After the 2016 elections, many journalists, pundits, and academics asserted that support for Donald Trump reflected not economic concerns but pathologies like racism and misogyny. Many of the empirical analyses that purportedly justified such conclusions are subject to methodological questions that received less critical examination than they should have. Given the anticipated close election involving Trump and a woman of color in 2024, these problems should be recognized so analysts do not repeat them.
Takeaways
- After the 2016 elections, commentators debated whether voter support for Donald Trump reflected economic distress or various cultural resentments such as racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, with many dismissing the former to emphasize the latter.
- Many analyses that examined this question raise methodological objections that diminish the validity their results.
- Consequently, facing another Trump election in 2024, researchers should prepare to conduct stronger analyses than were conducted after the 2016 election.
Economic Anxiety or Cultural Backlash: Which Is Key to Trump’s Support? by Hoover Institution
