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 editorswhich are also held in common with the journalists and scholars citing and amplifying this workleading to misinformation cascades. Of course, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, prejudicial study design, and failure to address confounds are not limited to questions about Trumphowever 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 awryand 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

“…The problem with an economic explanation for support for Donald Trump is that these effects were dependent on political orientation in study 1 and nonexistent in the ANES data. This coincides with weak effects of economic dissatisfaction on intentions to vote for Trump found in other research (e.g., Mutz, 2018;Schaffner, MacWilliams, & Nteta, 2018 (al Gharbi, 2018;Mutz, 2018;Pettigrew, 2017;Schaffner et al, 2018), but also social dominance and authoritarianism (Choma & Hanoch, 2017;Mutz, 2018;Pettigrew, 2017 Choma and Hanoch (2017) found an association between SDO and support for Trump in a cross-sectional study pre-election with the same distribution, and a positive skew is the general finding in the literature on SDO (Ho et al, 2015;Jost & Thompson, 2000;Perry & Sibley, 2011;Pratto & Shih, 2000;Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth & Malle, 1994). In contrast, when analyzing the post-election ANES survey, we did find a positive association be- Sidanius & Pratto, 1993).…”

“…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, ).…”

What Isn’t Christian Nationalism? A Call for Conceptual and Empirical Splitting

“…Such pronouncements, irrespective of their social scientific merit, seem antithetical to efforts to transcend entrenched partisan divisions in the service of a political “vital center” (Gorski 2017a). Indiscriminately applying the term may in fact reinforce the threat of Christian nationalism by instantiating, and hence aggravating, political sectarianism (Al-Gharbi 2018; Finkel et al 2020). Greater clarification of the concept along the lines set out here can yield more broad-based and concentrated approaches for upholding democracy in a pluralistic society.…”

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 ).…”