What 4 types of American nationalism can tell us about Trump voters

[DonViejo]

By Bart Bonikowski and Paul DiMaggio February 6 at 5:00 AM

With Donald Trump in the White House, observers are still asking what in his message resonated with enough voters to put him over the top in the electoral college. Theories include economic anxiety, racial resentment, authoritarianism and much more. As the nation debates the new president’s dramatic initiatives to restrict immigration, here is one more possible explanation: a clash of beliefs about what it means to be a real American.

Our research identified four sets of beliefs about what it means to be an American

In our research, we looked at an unusually wide range of attitudes that Americans hold about their nation, as measured by the 1996 and 2004 General Social Survey and a 2012 online panel administered by GfK Research. These nationally representative data from more than 5,000 survey respondents offered us insights into the beliefs of a wide cross-section of the American public.

Using a statistical method called “latent class analysis,” we identified four clusters of respondents, each characterized by a distinct nationalist disposition.

One cluster consisted of Americans we called “ardent nationalists.” These respondents expressed strong national pride, believed the United States to be superior to other countries and defined American identity in ethnically and culturally exclusionary terms. They constituted nearly 20 percent of the sample in 1996 and 2012. In 2004, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 25 percent fell into this group.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/02/06/true-or-false-real-americans-are-christian-speak-english-and-were-born-in-the-u-s/?utm_term=.887566421b46&wpisrc=nl_politics&wpmm=1

[Hortensis]

1. "American Creed"--that's me. But dismaying otherwise.

Thank goodness our nationalist dispositions obviously aren't our only drivers, or our nation would have turned into something very different long ago and the "American Creed" would be only something history majors learned about in college.

I wonder, though, how well this survey was put together and how truly the responses represent people's underlying natures rather than an "Infowars-driven" mood of the moment. Technological advances have of course forced internationalization far against the will of many who just aren't ready for it and increased nationalist anxieties.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Surprised that 'restrictive' has such huge number of Democrats and

independents.