The first story about the typical Trump buyer was simple: These were poorly informed voters, swept up by a modern circus act orchestrated by a mass-media-age P. T. Barnum with arguably worse hair. But Trump’s appeal has proven to be more than a passing fad.
Trump has several caucus and primary wins under his belt, analysts have a better sense of who’s actually turning out to vote for him. Here are four features of people voting for Trump
Those that Didn’t Go to College
The single best predictor of Trump support in the GOP primary is the absence of a college degree. In an analysis of Trump's blowout win in New Hampshire, Evan Soltas determined that the factor explaining most of the variance in Trump's support in New Hampshire was education.
“For every 1 percentage point more college graduates over the age of 25, Donald Trump's share of votes falls by 0.65 percentage points,” he said.
Diplomas are what Ron Brownstein call the “new Republican fault line.” In 2012, Mitt Romney struggled for months to consolidate support because, even as he had clear support among college-educated Republicans, he fared worse among non-college voters.
Those that think They dont Have a Political Voice
If there were one question to identify a Trump supporter if you knew nothing else about him, what might it be? “Are you a middle-aged white man who hasn’t graduated from college?” might be a good one. But according to a survey from RAND corporation, there is one that’s even better: Do you feel voiceless?
RAND tested several queries to clearly divide Trump’s support from his rivals. For example, they found that Trump crushes Ted Cruz among voters who both strongly believe that “immigrants threaten American customs and values" and among voters who "strongly favor" raising taxes on the richest American households. But voters who agreed with the statement “people like me don't have any say about what the government does” were 86.5 percent more likely to prefer Trump. This feeling of powerlessness and voicelessness was a much better predictor of Trump support than age, race, college attainment, income, attitudes towards Muslims, illegal immigrants, or Hispanic identity.
Trump has clearly played on fears of non-white outsiders, by likening Mexican immigrants to rapists, promising to deport illegal immigrants and to build a wall between the U.S. and its neighbors, pledging to keep Muslims out of the country during the Syrian diaspora, and playing coy with his relationship with the KKK. But he has also told a simple three-part narrative to attract the despondent demographic: America is losing; Donald Trump is a winner; and if Trump becomes president, America will become a winner, too.Is this not deception? This Great Man Theory of political change, however, strikes others as potentially dangerous...
They Want to Wage an Interior War Against Outsiders
Matthew MacWilliams, a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studies political authoritarianism.
The classic definition of authoritarianism implies a tradeoff—more security for less liberty—but MacWilliams says it’s also about identifying threatening outsiders and granting individuals special powers to pursue aggressive policies to destroy them. The best predictor of Trump support isn't income, education, or age, he says. In South Carolina, it was “ authoritarianism … [and] a personal fear of terrorism” that best predicted Trump’s support across the state.
Trump’s foreign policy, like his policy for anything, is a muddle. He’s cautious toward the Israel-Palestine conflict, yet he told Fox News he would kill the families of ISIS members to stop their advance, something awfully close to a public pledge to commit war-crimes.
They Live in Parts of the Country With Racial Resentment
Find a map of the United States and draw a thick red mark just east of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. That's Trump Country.
Although
Trump appears to run equally well among moderates and conservatives in
polls, Soltas found that, in New Hampshire, he dominated in more
moderate counties. “For every 1 percentage point more liberal the
precinct, Donald Trump's share of votes rises by 0.48 percentage
points,” Soltas found.
According to the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, who used data from Civis Analytics,
Trump’s support is strongest from the Gulf Coast, through the
Appalachian Mountains, to New York, among marginally attached
Republicans (possibly former Democrats). It is a familiar map for some
demographers, since it’s similar to a heat map of Google searches for
racial slurs and jokes. “That Mr. Trump’s support is strong in similar
areas does not prove that most or even many of his supporters are
motivated by racial animus,” Cohn writes. “But it is consistent with the possibility that at least some are.”
Written by Derek Thompson
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