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What unites Trump voters?
#31
Compelling long article from Vox, it's got little to do with economics or other factors, it's resentment against loss of status by immigration:


Quote:III. It’s the xenophobia, stupid

Far-right party platforms differ from country to country, including on major social issues like feminism and economic issues like the size of the welfare state. The one issue every single one agrees on is hostility to immigration, particularly when the immigrants are nonwhite and Muslim.

"What unites the radical right is their focus on immigration," Elisabeth Ivarsflaten, a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway who studies the far right, told me in a recent interview. The widespread popular unease about those migrants is a key source of their appeal.

Start with the timingThe 1980s were a critical time for European immigration. It’s when immigrant families came over in large numbers, rather than just the guest workers who had been allowed under previous laws. That brought white Europeans in contact with nonwhite, heavily Muslim immigrant populations for the first time.

"Until then, they [the immigrants] were mostly secluded; it was mostly men who worked in factories, all together, and [lived] quite close to where they worked. When the families came over, they started to move into residential areas, working-class areas in particular," Cas Mudde, a University of Georgia scholar, told me. "That was one of the key developments [for the far right] — the visibility of multiculturalism, which was not addressed by the mainstream parties."

A 2012 paper by a group of Swiss and Austrian researchers found direct support for this hypothesis. After poring through decades of local demographic statistics from across Austria, they found that the increase in support for the country’s leading far-right party was strongly correlated with a community’s increase in immigrant population.

"Our results suggest that voters worry about a changing ethnic and cultural composition in their neighborhoods and schools," they write.

Ivarsflaten’s research came to similar conclusions. In a 2008 paper, she looked at data on vote shares for seven European far-right parties, to try to figure out why people voted for them. She found that a person’s support for restricting immigration was "close to a perfect predictor" of one’s likelihood of voting for a far-right party.

By contrast, people’s views on other political questions — like economics or trust in government — didn’t have nearly the same predictive value. You can see this in the following chart from her paper. The Y-axis is the probability of voting for a far-right party; the X-axis is the level of support for restrictive immigration policies, right-wing economic views, and the like. The difference between immigration policy preferences and the others is striking:

[Image: WHITE_RAGE_CHART5.jpg]

"This study therefore to a large extent settles the debate about which grievances unite all populist right parties," Ivarsflaten concluded. "The answer is the grievances arising from Europe’s ongoing immigration crisis."

Eight years later, after running tests on newer data for a forthcoming paper, Ivarsflaten believes the thesis still holds.

Now, the fact that immigration is the leading driver of the far right’s rise doesn’t explain why Europeans resent immigrants so much. Luckily, scholars have also looked at that question. What they found was fairly conclusive: European whites believe that immigration poses a threat to "traditional" European culture.

They express the exact kind of grievances that Petersen’s "resentment" theory would predict: a sense of anger at the social order being overturned by immigrants, particularly those from Muslim countries.

George Washington University’s John Sides and UC Berkeley’s Jack Citrin combed through data on 20 European countries, a sample of 38,339 individual people, to see what best predicted negative attitudes toward immigrants.

Economic factors didn’t seem to matter much. They found little association between the national unemployment level and the prevalence of negative attitudes toward immigration, or an individual’s income and their likelihood of holding such attitudes.

But when they tested measures of cultural resentment — people’s evaluations of statements like, "It is better for a country if almost everyone shares the same customs and traditions" — the results were very different. White European Christians opposed to multiculturalism were overwhelmingly more likely to be immigration skeptics.

When you get into the details, the link between anti-immigrant sentiment and cultural anxiety becomes even clearer.

A group of Belgian researchers examined support for their own country’s far-right party, Vlaams Blok, at the municipal and national levels. Instead of just looking at the impact of the presence of "immigrants" in a particular area, they looked at different types of immigrants.

Specifically, they separated out immigrants from Turkey and Africa’s Muslim-majority Maghreb region, which includes such countries as Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria. They found that the presence of Muslim immigrants correlated well with increased support for Vlaams Blok, but the presence of non-Muslim immigrant populations didn’t.

