In the five days leading up to the South Carolina Republican primary I fielded a survey of 358 likely voters, hoping to better understand who supports Donald Trump, why, and what it may mean for the Republican presidential nominating contest.
What I found is a trend that has been widely overlooked. A voter’s gender, education, age, ideology, party identification, income, and race simply had no statistical bearing on whether someone supported Trump. Neither, despite predictions to the contrary, did evangelicalism.
Here is what did: authoritarianism, by which I mean Americans’ inclination to authoritarian behavior. When political scientists use the term authoritarianism, we are not talking about dictatorships but about a worldview. People who score high on the authoritarian scale value conformity and order, protect social norms, and are wary of outsiders. And when authoritarians feel threatened, they support aggressive leaders and policies.
Authoritarianism and a hybrid variable that links authoritarianism with a personal fear of terrorism were the only two variables that predicted, with statistical significance, support for Trump.…
I did find one soft spot in Trump’s support. Regular, weekly church attendance — as measured by a standard Pew Research question included in my survey — predicted a statistically significant and substantive opposition to Trump.…VOX
The best predictor of Trump support isn't income, education, or age. It's authoritarianism.
Matthew MacWilliams
It's interesting but counter-intuitive, to me at least. I thought a vote for Trump (Or Sanders) was a vote against the PTB.
ReplyDeleteThe headline applies to me for sure...
ReplyDeletebut that is a good point too Ryan...
Its interesting to see Alex Jones who is supposed to be this big libertarian is Trump's biggest supporter...
I see a lot of what were supposed to be libertarians supporting Trump...
but I am probably right of Fascism and I support Trump as the headline implies..
Libertarians are authoritarians. They expect people to do as they are told, operate entirely as individuals not as groups and want to have the guns to back it up.
ReplyDeleteThe basis of their nonsense - that people don't attack each other or gang up - is the same facile nonsense as the weed smoking left anarchist movement. And just as sensible - since it denies all ape culture that has evolved over about 5 million years.
Did I get these links on this site? Can’t remember. Tom?
ReplyDeleteProfessor Bob Altemeyer has been studying Authoritarism for 40 years. He was one of the first to do a serious series of scientific studies. Read his intro; he wears his cachet lightly: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
Here’s his book, The Authoritarians.
http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/TheAuthoritarians.pdf
THAT SAID.
I don’t buy it. Not one bit. It’s too facile an explanation. (This is the basis of a doctoral student’s thesis, after all. He needs to get it published.) Trump is happening because the people who are voting for him are tired of not being listened to, abandoned. Tired of their complaints discounted, dismissed, or silenced. Tired of what they lost starting in 2008. And wildly disillusioned with Obama’s judgment and inability to correct it. Or the fact that they feel duped by having thought he could. And when the wheels come off your life, you lose your house, job, your retirement, or you lose the means to help your kids succeed or eat, political correctness is the last goddam thing you want to be stabbed with after you express your anger, whether that anger is irrational, short-sighted, misinformed...or not…even if it’s perfectly justified. What Trump has is the gift of perfect timing in this day, in this time.
It has been the knowledge of rulers going back to the Sumerians, 5500 years ago, which is as far as our written recorded ‘westernish’ history goes--China is over 8,000 years old, and they knew it, ditto the Egyptians—that the people will eventually revolt against tyrannical behavior and destroy the ruler. That’s why the Sumerians invented Debt Jubilees when a new ruler came to power, long before the Old Testament was ever written (Matt, take note). Their wiser rulers knew that you had to use the state to give the people a break, or you’d lose your head. And no one did that in 2008; they took care of the elites.
Altemeyer’s book is an interesting read for his affability and self-deprecating humor, but he is thorough, he’s worked from the data for decades. And if you plow through the book, which I’ve done a good bit of, the definition of an authoritarian does not account for the range of, nor explain, Trump’s appeal, which cuts across all political parties, education levels, and social classes. He creamed Las Vegas tonight (realclearpolitics.com). Obama creamed it in 2008; it’s a Blue town. There’s a test on page 10 that Altemeyer officially standardized to suss one out. (I got a 36 the first time, a 44 the second, definitely not someone with authoritarian tendencies. Colorful personality, yes. Authoritarian, no.) Try it. With a cold beer.
The Sumerian stuff is in History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History by Samuel Noah Kramer (1954).
