![]() The most straightforward research in this area looks at how views on race influenced support for Trump. A lot of studies show racial attitudes are a big deal in US politics Time and time again, researchers have found that racial attitudes play a major role in support for Trump and US politics more broadly. Still, the study is not the first of its kind to produce these kinds of findings. The researchers said that they will need further study to clarify this, along with questions of how racial cues affect views on other policy issues among Trump supporters. It’s possible that it’s not that Trump supporters are made less likely to support housing assistance when exposed to the image of a black man, but that they are made more likely to support housing assistance when exposed to the image of a white man. One caveat to the study: It’s not clear if the results are reflective of higher support due to a white racial cue or lower support due to the black racial cue. “That is, support for Donald Trump appears to serve as a basis for polarized responses to racial cues in its own regard.” “Support for Donald Trump - not partisanship or ideology - uniquely captures distinct reactions to our experimental manipulation of race,” they conclude. The researchers, which generally controlled for a host of socioeconomic and demographic variables, also tested to see whether measures of polarization or ideology changed the findings. The researchers concluded, “These findings indicate that responses to the racial cue varied as a function of feelings about Donald Trump - but not feelings about Hillary Clinton - during the 2016 presidential election.” In contrast, favorability toward Clinton did not significantly change respondents’ views on any of these issues when primed with racial cues. (Luttig told me that this is likely a result of racial progressives viewing black people as disadvantaged in America due to structural racism, therefore requiring more aid.) In fact, there was an opposite effect among respondents who reported the least favorability toward Trump: They were less likely to oppose housing assistance, get angry at the program, or blame the recipients of such programs for their situation when exposed to the black racial cue compared to the white racial cue. After they were exposed to the black racial cue, they were not only less supportive of housing assistance programs, but they also expressed higher levels of anger that some people receive government assistance and were more likely to say that individuals who receive assistance are to blame for their situation.Īll of these findings were heightened with greater favorability for Trump. They found that the image of a black man greatly impacted responses among Trump supporters. (The researchers only used data from white respondents because support among minority groups for Trump was too low to be statistically reliable.) But there was a twist: Respondents were randomly assigned “a subtle image of either a black or a white man.” What the study foundįor the study, researchers deployed a survey experiment, sampling more than 700 white people on their support housing assistance programs. That suggests that Trump has a powerful incentive to get people to keep thinking about race: If his most ardent supporters just need a slight racial cue to come around to his conservative policy views, then Trump simply has to bring up race to get his supporters fired up for him. This latest study is notable, though, because all it uses is an image of a black man to produce its results. And other research has shown that priming people to think about race can make them more conservative on a host of issues. Previous studies have found that racial resentment was a much stronger indicator of support for Trump than views about the economy. The study is just the latest to show that racial attitudes are a powerful predictor for support for Trump - and the newest to suggest that such attitudes play a major role in Americans’ views toward public policy. Favorability toward Trump was a key measure for how strong this effect was. ![]() They found that when exposed to the image of a black man, white Trump supporters were less likely to back a federal mortgage aid program. In a randomized survey experiment, the trio of researchers exposed respondents to images of either a white or black man. That’s the takeaway from a new study by researchers Matthew Luttig, Christopher Federico, and Howard Lavine, set to be published in Research & Politics. All it takes to reduce support for housing assistance among Donald Trump supporters is exposure to an image of a black man.
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