A new study reveals the real reason Obama voters switched to Trump [View all]

[ehrnst]

“White voters with racially conservative or anti-immigrant attitudes switched votes to Trump at a higher rate than those with more liberal views on these issues,” the paper’s authors write. “We find little evidence that economic dislocation and marginality were significantly related to vote switching in 2016.”

This new paper fits with a sizeable slate of studies conducted over the past 18 months or so, most of which have come to the same conclusions: There is tremendous evidence that Trump voters were motivated by racial resentment (as well as hostile sexism), and very little evidence that economic stress had anything to do with it.
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“We find a much stronger association between symbolic racial and immigration attitudes and switching for Trump and Clinton than between economic marginality or local economic dislocation and vote switching,” Reny et al. write. “In fact, we find marginally small or no associations between any of our economic indicators and vote switching in either direction.”

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Now, Reny et al.’s statistical analysis can’t show all of this on its own. You should never draw conclusions this large from one statistical analysis, as it could suffer from any number of problems.

However, this analysis of the election is supported by a wide and deep body of research, the vast majority of which shows that concerns about identity and race were the decisive issues in the 2016 election. This was true in the Republican primary and the general; it’s also consistent with research on far-right parties in Europe whose xenophobic appeals are similar to Trump’s. There is a complete lack of statistical evidence, by contrast, for the “economic anxiety” theory.
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History suggests that significant changes in voting across party lines, particularly for the presidency, precede changes in party identities, the basis for realignments. This sequence of events played out during the Southern realignment (i.e., Democrats voting for GOP presidential candidates but maintaining their party attachment) and here we provide evidence that it may be happening again after two terms with a black president and during an era of mass demographic change due to immigration. Racial conservatives and those with the most punitive immigration views are moving right and were the most likely to switch to Trump in 2016. Our data suggest the same is happening in the opposite direction as those with racially liberal or pro-immigration views may be sorting into the Democratic Party.

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But it’s plausible, and there’s no use burying our heads in the sand by pretending this is about class when it isn’t.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/10/16/17980820/trump-obama-2016-race-racism-class-economy-2018-midterm

Direct link to study:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/qphz9lxy6pxni1k/final_submission_reny_etal_poq_public.pdf?dl=0