ReplyDelete"Notably, in the first state with meaningful GOP turnout among nonwhites, Trump even won Hispanic caucus-goers, with 45 percent support, as good as Marco Rubio’s and Ted Cruz’s support among Hispanics combined (28 percent and 18 percent, respectively). And, as previously, Trump did best among less-educated voters, winning half of those without a college degree, peaking at 57 percent support among those who haven’t gone beyond high school. Trump’s margin narrowed among more-educated voters, down to a far closer 37-31 percent vs. Rubio among those with a postgraduate degree."
ReplyDeleteBlowback: Democrats have a hard time winning poor workers. Bernie does well with rich kids and university students generally though. Hillary handily wins the millionaire coastal voters and the billionaire disruptivators. I don't understand why Dems can't stop mocking the poor long enough to notice they have lost the poor and lower middle classes.
Sanders is showing strong support from those with annual income under $50,000, not with the wealthy.
DeleteMRW Bill has a link to the Political Compass Test at his site... Ive taken that and imo the authority part is largely a homophobe detector... wouldnt surprise me to find out the people who developed it were gay...
ReplyDeleteIll take a look at that guys test too but am going in skeptical...
And about those 'jubilee' things that is not optimal its like a 'reset' button... no one competent in systems design/operations would look at a 'reset' as a good way to operate a system... its like having to reboot your computer all the time its no good...
Having to implement a 'reset' is NOT wise... indicates a poor design/operation....
this is revealing from the article:
"I did find one soft spot in Trump’s support. Regular, weekly church attendance "
Not surprising as the OT is taught in Christendom all the time...
Here's the Lord himself on authority:
"For I also am a man set under authority, having soldiers under me, and I am saying to this one, 'Go,' and he is going, and to another, 'Come,' and he is coming, and to my slave, 'Do this,' and he is doing it."
10 Now, hearing it, Jesus marvels. And He said to those following, "Verily, I am saying to you, With no one in Israel so much faith did I find." Mat 8:9
According to the Lord here, faith itself is measured by one's ability to perceive and understand authority.
Christendumb thinks its measured by how many times you attend church or work at the soup kitchen or obey the OT ten commandments or wtf... how well you comply with dogmatic materialist terms subject to default... its BS...
And this is revealing from Kristol:
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/702252347003695106
Kristol probably never having read the NT part of 'the bible!' he's OT focused... doesnt understand authority... what does he want Trump to propose stoning homosexuals and adulterers as that is what 'the bible!' says? did he come back from the new Star Wars movie and join the Jedi Order and change his name to Obe Wan Kristoli too....
Profound religious undertones to what is going on in this election...
"The basis of their nonsense - that people don't attack each other or gang up"
ReplyDeleteOr maybe they know it is nonsense and the "non aggression principle" means "out for whatever we can get"
The political compass test is junk science tbh. And I scored near the libertarian left corner which is probably right, but still I regard it as junk and skewed when I did it long time ago.
ReplyDelete“The political compass test is junk science tbh." Which is exactly what Altemeyer said it was, Ignacio, in the pages following the test. ;-)
ReplyDeleteIf it hadn’t been for the superdelegates Clinton picked up (451 vs Sanders' 19), there would have been one delegate vote difference in their three-state tally because of Sanders’ showing in NV. Not that any of the poobah pundits in NYC bothered to notice that before coronating Clinton last Sunday.
ReplyDelete96 million Millennials will be of voting age by Nov 8, 2016. I don’t know if they realize their voting power yet.
Matt,
ReplyDelete“no one competent in systems design/operations would look at a 'reset' as a good way to operate a system... Having to implement a 'reset' is NOT wise... indicates a poor design/operation....”
True. (I used to do this shit at Bell Labs.) But Intervening in a system is how you change the future in a human system.
Correction: But Intervening in a system is how you change the future in a human system as long as the intervention is a change in values.
ReplyDeleteShit. “also represents a change in values."
ReplyDeleteDemocracy is the only political system that is designed with a non-violent reset available periodically, and that makes it superior t other system. In fact, all resets in democracy are not necessarily periodic. There is also recall in some cases. Reset is foundational to democracy.
ReplyDelete"Libertarians are authoritarians."
ReplyDeleteNeil - How do you explain your assertion that Libertarians are authoritarians, when Ron Paul, perhaps the most prolific Libertarian of our time, says that Donald Trump is the authoritarian?
http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/10/03/ron-paul-donald-trump-is-an-authoritarian-and-he-brags-about-it/
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/donald-trump-is-an-authoritarian-and-is-dangerous-says-ron-paul/