Fear of Diversity Made People More Likely to Vote Trump.

[Cattledog]

The 2016 presidential election will go down as the election that spawned a million takes. Much of this debate centered around whether the rise of Donald Trump was primarily due to economic anxiety or whether his support was an expression of resentment of racial minority groups and immigrants.

In previous analyses of Trump’s support during the primaries, we showed that racial resentment played a larger role in the 2016 election than economic concerns. Recently released survey data allows us to ascertain in what ways Trump’s general election support compares to previous elections. The data also give us the opportunity to focus in on those voters who switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016, and compare them to those voters who did not support Trump in 2016 but voted for Romney in 2012.

We find that opinions about how increasing racial diversity will affect American society had much more impact on support for Trump during the 2016 election compared to support for the Republican candidates in the two previous presidential elections. We also find that individuals with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump, but those with low racial resentment and more positive views about rising diversity voted for Romney but not Trump.

In short, our analysis indicates that Donald Trump successfully leveraged existing resentment towards African Americans in combination with emerging fears of increased racial diversity in America to reshape the presidential electorate, strongly attracting nativists towards Trump and pushing some more affluent and highly educated people with more cosmopolitan views to support Hillary Clinton. Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics.

More at:

https://www.thenation.com/article/fear-of-diversity-made-people-more-likely-to-vote-trump/

[Trust Buster]

1. I agree. It was necessary for the Party to purge these fools from our ranks. It hadn't been done

since 1968 with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Better to target the 46% of eligible voters who chose not to vote in the last election. The haters should be left to hate from the other side.

[DeminPennswoods]

2. The oddity

The oddity is that these same voters actually voted for Obama and then moved to Trump suggesting that racial attitude wasn't the determining reason for their vote. What's the common theme between both men? Both, in their own ways, promised that America wouldn't abandon them - things would be ok. Obama did it with hope and Trump did it with fear.

[JI7]

5. no, most of them did not vote for obama

[DeminPennswoods]

7. From The Nation excerpt above

"We also find that individuals with high levels of racial resentment were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump, "

Look at the electoral maps from 2012 and 2016 of Obama won areas, the switching is obvious.

[Squinch]

8. In those areas, there were a large number of people who seldom vote who came out for Trump.

A flip of a county doesn't necessarily mean a flip from Obama to Trump. It means one group stayed home and another came out.

[karynnj]

25. His/her point is worth considering for the group of people who DID vote for both Obama and Trump

and his or her explanation is interesting and something we could learn from. Especially those people who voted twice for Obama.

[DanTex]

17. Neither Romney nor McCain were racists. Racism wasn't on the ballot in 08 and 12.

Trump gave people the choice to vote for racism.

[DeminPennswoods]

26. Racism has been on the GOP ballot since Nixon's Southern Strategy

nt

[JHan]

29. Trump removed the mask of compassionate conservatism.

millions saw the ugliness and still voted for it.

[JI7]

30. not with mccain and Romney

[Le Gaucher]

3. I have made similar arguments to my Republican brother in law..But he says racists would not have

Voted for Obama.

He thinks every country has fringe cuckoo elements.. so does America.. He thinks the biggest element why Hillary lost is that she was a flawed candidate who didn't address the concerns of white working class ( )

[Squinch]

9. And he thought Trump WOULD address the concerns of the white working class, so that

tells you what a pea brain he is.

The whole "Hillary is a flawed candidate" was fed to them - now we see apparently fed to them by Putin - and they ate it up because they're scared of women and brown people. When you ask "flawed how?" they can never give you an answer other than "Benghazi" and "Foster" and "emails."

[Le Gaucher]

10. To be fair.. He doesn't think Trump is going to solve anything for WW class

And that Trump made lots of empty promises. But he feels that a lot of Bernie voters pulled the lever for Trump over Hillary because they felt they had a shot with Trump rather than Hillary. And he agrees that Hillary would have made a better president .. but She is a flawed candidate who could not connect.

My town of Berkeley Heights NJ last voted for a Democratic president during 1964 Lyndon Johnson election. Romney carried my town by 16 points. Yet Hillary won. So there are lots of cross over voters this time around .. My brother in law is a Republican .. he says he voted for Hillary .. but would have voted for Trump over Bernie Sanders.. and that is typical of many Republicans in my town.

Lots of wierd political calculus going on.

[Squinch]

16. When you look at the facts, what those people say is not what they mean.

What those people DID, which was to give power to sexism and racism, is what they really mean.

"A flawed candidate who could not connect." We hear that phrase over and over and over, word for word, don't we? Why, it's like they have been programmed to say that very phrase, isn't it? They said the same thing about Obama. Remember the outrage about his lattes and his kale and his bad bowling and his mom jeans? A guy like that just couldn't relate, remember? But it didn't stick as well. Gosh. Wonder why it stuck so well to Hillary.

