Validating and testing a measure of anti‐semitism on support for QAnon and vote intention for Trump in 2020

Abstract

Objective Knowledge on anti‐semitism and its effects as an attitude is limited. We seek to assess its relationship with other out‐group measures and its predictive ability on political judgments. We seek to (a) study the properties of a measure of anti‐semitism; (b) explore the relationship between anti‐semitism and other frequently used measures of out‐group attitudes; (c) assess the key demographic predictors of endorsement of anti‐semitic beliefs; (d) evaluate the predictive ability of our measure of anti‐semitism in models predicting support for the QAnon conspiracy theory and vote for Trump in the 2020 election. Data and Methods This study utilizes two national online surveys fielded in January and August 2020 that are weighted to match the U.S. population. We utilize a Bayesian factor analytic approach to assess the relationship between various out‐group measures. We also use regression analyses to predict the correlates of anti‐semitism and to test the relationship between anti‐semitism and support for QAnon and for Trump. Results Our results show that anti‐semitism shares more variance with xenophobia than anti‐black prejudice suggesting that people tend to perceive Jews as national outsiders not as racial others. Furthermore, anti‐semitism is a strong positive predictor of both support for QAnon and intent to vote for Donald Trump.