September 2016
It ’ s Nativism :
Explaining the Drivers of Trump ’ s Popular Support
SO WHAT DO WE FIND ?
Logistic Regression : Drivers of Support for Trump
Model 1 Trump among Reps * Model 2 Republicans ** Model 3 Trump ***
White |
0 % |
4 % |
11 % |
Degree ( college +) |
1 % |
0 % |
0 % |
Hispanic |
1 % |
1 % |
0 % |
Government Intervention |
1 % |
5 % |
0 % |
Male |
1 % |
0 % |
10 % |
No Abortion |
1 % |
24 % |
0 % |
Fear of Others |
3 % |
1 % |
0 % |
American Dream |
8 % |
0 % |
3 % |
45 + |
8 % |
0 % |
1 % |
Worse off than Parents |
9 % |
0 % |
6 % |
System is Broken |
12 % |
18 % |
1 % |
Authoritarianism |
13 % |
4 % |
6 % |
Nativism |
56 % |
46 % |
67 % |
* Primary Vote for Trump among Republicans ** Identify as Republican *** Primary Vote for Trump among all Americans |
First , independent of model specification , nativism is the most important factor in defining support for Trump ( as well as for identifying with the Republican Party ). Indeed , when looking at primary support for Trump among Republicans , Nativism explains 56 % of the impact , with other factors accounting for very little in a relative sense . Authoritarianism only accounts for 13 % in model 1 .
Second , when we broaden our universe and look at support for Trump among all Americans , we find that , indeed , nativism is very important ( 67 %); all other factors are tertiary at best . We find a similar trend for identifying ( or not ) with being Republican : nativism ( 46 %); anti-abortion ( 24 %); and system is broken ( 18 %). Again , in both models 2 and 3 , we find that authoritarianism only has a marginal impact : 4 % in model 2 and 6 % in model 3 .
Third , demographics , as a whole , explain very little of the overall impact . This varies from around 24 % in model 2 to about only 5 % in model 1 . In the case of support for Trump among all Americans , being male and white explain about 20 % of the impact .
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