Trump is admitted molester of women who has gone bankrupt 8 times, who has ruined entire cities with his incompetence, who has cheated every person who ever worked for him and who has never done anything but promote himself. They knew ALL this and they pulled that lever anyway.

They "felt they had a better shot with him" than the person who built a platform that specifically and very ingeniously addressed how to bring opportunities back to the coal and rust belts. She offered them a chance to regain their self respect, she offered protection for their healthcare and their children's educations.

But they couldn't relate to her. So they voted the white man who offered them overt racism and sexism and jingoism. THAT'S what they could relate to.

[Le Gaucher]

20. I hope I can memorize your answer and give it back

[Squinch]

28. .

[SammyWinstonJack]

15. Nailed it!

[griloco]

4. FOWPs (frightened old white people)

Who must now sit on the last line of the National Anthem

[betsuni]

6. K&R

[Vinca]

11. This morning I watched an interview on CNN with a Pennsylvania factory owner who

voted for Trump. He says he voted for him because he thought it would make his business grow. The company has a big problem though. He has to rely on immigrant and refugees labor to keep his factory making money because the locals can't pass a drug test. So how's that working out???? Then they cut to a young woman in rehab who is whining because she can't even get a job at a corner store because of her history. She says she doesn't begrudge refugees having an opportunity, but that she needs an opportunity, too. It seems lost on her she's had years and years and years of opportunity. While I'm sympathetic to people who find themselves addicted, they lose my sympathy when they can't appreciate the plight of anyone other than themselves. Typical Trump voter.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

12. Racist Don the Con set America back 60 years & that makes America WORSE, not great.

Changing demographics are not ignorable. You either live with it, as the large majority of Americans want to, or you try to make life living hell for as many people as you can, which is the tRumpLickers' way.

The elephant in the room is Putin.

[kydo]

13. Oh its still very much about class. Racial resentment is just the manner to achieve their goal.

Divide and conquer. Pitch the white middle class vs the black class and the middle class is not as strong force when they are just middle class. Same with the poor. LBJ said it best about why this tactic works. The rich and upper way upper class do it all the time. This way they win twice. First they win. Second they LOL at the schmucks that think they will ever be in their class.

Its all about class warfare. The smallest group (the way upper class) always win. The race card is a powerful card to play. People don't like being at the bottom. Tell them they aren't. That black person, or any other minority group is at the bottom and they are trying to take what is rightfully yours. Well many will believe it.

[SunSeeker]

14. Ignorant, self-defeating, stupid fuckwads. nt

[ewagner]

18. It might be less complicated than this...

In the Hillary/Trump race as well as in the Feingold/Johnson race and too numerous to count "down-ballot" races here in Wisconsin, the Republican tactic was the same:

DRIVE THE DEMOCRAT'S "NEGATIVES" UP.

Trump was AND remains an awful candidate, person and president....but the idea was always to make him the lesser of two evils..everything the Repubs did was negative ads...absolutely everything...they used multiple negative narratives and allowed voters to pick their own poison as a reason to vote against any Dem...and it worked.

The reason it's so hard to pin down a single reason for the defeat is because there were as many reasons as there were Democratic candidates...the repubs used every negative they could find and they had the $$$$ to do it everywhere and against every last Dem.

The steady drumbeat of BUT HER EMAILS made Hillary look bad and drowned out her message through MSM as well as the Right-wing bullhorn.

And...maybe...probably...Russia helped....

[ck4829]

19. The fear of diversity and people who are different than us helps us sleep at night

It helps us forget that most crime is done intraracially rather than interracially, it gives us some 'other' to blame, and it assigns a different kind of meaning to it... both from the extreme (Like when a white person goes shooting, they're a mentally ill lone wolf vs a minority/immigrant/Muslim/etc. and then it's WAR!) to the mundane (Our notions about crime or how we even define things being legal or illegal).

Some people don't want to think about these things - They voted for Trump.

[uponit7771]

21. Sigh, yeah .... the whole jobs thing makes no sense seeing UE rate was in the 4s

[dsc]

22. pretty damning evidence that the whole it was all about trade is nothing but tommyrot

[colsohlibgal]

23. It Was A Huge Factor

Fear of the "Other" drove a lot of people to take leave of their senses.

Another component was a smaller group yearning to break up the Kleptocracy who unwisely believed Chitolini's occasional populist rants.

[dalton99a]

24. The common denominator among Trump voters is bigotry

"some are good people I presume"

[Thomas Hurt]

27. Fear of the "Other"

is part of the human condition. It hits the ignorant and arrogant the worst.

[Initech]

31. Do they think Diversity is also a very old wooden ship from the Civil War era?