A popular narrative that Republican voters’ support of Trump is motivated by racism isn’t true, two Columbia University sociologists who’ve studied the data wrote in an NBC News op-ed published on Aug. 6, 2020.
And this, they say, also helps explain why Trump’s recently-adopted Nixon-style “law and order” campaigning isn’t working. Instead, they argue, he’s driving away Republican and independent voters by “exacerbating racial tensions.”
If true, that’s good news for America, because it means most people abhor racism, want to smooth over race relations, and will support sensible police reforms. It also offers soothing reassurance the GOP hasn’t become a white supremacist party (some people probably will argue with this, though, because Trump made it look like one).
History has shown repeatedly that presidents can’t control events. There’s a huge element of luck. (See, e.g., Jimmy Carter.) Trump’s has been bad, although he also makes his bad luck. The year in which he has to run for reelection has been thrown into turmoil by two big events, the Covid-19 crisis and a wave of protests following a rash of high-profile police killings of black people, both of which he has mismanaged.
Predictably, his polls have plunged, and he’s now considered a severe underdog and may take the GOP’s Senate majority down with him.
Most of those declines are among white voters; what support he has from minorities is holding steady. His support has notably eroded among white evangelicals, suburban women, and voters over age 65.
The stock market continues to rise anyway, despite a prospect of higher corporate taxes and more business regulation under Biden, because investors are now focusing on the economy’s 2021 recovery and apparently don’t see Trump as necessary for better times. If anything, a better-managed Covid-19 response might hasten an economic improvement.
The sociologists also demolished two popular beliefs about the 2016 election:
- Trump didn’t mobilize passive voters. Turnout actually declined, dropping -5% from 2012 and -8% from 2008.
- Most people who voted Republican in 2016 were voting for party, not Trump, and would have preferred a different nominee.
They believe journalists, whose reporting helped fuel the narratives they’re debunking, misunderstood what was going on. But no one has misgauged the public more than Trump: “He keeps giving his voters what he thinks is red meat, and they continue to recoil in horror and abandon him for it.”
But with Covid-19 still out of control, and the economy facing fresh setbacks, there are other potential explanations for his sinking poll numbers.
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