Who would have thought it? A new study has turned up some startling findings that only those who were otherwise paying attention the past 49 years could have predicted. It turns out most of those Trump voters were not suffering from economic angst. They’re just bigots. Or, how can I say it? Oh! Deplorables!
On Monday researchers released the most comprehensive survey data yet aimed at understanding what actually went down in Election 2016. The group includes academics but also right-leaning outlets such The Heritage Foundation and left-leaners like the Center for American Progress.
What’s different about the Voter Study Group is that it tracks the attitudes and votes of the same 8,000 adults since before the 2012 election, and then throughout the 2016 election. So it’s like the nation’s largest, longest political focus group.
The story we’ve told ourselves — that working-class whites flocked to Trump due to job worries or free trade or economic populism — is basically wrong, the research papers released this week suggest.
They did flock to Trump. But the reason they did so in enough numbers for Trump to win wasn’t anxiety about the economy. It was anxiety about Mexicans, Muslims and blacks.
via Hullabaloo quoting the Seattle Times
No one could ever have predicted those results (we are told), except for the guy featured in the article who did. Whyever would it be the case that a party that has more or less openly appealed to racists for the past 49 years would win an election because it ramped up the racism? The fact is that this is an ugly truth that our media has resisted facing for the past 49 years and that it will likely continue to resist facing. They are far more comfortable with the economic angst meme, and they’ll keep pushing it regardless of the evidence.
Postscript: I realize that the word “redundancy” may not convey precisely what I have in mind here, that the study merely confirms what anyone with a brain already knew. But it’s close enough, and I couldn’t resist the Firesign Theater reference.
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