Populist Voting in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Voter Deficiencies or a Reaction to Disadvantages?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josephine Gellersen ◽  
Toon Kuppens ◽  
Katherine Stroebe
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Low Education ◽  
Lower Education ◽  
Better Than

What drives people to vote for a populist politician like Donald Trump? Many have explained “Trumpism” by referring to voters’ racism or low intellect, not least because low education predicted Trump voting. Few have considered whether reactions to the perceived disadvantages lower educated people experience may also affect vote choice. We investigated whether voting Trump may be explained by societal discontent, and why. Prior research on populism has not explored psychological mechanisms relating discontent to populism. We propose that the relation between discontent and populism is explained by the perception that populists care about voters’ struggles and the hope that they will address them . We examined correlates of voting Republican in the 2016, 2012, and 2008 presidential elections. Different from Republican voting in previous years, lower education predicted Trump voting via societal discontent, hope and care. Societal discontent was more strongly related to Trump voting compared to Republican voting in previous elections. This relation was mediated by hope and care. Importantly, racist attitudes did not predict voting Trump better than it did voting Republican in other years.

scholarly journals We Have It Totally Under Control? Exploring the Effects of Ideology and Knowing Someone Diagnosed With COVID-19 on Evaluations of President Trump’s Leadership on the Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110413
Author(s):  
Jason S. Byers ◽  
Laine P. Shay
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mixed Response ◽  
Using Data

President Donald Trump has made various decisions, many controversial, to manage the coronavirus pandemic. The reaction to President Trump’s leadership has been met with a mixed response from the public. This raises an important question; what factors influence a citizen’s evaluation of President Trump’s response to the pandemic? We develop a theory that links a citizen knowing someone diagnosed with COVID-19 with their evaluation of President Trump’s management of the pandemic, with the expectation that this relationship is conditioned by a citizen’s ideology. Using data from two surveys, we find that knowing someone diagnosed with COVID-19 diminishes the effect ideology has on a citizen’s evaluation. Additionally, we find that a citizen’s evaluation of President Trump’s leadership on COVID-19 is associated with their vote choice in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. Overall, this article contributes to our understanding of public opinion on COVID-19 and its political ramifications.

Experiencing vicarious rejection in the wake of the 2016 presidential election

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Heather M. Claypool ◽  
Alejandro Trujillo ◽  
Michael J. Bernstein ◽  
Steven Young
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Social Pain ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Before And After

Presidential elections in the United States pit two (or more) candidates against each other. Voters elect one and reject the others. This work tested the hypothesis that supporters of a losing presidential candidate may experience that defeat as a personal rejection. Before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, voters reported their current feelings of rejection and social pain, along with potential predictors of these feelings. Relative to Trump supporters, Clinton (losing candidate) supporters reported greater feelings of rejection, lower mood, and reduced fundamental needs post-election, while controlling for pre-election levels of these variables. Moreover, as self–candidate closeness and liberal political orientation increased, so too did feelings of rejection and social pain among Clinton supporters. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding human sensitivity to belonging threats and for the vicarious rejection literature.

Electoral Systems, Campaign Strategies, and Vote Choice in the Ukrainian Parliamentary and Presidential Elections of 1994

1998 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Birch
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Electoral Systems ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Campaign Strategies ◽  
Campaign Strategy ◽  
Parliamentary Elections ◽  
Incentive Structures

In the Ukrainian parliamentary elections of 1994 the Communist party gained the greatest number of seats, yet the presidential election of the same year was won by a liberal reformer, Leonid Kuchma. The question arises as to how within a period of only a few months the Ukrainian electorate could have brought about such divergent results. This article addresses the question with reference to the workings of the Ukrainian electoral systems. It argues firstly, that the systems governing the two types of election created distinctive incentive structures for campaign strategy which interacted with the structure of preferences of the electorate in different ways, and secondly, that majoritarian aggregative formulae had different effects in the two sets of elections.

scholarly journals Fundamentals-Based State-Level Forecasts of the 2020 US Presidential Election

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clemens Nollenberger ◽  
Gina-Maria Unger
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Electoral College ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Improve Accuracy ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
Us Presidential Election

Forecasts of US presidential elections have gained considerable attention in recent years. However, as became evident in 2016 with the victory of Donald Trump, most of them consider presidential elections only at the national level, neglecting that these are ultimately decided by the Electoral College. In order to improve accuracy, we believe that forecasts should instead address outcomes at the state-level to determine the eventual Electoral College winner. We develop a political economy model of the incumbent vote share across states based on different short- and long-term predictors, referring up to the end of the second quarter of election years. Testing it against election outcomes since 1980, our model correctly predicts the eventual election winner in 9 out of 10 cases – including 2016 –, with the 2000 election being the exception. For the 2020 election, it expects Trump to lose the Electoral College, as only 6.2 percent of simulated outcomes cross the required threshold of 270 Electoral Votes, with a mean prediction of 106 Electoral Votes.

scholarly journals Candidate Ideology and Vote Choice in the 2020 US Presidential Election

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Broockman ◽  
Joshua Kalla
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
National Survey ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
General Election ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Voter Information ◽  
Us Presidential Election

