Race and the Race for the White House: On Social Research in the Age of Trump

Abstract

As it became clear that Donald Trump had a real base of political support, even as analysts consistently underestimated his electoral prospects, they grew increasingly fascinated with the question of who was supporting him (and why). However, researchers also tend to hold strong negative opinions about Trump. Consequently, they have approached this research with uncharitable priors about the kind of person who would support him and what they would be motivated by. Research design and data analysis often seem to be oriented towards reinforcing those assumptions. This essay highlights the epistemological consequences of these tendencies through a series of case studies featuring prominent and influential works that purport to explain the role of race and racism in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. It demonstrates that quality control systems, which should catch major errors, seem to be failing in systematic ways as a result of shared priors and commitments between authors, reviewers and editors – which are also held in common with the journalists and scholars citing and amplifying this work – leading to misinformation cascades. Of course, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, prejudicial study design, and failure to address confounds are not limited to questions about Trump – however they seem to be particularly pronounced in this case due to the relative homogeneity and intensity of scholars’ views about this topic as compared to other social phenomena. “Trump studies,” therefore, provides fertile ground for exploring how social research can go awry – and the consequences of these failures -- particularly with respect to work on contentious and politically-charged topics.

It’s security, stupid! Voters’ perceptions of immigrants as a security risk predicted support for Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election

“…In the ANES survey, these simple effects were reversed. It is difficult to interpret this finding, as the emerging literature on Trump support focuses exclusively on nefarious explanations, most notably racism and sexism (al Gharbi, ; Mutz, ; Pettigrew, ; Schaffner et al, ), but also social dominance and authoritarianism (Choma & Hanoch, ; Mutz, ; Pettigrew, ).…”

“…Mutz's analyses have come under intense criticism including reanalysis that does not support Mutz's contention that SDO is a stronger explanation for Trump's victory than economic explanations (Morgan, ), and her argument that increasing SDO is paramount to “status threat” is based on her improper use of deductive logic . Neither of these analyses made any consideration for the possible role of security concerns, which is reflective of the larger literature on Trump support that approaches the topic with strong anti‐conservative priors (al Gharbi, ).…”

Resistance as Sacrifice: Toward an Ascetic Antiracism

“…Critically, those most responsible for this racial stratification trend left politically. These are the whites who most fervently denounce Donald Trump and his supporters for their alleged racism and xenophobia (al‐Gharbi ); they are the whites most likely to produce and consume antiracist content in academia or the media. In fact, highly educated white liberals have come to be more “woke” in their racial attitudes than the average black or Hispanic (Kaufmann ; Yglesias ).…”

The Nature and Consequences of Ideological Hegemony in American Political Science

“…Scholars have begun to document the potentially pernicious effects of ideological homogeneity on research in the related disciplines of psychology (Duarte et al 2015) and sociology (al Gharbi 2018). Those highly recommended articles treat the nature and dimensions of the problem in much greater depth than space permits here.…”