Study: racism and sexism predict support for Trump much more than economic dissatisfaction [View all]

The study comes with a chart to prove it.

Updated by German Lopez@germanrlopezgerman.lopez@vox.com Jan 4, 2017, 1:30pm EST

Following Donald Trump’s election, the media tried to identify several indicators for why he won. Was it the opioid painkiller and heroin epidemic? Poor health outcomes? The economy?

A new paper by political scientists Brian Schaffner, Matthew MacWilliams, and Tatishe Nteta puts the blame back on the same factors people pointed to before the election: racism and sexism. And the research has a very telling chart to prove it, showing that voters’ measures of sexism and racism correlated much more closely with support for Trump than economic dissatisfaction after controlling for factors like partisanship and political ideology:



As the paper acknowledges, clearly economic dissatisfaction was one factor — and in an election in which Trump essentially won by just 80,000 votes in three states, maybe that, along with issues like the opioid epidemic and poor health outcomes, was enough to put Trump over the top. But the analysis also shows that a bulk of support for Trump — perhaps what made him a contender to begin with — came from beliefs rooted in racism and sexism.

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http://www.vox.com/identities/2017/1/4/14160956/trump-racism-sexism-economy-study