A year’s worth of studies show Trump was elected because of racism

Donald Trump

For a year we’ve been hearing about how Trump voters were motivated by “economic anxiety”, with organs like The New York Times devoting many thousands of words to explaining how a tough job market apparently compelled the “forgotten” millions of flyover America to cast their ballots for a xenophobic blowhard. And sure, that’s likely the reason many Trump supporters gave. But as survey after survey has found, the real reason they voted for a racist is – brace yourselves, this is a shock – they’re racist, too.

Over at the Washington Post, researchers Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen have published the results of a new survey on these questions, with a focus on the 41 percent of white millennials who voted for Trump and the sense of “white vulnerability” that motivated them. The conclusion is very clear:

Contrary to what some have suggested, white millennial Trump voters were not in more economically precarious situations than non-Trump voters. Fully 86 percent of them reported being employed, a rate similar to non-Trump voters; and they were 14 percent less likely to be low income than white voters who did not support Trump. Employment and income were not significantly related to that sense of white vulnerability.

So what was? Racial resentment.

Even when controlling for partisanship, ideology, region and a host of other factors, white millennials fit Michael Tesler’s analysis, explored here. As he put it, economic anxiety isn’t driving racial resentment; rather, racial resentment is driving economic anxiety. We found, as he has in a larger population, that racial resentment is the biggest predictor of white vulnerability among white millennials. Economic variables like education, income and employment made a negligible difference.

[…]

To anyone who’s been following the research on this, the findings should come as little surprise. There have now been numerous studies that found support for Trump is closely linked to racial resentment, defined by Fowler, Medenica, and Cohen as “a moral feeling that blacks violate such traditional American values as individualism and self-reliance.”

The given explanation that Trump was made President primarily because of economic troubles has never held water. It’s easy to believe that many may have been seduced by Trump’s faux-populist allure – look, he’s got lots of money, so he must be good at the economy! – and that’s undoubtedly the case for some. But economic issues alone wouldn’t account for millions of mostly rural, almost exclusively White Americans standing by a man who attacks every minority group under the sun. It wouldn’t explain how they could vote for a man who lies as he breathes, and then bullies and belittles anyone who calls out those lies. Frankly, it wouldn’t explain how they could support someone as incredibly stupid, ignorant and incompetent at everything as Donald Trump.

There’s a much simpler and eminently more reasonable explanation: They voted for the candidate who best represented their values on the stage. And the values Trump represents and exudes are those of shallow thinking, a reflexive dismissal of anything that challenges their views, and a nativist tribalism that manifests as boundless racism.

Donald Trump is a flamboyant racist who was elected because he appealed to large swathes of America that are just as racist as he is. The cornerstone of his campaign was the myth that everything bad that happened to White America was someone else’s fault – particularly Mexicans and other browns, but also Blacks, Muslims, and everyone else the Good God-Fearin’ Christians already felt iffy about. Are we really supposed to pretend otherwise?

(via @fark)