The Cognitive and Emotional Sources of Trump Support: The Case of Low-Information Voters

Abstract

This article provides empirical evidence for the hypothesis that Donald Trump distinctively attracted unprecedented levels of support from “low-information voters.” The findings suggest that his campaign exploited a void of facts and reasoning among these voters that made them more vulnerable to relying on emotions about Mexican immigrants, Muslim refugees, and African-American citizens, as well as their disdain for the first African-American President Barack Obama. As a result, these Trump supporters were less in a position to want or be able to question Trump’s seemingly unprecedented campaign of misstatements, untruths, and lies. The article discusses the implications for US politics in the Trump era and beyond.

Notes

¹ Emily Flitter, “Trump is a ____: White House Hopeful Plays Fill-in-the-Blanks with Voters,” Reuters, (February 16, 2016), available online at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-language-idUSKCN0VQ035.

² Ian Haney, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 3–4.

³ Xaxnar, “This Is Way Beyond Dog-Whistling. This Is Trump-eting. Heckuva Job GOP,” Daily Kos, (August 9, 2016), available online at: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/8/9/1558523/-This-Is-Way-Beyond-Dog-Whistling-This-Is-Trump-eting-Heckuva-Job-GOP.

⁴ Angie Drobnic Holan, “In Context: Hillary Clinton and the ‘Basket of Deplorables’,” Politifact, (September 11, 2016), available online at: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/sep/11/context-hillary-clinton-basket-deplorables/.

⁵ For instance, see Philip Klinkner, “The Easiest Way to Guess if Someone Supports Trump? Ask if Obama is a Muslim,” Vox, (June 2, 2016), available online at: https://www.vox.com/2016/6/2/11833548/donald-trump-support-race-religion-economy.

⁶ Holan, “In Context: Hillary Clinton and the ‘Basket of Deplorables’”.

⁷ Matthew McWilliams, “The Best Predictor of Trump Support Isn’t Income, Education, or Age. It’s Authoritarianism,” Vox, (February 23, 2016), available online at: https://www.vox.com/2016/2/23/11099644/trump-support-authoritarianism; and Amanda Taub, “The Rise of American Authoritarianism: A Niche Group of Political Scientists May have Uncovered What’s Driving Donald Trump’s Ascent. What They Found Has Implications That Go Well Beyond 2016,” Vox, (March 1, 2016), available online at: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/1/11127424/trump-authoritarianism.

⁸ Carly Wayne, Nicholas Valentino and Marzia Oceno, “How Sexism Drives Support for Donald Trump,” The Monkey Cage, (October 23, 2016), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/23/how-sexism-drives-support-for-donald-trump/.

⁹ John Sides, “Race, Religion, and Immigration in 2016:How the Debate over American Identity Shaped the Election and What It Means for a Trump Presidency,” Democratic Fund: Voter Study Group, (June, 2017), available online at: https://www.voterstudygroup.org/reports/2016-elections/race-religion-immigration-2016.

¹⁰ Thomas Edsall, “The Great Democratic Inversion,” New York Times, (October 27, 2016), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/27/opinion/campaign-stops/the-great-democratic-inversion.html.

¹¹ See Dana Millbank, “There’s No Such Thing as a Trump Democrat,” Washington Post, (August 5, 2017), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-trump-democrat/2017/08/04/0d5d06bc-7920-11e7-8f39-eeb7d3a2d304_story.html?utm_term=.800b79e67895.

¹² Zack Beauchamp, “White Riot: How Racism and Immigration Gave Us Trump, Brexit, and a Whole New Kind of Politics,” Vox, (September 19, 2016), available online at: https://www.vox.com/2016/9/19/12933072/far-right-white-riot-trump-brexit.

¹³ Nate Silver, “The Mythology of Trump’s Working-Class Support,” FiveThirtyEight, (May 3, 2016), available online at: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps-working-class-support/.

¹⁴ Beauchamp, “White Riot;” and Klinkner, “The Easiest Way to Guess if Someone Supports Trump?”.

¹⁵ Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, Working Paper #RWP16–026, (August, 2016), available online at: https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=1401.

¹⁶ Ibid., 30.

¹⁷ Edsall, “The Great Democratic Inversion”.

¹⁸ Samuel Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 7.

¹⁹ Rush Limbaugh, “Colbert King’s Low-Information Definition of the Term “Low-Information Voter”,” The Rush Limbaugh Show, (March 25, 2013), available online at: https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2013/03/25/colbert_king_s_low_information_definition_of_tthe_term_low_information_voter.

²⁰ American National Election Studies Pilot Study (ANES). (2016), available online at: https://www.electionstudies.org/studypages/anes_pilot_2016/anes_pilot_2016.htm.

²¹ Kevin Arceneaux and Ryan J. Vander Wielen, “The Effects of Need for Cognition and Need for Affect on Partisan Evaluations,” Political Psychology 34:1 (2013): pp. 23–42; and John T. Cacioppo and Richard E. Petty, “The Need for Cognition,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42:1 (1982): pp. 116–31.

²² Cacioppo and Petty, “The Need for Cognition,” p. 118.

²³ “High NFC” respondents were coded as those who scored 9–10 on the NFC scale (25% of all respondents). “Medium NFC” respondents were as those who scored 7–8 on the NFC scale (39% of all respondents) and “low NFC” respondents were coded as those who scored below 7 (34% of all respondents).

²⁴ See analyses we have posted at: https://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~schram/lowinformationfinal.xls.

²⁵ The additional analyses are available at: https://urban.hunter.cuny.edu/~schram/lowinformationfinal.xlsx.

²⁶ William Van Til, “The American Democratic Experiment,” Educational Leadership, (October, 1959): 6–10, available online at: https://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_195910_vantil.pdf.

²⁷ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000) vol. II, p. 243.

²⁸ William James, “On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” in Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company, 1899), Chapter 2, available online at: https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/jcertain.html.

²⁹ Richard Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Harper’s Magazine, (November, 1964), available online at: https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/.

³⁰ Ibid., 6.

³¹ Chris Sommerfeldt, “Donald Trump Supporter in Iowa Arrested for Voter Fraud,” Daily News, (October 29, 2016), available online at: https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/donald-trump-supporter-iowa-arrested-voter-fraud-article-1.2850101.

³² Josh Marshall, “Trump Rolls Out Anti-Semitic Closing Ad,” Talking Points Memo, (November 5, 2016), available online at: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-rolls-out-anti-semitic-closing-ad. The advertisement can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8#action=share

³³ Aaron Blake, ““The Poorly Educated” People of America Cut an Ad for Donald Trump,” The Washington Post, (February 25, 2016), available online at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/25/the-poorly-educated-people-of-america-cut-an-ad-for-donald-trump-video/.

³⁴ Paul de Haye, “Microtargeting Low-Information Voters,” Medium, (Deccember 30, 2016), available online at: https://medium.com/personaldata-io/microtargeting-of-low-information-voters-6eb2520cd473.

³⁵ Adam Henshall, “What Marketers Can Learn from Trump about the Science of Persuasion,” process.st, (March 31, 2017), available online at: https://www.process.st/science-of-persuasion/.

³⁶ Karoli Kuns, “Justice David Souter On Civic Ignorance: “That Is How Democracy Dies”,” Crooks and Liars, (October 22, 2016), available online at: https://crooksandliars.com/2016/10/justice-david-souter-civic-ignorance-how.

³⁷ John Judis, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics (Columbia Global Reports, 2016), Conclusion; and Jan-Werner Müller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 2016), Conclusion.