Economic Populism and Bandwagon Bigotry: Obama-to-Trump Voters and the Cross Pressures of the 2016 Election

Abstract

Through an analysis of validated voters in the 2016 American National Election Study, this article considers the voters who supported Obama in 2012 and Trump in 2016. More than 5.7 million in total, Obama-to-Trump voters were crucial to Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. They were more likely to be white, working class, and resident in the Midwest. They had lower levels of political interest, were centrist in both party affiliation and ideology, and were late deciders for the 2016 election. On economic interests, they were centrists, except for trade policy, which they viewed, on average, as a greater threat than other voters. They claimed to have more experience with economic vulnerability than Democratic loyalists of comparable social standing. On racial attitudes, including the racialized economic topic of immigration, they had a profile similar to Republican loyalists. While their support of Trump may be attributable to surging white nativism, this article argues for an alternative explanation. Voters who were attracted by Trump’s economic populism only joined his coalition if they could accept his racialized rhetoric. As a result, the Trump bandwagon predominantly attracted generically bigoted voters with racial attitudes similar to Republican loyalists.

Prejudice, Bigotry, and Support for Compensatory Interventions to Address Black–White Inequalities: Evidence from the General Social Survey, 2006 to 2020

“…Under this scenario, Democrats and Independents who moved to the right had racial attitudes similar to those of the typical Republican voter (see Morgan and Lee 2019). As a result, their movement into the group of Republican identifiers would not likely have changed the trajectory of the average racial attitudes of Republicans, all else equal.…”

“…First, some comparatively prejudiced Democrats and Independents, who saw appeal first in the Tea Party movement and then later in the emergence of Donald Trump as a presidential aspirant, found Democratic candidates less attractive. These individuals became part of the "bandwagon bigotry" that was crucial for Trump's narrow victory in 2016 (see Morgan and Lee 2019). Second, many Republican voters supported Trump in 2016 because of party loyalty, suppressing their misgivings about his potential presidency.…”

The Absence of the Ordinary in 2020 Presidential Politics: What Politicians Communicate

“…Other social scientists (e.g., Gidron and Hall 2019) made similar arguments with respect to the flourishing of European populism. Morgan and Lee’s (2019) research challenged Mutz. They found a combination of economic populism with some bandwagon racism pushed Trump over the edge in the states that he won.…”

“…They found a combination of economic populism with some bandwagon racism pushed Trump over the edge in the states that he won. Morgan and Lee’s (2019) findings acknowledge social and cultural variables, yet demonstrate that in the end, it was kitchen‐table issues centered on the economy that sealed the deal for Trump. Their research also circles back to the issue of the “ordinary,” the subject of this article.…”

Class Position and Political Opinion in Rich Democracies

“…The unidimensional politics of identity -whether racial, cultural, and/or geographical in origin -take center stage, despite the fact that both Hochschild's and Cramer's compelling ethnographic accounts are replete with evidence of the subjects' outrage and despair over the concentration of economic power and resources in the hands of economic and political elites. 8 See especiallyMorgan's (2018) re-analysis ofMutz's (2018) data,Morgan & Lee (2019), andGreen & McElwee (2019), who conclude that "both racial attitudes and economic conditions are significantly associated with voting behavior in 2016...[yet the] findings make clear the difficulty of directly...attributing Donald Trump's election to one as opposed to the other"(Green & McElwee 2019:360). For similar arguments in Europe, seeNaumann & Stoetzer…”