TY - JOUR
T1 - The Racial and Economic Context of Trump Support
T2 - Evidence for Threat, Identity, and Contact Effects in the 2016 Presidential Election
AU - Knowles, Eric D.
AU - Tropp, Linda R.
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded in part by grant # 87-14-04 awarded to the first author and a Visiting Scholar Fellowship awarded to the second author from the Russell Sage Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © The Author(s) 2018.
PY - 2018/4/1
Y1 - 2018/4/1
N2 - Donald Trump’s ascent to the Presidency of the United States defied the expectations of many social scientists, pundits, and laypeople. To date, most efforts to understand Trump’s rise have focused on personality and demographic characteristics of White Americans. In contrast, the present work leverages a nationally representative sample of Whites to examine how contextual factors may have shaped support for Trump during the 2016 presidential primaries. Results reveal that neighborhood-level exposure to racial and ethnic minorities predicts greater group threat and racial identification among Whites as well as greater intentions to vote for Trump in the general election. At the same time, however, neighborhood diversity afforded Whites with opportunities for intergroup contact, which predicted lower levels of threat, White identification, and Trump support. Further analyses suggest that a healthy local economy mutes threat effects in diverse contexts, allowing contact processes to come to the fore.
AB - Donald Trump’s ascent to the Presidency of the United States defied the expectations of many social scientists, pundits, and laypeople. To date, most efforts to understand Trump’s rise have focused on personality and demographic characteristics of White Americans. In contrast, the present work leverages a nationally representative sample of Whites to examine how contextual factors may have shaped support for Trump during the 2016 presidential primaries. Results reveal that neighborhood-level exposure to racial and ethnic minorities predicts greater group threat and racial identification among Whites as well as greater intentions to vote for Trump in the general election. At the same time, however, neighborhood diversity afforded Whites with opportunities for intergroup contact, which predicted lower levels of threat, White identification, and Trump support. Further analyses suggest that a healthy local economy mutes threat effects in diverse contexts, allowing contact processes to come to the fore.
KW - Donald Trump
KW - White identification
KW - diversity
KW - intergroup contact
KW - threat
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U2 - 10.1177/1948550618759326
DO - 10.1177/1948550618759326
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85042090554
SN - 1948-5506
VL - 9
SP - 275
EP - 284
JO - Social Psychological and Personality Science
JF - Social Psychological and Personality Science
IS - 3
ER -