Canonical theories predict that moderate candidates perform better in general elections, but research emphasizing voters’ partisan loyalties challenges these predictions. The 2020 Democratic Presidential primary represented a unique opportunity to speak to these debates due to relatively high voter information about multiple moderate and extreme candidates running in the same election. We conducted a national survey (n = 40,153) that asked how respondents would choose in a general election between one of the Democratic candidates and Republican Donald Trump. Our evidence is consistent with canonical predictions: respondents are more likely to select Trump when he is against an extreme Democrat than against a moderate Democrat. Republican partisans contribute to moderate candidates’ advantage: ≈2% select Trump against a more extreme Democrat but would not against a more moderate Democrat. One of the extreme candidates, Bernie Sanders, ostensibly challenges canonical predictions by receiving as much support as moderate candidates – but only when assuming (1) young people vote at abnormally high rates and (2) young Democrats who claim they will only vote if Sanders is nominated are answering accurately. These patterns are robust to showing attacks against the candidates and in competitive states. Our findings lend further support to canonical predictions about moderate candidates’ electoral advantages.

The Mixed Effects of Candidate Visits on Campaign Donations in the 2020 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110415
Author(s):  
Boris Heersink ◽  
Nicholas G. Napolio ◽  
Jordan Carr Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Mixed Effects ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Weak Evidence

Recent scholarship on the effect of candidate visits in presidential elections has found that appearances by candidates appear to mobilize both supporters and opponents. Specifically, in the 2016 presidential election, donations to campaigns of the visiting presidential candidates increased, but—in the case of Republican nominee Donald Trump—so did donations to his opponent, Hillary Clinton. In this paper, we extend this research by assessing the effect of visits on campaign donations by presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2020 election. We find evidence that visits by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris had strong mobilizing and counter-mobilizing effects, increasing donations to both campaigns. We find weak evidence that visits by Joe Biden increased contributions to his campaign, but we do not find evidence that his visits had a counter-mobilizing effect, and we find no evidence that visits by Mike Pence affected donations in either direction.

Why Did Women Vote for Donald Trump?

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (03) ◽  
pp. 523-527 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Setzler ◽  
Alixandra B. Yanus
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Social Roles ◽  
White Men ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Important Predictor ◽  
Party Affiliation ◽  
Traditional Values ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Racial Resentment

ABSTRACTPopular accounts of the 2016 presidential election attribute Donald Trump’s victory to the mobilization of angry white men seeking to restore traditional values and social roles. Whereas a majority of Trump voters were male, more than 40% of women who went to the polls on Election Day also supported him. This analysis explores the motivations of these women, asking how partisanship, demographics, and beliefs motivated their vote choice. We found that, although party affiliation was an important predictor of both women’s and men’s vote choice, sexism and racial resentment had a greater influence on voters of both genders. Moreover, the influence of these biases was similar for women and men.

scholarly journals Did exposure to COVID-19 affect vote choice in the 2020 presidential election?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 205316802110415
Author(s):  
Marco Mendoza Aviña ◽  
Semra Sevi
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Conventional Wisdom ◽  
Vote Choice ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Force Majeure ◽  
Global Force ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Using Data

An important body of literature shows that citizens evaluate elected officials based on their past performance. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the conventional wisdom in both media and academic discourse was that Donald Trump would have been a two-term president absent an unprecedented, global force majeure. In this research note, we address a simple question: did exposure to COVID-19 impact vote choice in the 2020 presidential election? Using data from the Cooperative Election Study, we find that Trump’s vote share decreased because of COVID-19. However, there is no evidence suggesting that Joe Biden loses the election when no voter reports exposure to coronavirus cases and deaths. These negligible effects are found at both the national and state levels, and are robust to an exhaustive set of confounders across model specifications.

scholarly journals Support for populist candidates in the 2016 presidential elections predicted by declining social capital and an increase in suicides.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Lynch ◽  
Emily Lynch ◽  
Michael Briga ◽  
Samuli Helle ◽  
Simon Chapman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Mental And Physical Health

Social relationships have far-reaching effects on both the mental and physical health of individuals and, consequently, the larger communities in which they live. Deteriorating social networks reflect rising alienation and social isolation, and in extreme cases, can result in death. Using changes in mortality rates, measures of social capital, and key demographic and economic factors we show that per capita deaths from alcohol or suicide, as well as an overall decline in social capital, strongly predict support for populist candidates Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the United States 2016 presidential election and primaries. These results suggest that healthy social relationships and networks underpin trust in politicians and government, and that their deterioration may result in popular outrage against ‘elites’.

scholarly journals The COVID-19 Pandemic and US Presidential Elections

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abel Brodeur ◽  
Leonardo Baccini ◽  
Stephen Weymouth
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Counterfactual Analysis ◽  
County Level ◽  
Meat Processing ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Socioeconomic Variables ◽  
Retrospective Voting ◽  
Identification Strategy

What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 U.S. presidential election? Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in county-level voting for Donald Trump between 2016 and 2020. To account for potential confounders, we include a large number of COVID-19-related controls as well as demographic and socioeconomic variables. Moreover, we instrument the numbers of cases and deaths with the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories to sharpen our identification strategy. We find that COVID-19 cases negatively affected Trump's vote share. The estimated effect appears strongest in urban counties, in swing states, and in states that Trump won in 2016. A simple counterfactual analysis suggests that Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been 5 percent lower. Our paper contributes to the literature of retrospective voting and demonstrates that voters hold leaders accountable for their (mis-)handling of negative shocks.

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