Resentful white people propelled Trump to the White House — and he is rewarding their loyalty

… In March 2016, the political scientist Michael Tesler and I showed the importance of “white identity” during the Republican primary. Trump did particularly well among whites who strongly identified as white, who thought whites suffered from discrimination, who thought whites were losing out on jobs to minorities, and who thought it was important for whites to work together to change laws that were unfair to whites.

Indeed, in further analysis that we’ve done, a strong sense of white identity has emerged as one of the most potent — if not the most potent — predictors of support for Trump in the primary. Support for Trump depended far less on personal economic anxiety — “I’m afraid of losing my job” — than on a distinctly racialized anxiety: “I think minorities are taking jobs from people like me.” CONT.

John Sides (GWU), Monkey Cage