambling, off script, for most of his 50-minute speech to announce his presidential candidacy in June 2015, Donald Trump returned to his written remarks for the final section. He delivered these somber words slowly, pausing for emphasis. “Sadly ... the American dream is dead,” he said. In the cavernous lobby of Trump Tower, an eager supporter filled that pregnant silence. “Bring it back!” Sure enough, that was Trump’s promise and the final line, the bottom line, of his candidacy: “But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and we will make America great again!” This became his mantra. "Make America Great Again." The premise of that motto—the American dream is dead—carried the day in state after state, and it drew boisterous crowds at rallies in places like Lowell, Mass.; Beaumont, Texas; Mobile, Ala.—“We’re running on fumes. There’s nothing here."—and Springfield, Ill.

The One Trait That Predicts Trump Fever - POLITICO Magazine

Turns out that where communities were intact and there was a strong sense of community left, much less people voted for Trump.

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Ben Howe, a conservative writer and evangelical Christian who refuses to support Donald Trump, explained why fellow evangelicals continue to back the president despite his decidedly ungodly behavior. Speaking with the Atlantic’s Emma Green about his new book The Immoral Majority, Howe — whose evangelical bona fides include attending pastor Jerry Falwell’s church as a kid — described evangelicals’ support for Trump, insisting “they love the meanest parts of him.” “In the minds of a lot of conservatives, the left exists to impugn their motives, and the Republican Party regularly lied to them and said they would defend them and then didn’t,” Howe said. “And that was the establishment. Trump became their hero, because he hated the establishment, and he beat up on the media, and he was fighting back against all these forces. The more he fights, the more they feel justified, like, He’s our hero because we needed someone to do this for us.”

‘They love the meanest parts of him’: Conservative writer explains why evangelical Christians stick with Trump – Alternet.org