"It is not so much the presence of foreigners, but rather the fear of the Islamic way of living that leads to extreme right voting," they write.

What happened in Europe is straightforward: An unprecedented wave of nonwhite, heavily Muslim immigration made many European whites uneasy. Le Pen, Haider, Fortuyn, and the rest developed a mode of politics designed to weaponize this backlash — to take inchoate anti-immigrant sentiment and turn it into votes through heated nationalist and anti-Islam rhetoric.

If that sounds like the rhetoric of Campaign 2016, it should.
White riot - Vox
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#32
This looks like being as close as anything to a definite account, thanks for posting part of that article, the rest is equally interesting and compelling.
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#33
So it's basically surprisingly simple:
  • Everywhere, the rise of these right-wing parties and candidates closely correlate with the rise of immigration, especially when immigrants have a very different background (religion and/or race).
  • The resentment comes from a perceived status loss of the white Christian population, further enhanced as this is forced upon them by an elite with a very different cultural outlook and they live in areas generally not affected by a large influx of immigrants
  • It only looks like the resentment is motivated by economic factors as it's the poor neighborhoods that see this influx of immigrants
  • In the US, the hatred towards government is informed by the cultural roots of the white Christian population (US as a frontier state) and reinforced by the perception that government is not on their side (despite the fact that many of them are often dependent on the government) or even actively on the side of the immigrants, defending their rights.
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#34
I guess one could say it's basically tribal, "our" tribe is under siege and (particularly in the US) the government is on the wrong side.
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#35
Useful summary..

Quote:Where do these books leave us? There are, crudely drawn, four or so current theories of Trump and the new New Right
  1. The establishment conservative view, sounded by figures like Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and Leon Wieseltier, is that Trump is the sick consummation of an individualistic, “hyper-democratic” culture that values emotional satisfaction and “authenticity” over facts and reason. 
  2. One liberal view—expressed at its bluntest on social media, but also in columns by Paul Krugman and Jamelle Bouie—is that his supporters are basically racist and otherwise-bigoted hicks, whom the Republican Party has been feeding on the sly for decades, and who are now out of their cages. 
  3. A more polite version of this take sees Trump’s success as a response to the declining status of working-class, rural, and small-town whites in a demographically and culturally changing world, a last grab at a nostalgic America where, even if they are not bigots, they feel they once belonged. 
  4. A final view, more congenial to the Sanders and Jacobin left, is that while Trump himself is a repugnant charlatan, his supporters seek in him a salve for the real economic problems of blue-collar displacement and the bait-and-switch promises of the American dream.
Red-State Blues | New Republic
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#36
I think it is a blend of all four of those points, and ...

5. ~40 years of right-wing media saturation blaming Democrats, et. al. for all of these economic shifts that have hit the U.S. working/middle class the hardest. Obama was an 'illegitimate' President (birtherism, as promoted by Trump) and his failed 'liberal' policies, which Hillary Clinton would continue -- are to blame for the continued good paying blue-collar job destruction.
Ailes, Murdoch, Hannity, Limbaugh and the others have poisoned people's minds whereby everything that is perceived to be bad or wrong is because ... "liberalism" (i.e. Democrats).
The minds of this hardcore base are simply gone and they can no longer be reached -- except by shock and fear that they have been fed massive doses of for decades on right-wing radio/television outlets to which they always tune.

Iraq war debacle? Hillary, Kerry and other Democrats voted for it too and besides, it was all Bill Clinton's fault anyways, for not forcefully confronting it when he was President.

Repeal of Glass Steagal and other financial deregulation leading to epic financial market implosion? All Barney Frank's fault and CRA regulations that forced banks to lend to unqualified minorities (which isn't true, but no matter).

And on and on for every issue.

Republicans and their policies are not responsible. Republicans are NEVER responsible.
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#37
(09-19-2016, 08:41 PM)BobL Wrote: I think it is a blend of all four of those points, and ...

