To the dismay of many, President Donald Trump has amped up his racist rhetoric of late, sending out angry, misleading tweets about Latin-American immigrants. Tufts University scholar Daniel Drezner argues this is his attempt “to ensure that his loyal base supporters are sufficiently energized to come out and vote GOP in the midterms.”
Drezner doubts this will work. But a new scholarly analysis suggests Trump’s instinct that racial prejudice drove him to victory is spot on.
“The 2016 campaign witnessed a dramatic polarization in the vote choices of whites based on (their level of) education,” writes a research team led by political scientist Brian Schaffner of the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. “Very little of this gap can be explained by the economic difficulties faced by less-educated whites. Rather, most of the divide appears to be associated with sexism, and denialism of racism.” CONT.
Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard