Explaining Trump Some More

It’s over a year now, but academics, journalists, and political junkies still cannot get their fill–nor can I–of addressing the question, Why Trump? …

Studies have accumulated showing that the distinctiveness of Trump’s core supporters in the primaries and among new or swing voters in the general election lies less in his fans’ economic insecurity than in their cultural insecurity: concerns that the life-ways of white working-class Christians are being threatened by a set of “others”: immigrants, blacks, Muslims, feminists, Washington bureaucrats, Wall Street operators, and over-educated coastal elites.

Recent analyses of surveys show that Trump voters can be distinguished–aside from their demographics, skewing white, male, less educated, and old–most precisely by their view that native-born whites are being treated unfairly while others are being given unearned advantages. …

But what about the voters who shifted from voting for Obama to voting for Trump?, some analysts ask. Do they not demonstrate the greater importance of economic complaints over racism? CONT.

Claude Fischer