Taking Trump Voters’ Concerns Seriously Means Listening to What They’re Actually Saying
In The News Piece in Vox
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Oct. 15, 2016
Lee Drutman's piece on race and identity as a central dividing line in politics was cited in Vox:
In April, when the Pew Research Center asked Republicans for their views on Trump, and their opinions on the US becoming majority nonwhite by 2050, they found that Republicans who thought a majority nonwhite population would be "bad for the country" had overwhelmingly favorable views of Trump. Those who thought it was a positive or neutral development were evenly split on Trump.
By contrast, John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 got less primary support from voters with high racial resentment and anti-immigration scores than they did from less racially resentful or anti-immigrant voters. Those two primaries were lost by the white nationalist wing of the Republican Party at a time when that wing was gaining in number. As New America's Lee Drutman has found, Republicans’ views of blacks and Latinos plummeted during the Obama years.
The white nationalist wing was gaining in strength, and due for a win. It got one in Trump.