Rise of the Trumpenvolk

Author(s):  
J. Eric Oliver ◽  
Wendy M. Rahn

Despite the wide application of the label “populist” in the 2016 election cycle, there has been little systematic evidence that this election is distinctive in its populist appeal. Looking at historical trends, contemporary rhetoric, and public opinion data, we find that populism is an appropriate descriptor of the 2016 election and that Donald Trump stands out in particular as the populist par excellence. Historical data reveal a large “representation gap” that typically accompanies populist candidates. Content analysis of campaign speeches shows that Trump, more so than any other candidate, employs a rhetoric that is distinctive in its simplicity, anti-elitism, and collectivism. Original survey data show that Trump’s supporters are distinctive in their unique combination of anti-expertise, anti-elitism, and pronationalist sentiments. Together, these findings highlight the distinctiveness of populism as a mechanism of political mobilization and the unusual character of the 2016 race.

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-159
Author(s):  
Nicole Smith Dahmen

Applying person perception theory, this research uses quantitative content analysis to analyze 1,183 newspaper photographs of the two leading candidates from the 2016 presidential election. Study findings show that there were statistically significant differences in the photographic presentations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 election, with Clinton pictured more favorably than Trump.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirby Goidel ◽  
Keith Gaddie ◽  
Spencer Goidel

ABSTRACTUsing content analysis and original survey data, we investigated the news coverage and consequences of Donald Trump’s “rigged-election” claims during the 2016 presidential election. We added to previous literature by showing that the effects of such claims were highly contingent on individual partisan affiliation. Republicans and Independents who believed that the elections were rigged via voter fraud or media bias were more likely to report that they intended to vote or had already voted. Democrats and Independents who believed that Hillary Clinton would benefit from voter fraud or media bias were more likely to vote for Donald Trump.


Societies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niambi Carter ◽  
Tyson King-Meadows

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, much ado has been made about how racial anxiety fueled White vote choice for Donald Trump. Far less empirical attention has been paid to whether the 2016 election cycle triggered black anxieties and if those anxieties led blacks to reevaluate their communities’ standing relative to Latinos and immigrants. Employing data from the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey, we examine the extent to which race consciousness both coexists with black perceptions of Latinos and shapes black support for anti-immigrant legislation. Our results address how the conflation of Latino with undocumented immigrant may have activated a perceptional and policy backlash amongst black voters.


2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaqin Wang ◽  
Haitao Liu

During the 2016 election, Donald Trump was characterized by his simple, pompous and repetitive language. However, studies have shown that sometimes he does not speak the way he used to. Critical discourse analysis suggests that political discourse analysis should include both the characterization of the text and the systematic description of the context. Thus, this study intends to evaluate stylistic features of Donald Trump’s political discourse based on the evolution over time as well as the genre variation by employing a comparison between Obama, Clinton and Trump. Results show that in debates, Trump uses less diverse vocabulary and simpler sentences. In campaign speeches, nonetheless, along with the change of circumstances, he sometimes employed a richer vocabulary and well-edited sentences. In addition, Trump’s speeches contain relatively more central themes in his campaign speeches. His concentration on political themes may meet key interests of a large proportion of electorates.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-187
Author(s):  
D. Alex Hughes ◽  
Micah Gell-Redman ◽  
Charles Crabtree ◽  
Natarajan Krishnaswami ◽  
Diana Rodenberger ◽  
...  

AbstractResults of an audit study conducted during the 2016 election cycle demonstrate that bias toward Latinos observed during the 2012 election has persisted. In addition to replicating previous results, we show that Arab/Muslim Americans face an even greater barrier to communicating with local election officials, but we find no evidence of bias toward blacks. An innovation of our design allows us to measure whether e-mails were opened by recipients, which we argue provides a direct test of implicit discrimination. We find evidence of implicit bias toward Arab/Muslim senders only.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316802098744
Author(s):  
Kirby Goidel ◽  
Nicholas T. Davis ◽  
Spencer Goidel

In this paper, we utilize a module from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to explore how individual perceptions of media bias changed over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign. While previous literature has documented the role of partisan affiliation in perceptions of bias, we know considerably less about how these perceptions change during a presidential election. Consistent with existing theories of attitude change, perceptions of bias polarize with strong Democrats moving toward believing the media were biased against Hillary Clinton (and in favor of Donald Trump) and independent-leaning Republicans moving toward believing the media were biased against Donald Trump. At the end of the 2016 election, more individuals believed the media were biased against their side. These effects were moderated by how much attention individuals paid to the campaign.


The Forum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227
Author(s):  
Vladimir E. Medenica ◽  
Matthew Fowler

Abstract While much attention has been paid to understanding the drivers of support for Donald Trump, less focus has been placed on understanding the factors that led individuals to turn out and vote or stay home. This paper compares non-voters and voters in the 2016 election and explores how self-reported candidate preference prior to the election predicted turnout across three different state contexts: (1) all states, (2) closely contested states won by Trump, and (3) closely contested states won by Clinton. We find that preference for both candidates predicted turnout in the aggregate (all states) and in closely contested states won by Clinton, but only preference for Trump predicted turnout in the closely contested states won by Trump. Moreover, we find that political interest is negatively associated with preference for Clinton when examining candidate preferences among non-voters. Our analysis suggests that non-voters in the 2016 election held meaningful candidate preferences that impacted voter turnout but that state context played an important role in this relationship. This study sheds light on an understudied component of the 2016 election, the attitudes and behavior of non-voters, as well as points to the importance of incorporating contextual variation in future work on electoral behavior and voter turnout.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-70
Author(s):  
Peter Rooney

After the initial flurry of interest, government reports rarely receive the attention they deserve. Often based on detailed research, the information they contain is largely inaccessible, even when published in digital form, due to the lack of indexes. After briefly examining the extent to which such reports are indexed (and why they are usually not indexed), the background to and publication of the much-anticipated Mueller report on Russian interference in the US 2016 election is outlined. The inadequacies of several independently published editions are considered and the case is made for indexing the report, despite not having been commissioned to undertake this task. The indexing process is outlined, especially dealing with the metatopic, Donald Trump, and the redacted sections, and possible future developments are suggested. The online index is available at https://www.muellerreportindex.net.


Author(s):  
Edward B. Foley

The 2016 election is, at a minimum, problematic from a Jeffersonian perspective, like 1992, and may have been another systemic malfunction, like 2000. Donald Trump received 107 of his 304 electoral votes in states where he won less than 50 percent of the popular vote—failing to achieve the kind of compound majority-of-majorities consistent with the Jeffersonian vision of how the system should work. 2016 illustrates the system’s inability to handle third-party and independent candidates, like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein, an inability caused by the addition of plurality winner-take-all in the Jacksonian era. It is unknowable whether Trump or Hillary Clinton would have won runoffs in the three pivotal Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. But if Clinton had won runoffs there (and in the states where she was only a plurality winner), then she would have won the Electoral College with an appropriately Jeffersonian majority-of-majorities.


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