President Trump is cheering on Republican governors who lift stay-at-home orders, criticizing Democratic governors who’ve been more cautious and supporting right-wing protests against stay-at-home orders. Coronavirus politics, in other words, like climate change politics, is riven by party. According to recent survey research, average Americans may be following their party […] Read more »
Trump Is Staking Out His Own Universe of ‘Alternative Facts’
… A series of recent research papers explore reasons for the appeal of the demagogue; the role of anger in Trump’s ascendance; and the political dark triad of psychopathy, Machiavellianism and narcissism. In “The Authentic Appeal of the Lying Demagogue: Proclaiming the Deeper Truth about Political Illegitimacy,” published in 2018 […] Read more »
The Urban-Rural Gulf in American Political Behavior
… Places commonly differ in terms of the composition of the people who reside there. No one is arguing about that fact. The question is whether composition is all there is, or whether place has an independent effect. Are two people, identical in their demographic profiles, likely to vary in […] Read more »
In-group Love and Out-group Hate: White Racial Attitudes in Contemporary U.S. Elections
… Most work in the social sciences has ignored the possibility that white Americans possess a racial identity or a sense of racial solidarity, arguing that because of their dominant status and their numerical majority, white Americans are able to take their race for granted. But in recent years, significant […] Read more »
For Biden, naming Cabinet before election would be a big risk
Who’s on his list? And would it matter? Phil Roeder/Flickr, CC BY Christopher Devine, University of Dayton and Kyle C. Kopko, Elizabethtown College In addition to the rumblings about whom he’ll name as his vice presidential candidate, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden recently surprised many political observers by suggesting […] Read more »
Why Isn’t Trump Riding High?
One surprise with Covid-19 is not what happened but what didn’t happen. Although the pandemic might yet benefit President Trump — through heightened xenophobia, increased acceptance of authoritarian leadership, racial and ethnic schism — the political winds have not, to date, shifted in Trump’s direction. In fact, the opposite is […] Read more »