5.  ~40 years of right-wing media saturation blaming Democrats, et. al. for all of these economic shifts that have hit the U.S. working/middle class the hardest.  Obama was an 'illegitimate' President (birtherism, as promoted by Trump) and his failed 'liberal' policies, which Hillary Clinton would continue -- are to blame for the continued good paying blue-collar job destruction.
Ailes, Murdoch, Hannity, Limbaugh and the others have poisoned people's minds whereby everything that is perceived to be bad or wrong is because ... "liberalism" (i.e. Democrats).
The minds of this hardcore base are simply gone and they can no longer be reached -- except by shock and fear that they have been fed massive doses of for decades on right-wing radio/television outlets to which they always tune.

Iraq war debacle?  Hillary, Kerry and other Democrats voted for it too and besides, it was all Bill Clinton's fault anyways, for not forcefully confronting it when he was President.

Repeal of Glass Steagal and other financial deregulation leading to epic financial market implosion?  All Barney Frank's fault and CRA regulations that forced banks to lend to unqualified minorities (which isn't true, but no matter).

And on and on for every issue.

Republicans and their policies are not responsible.  Republicans are NEVER responsible.

Hi Bob. This has much to do why we started this website, especially the economic stuff. However, the evidence in the Vox article (part of it linked above in this thread) clearly lays the burden on anti-immigration, and with a wealth of evidence. Economics seems to have little to do with it although it's easy to think that because immigration disproportionally falls on poor neighborhoods.

Had discussions with a friend about this today, and whether Trump can actually win the elections. He argues it's unlikely, comparing the US favorably to Europe, because of the checks and balances in the US electoral system and how the make-up of the electoral college makes it difficult for the Republicans to win the Presidency. 

I do not necessarily disagree with that, but there are two other factors to consider which aren't present in Europe, at least not anywhere near on the same scale and scope:
  • The widespread anti-government ideology which is largely absent in Europe (nobody in Europe knows who John Galt is, Austrian economics isn't taught anywhere in Europe, etc.)
  • The whole right-wing infrastructure that has been slowly created to circumvent the checks and balances and de-legitimize existing institutions, from the right-wing media, to the billionaire donor class donating to every right-wing cause and election of officials, to right-wing 'think-tanks' that start with the conclusions. There isn't anything comparable in scale or scope anywhere in Europe.
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#38
Yes, keep arguing we're all racists and deplorables while all we're doing is protecting our way of life. We don't want people like you tell us how to live, or share our communities with people who are very alien. This isn't racist.
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#39
<< "Had discussions with a friend about this today, and whether Trump can actually win the elections. He argues it's unlikely, comparing the US favorably to Europe, because of the checks and balances in the US electoral system and how the make-up of the electoral college makes it difficult for the Republicans to win the Presidency." >>

I would like to believe that as well. It is a logical deduction and makes sense.

However, George W. Bush. Twice.
No sane person prior to 2000 thought this man, who exhibited all the intellectual qualities of a dry drunk -- could become President of the U.S. either.

Given that disaster, I am sad to say a Trump or even worse is entirely possible in the U.S. It sure as hell can happen here.
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#40
(09-20-2016, 05:42 PM)BobL Wrote: << "Had discussions with a friend about this today, and whether Trump can actually win the elections. He argues it's unlikely, comparing the US favorably to Europe, because of the checks and balances in the US electoral system and how the make-up of the electoral college makes it difficult for the Republicans to win the Presidency."  >>

I would like to believe that as well.  It is a logical deduction and makes sense.

However, George W. Bush.  Twice.
No sane person prior to 2000 thought this man, who exhibited all the intellectual qualities of a dry drunk -- could become President of the U.S. either.

Given that disaster, I am sad to say a Trump or even worse is entirely possible in the U.S.  It sure as hell can happen here.

Yea, I also fear you might be right, Bob. It's amazing how Clinton's foundation produced such a media frenzy without any solid evidence of any wrongdoing, whilst Trump's foundation is steeped in misuse (apart from achieving basically nothing) and this goes by virtually unnoticed..
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