Political Polarization and the Churches

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-144
Author(s):  
Charles A. McDaniel ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Base Of Support ◽  
State Separation

Critics decry what they see as an odd association in the 2016 election of Donald Trump and evangelical Christians who emerged as his most reliable base of support. Yet President Trump’s popularity among evangelicals is not as remarkable as it may seem given the often-paradoxical relationship between religion and politics in the United States. Alexis de Tocqueville’s warnings about the vulnerability of American Protestantism’s prophetic voice to individualism and materialism may help to explain Trump’s status as a “religious” president. Polls suggest that security concerns have eclipsed moral issues in importance for many American Christian voters. Such a transformation, Tocqueville believed, would undermine the nation’s moral foundations. This concern led Tocqueville to admire the American principle of church-state separation and voice support for something akin to the “Protestant Principle,” which promotes maintenance of prophetic distance between religion and politics to morally ground democracy.

Who Wants to Make America Great Again? Understanding Evangelical Support for Donald Trump

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michele F. Margolis
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Conservative Politics ◽  
United States Today ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractWhite evangelicals overwhelmingly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 election, producing extensive debate as to who evangelicals are, what it means to be an evangelical in the United States today, and whether the electoral results are surprising or not. This paper offers empirical clarity to this protracted discussion by asking and answering a series of questions related to Trump's victory in general and his support from white evangelicals in particular. In doing so, the analyses show that the term “evangelical” has not become a synonym for conservative politics and that white evangelical support for Trump would be higher if public opinion scholars used a belief-centered definition of evangelicalism rather than relying on the more common classification strategies based on self-identification or religious denomination. These findings go against claims that nominal evangelicals, those who call themselves evangelicals but are not religious, make up the core of Trump's support base. Moreover, strong electoral support among devout evangelicals is not unique to the 2016 election but rather is part of a broader trend of evangelical electoral behavior, even when faced with non-traditional Republican candidates. Finally, the paper explores why white evangelicals might support a candidate like Trump. The paper presents evidence that negative partisanship helps explain why devout evangelicals—despite Trump's background and behaviors being cause for concern—coalesced around his presidential bid. Together, the findings from this paper help make sense of both the 2016 presidential election and evangelical public opinion, both separately and together.

scholarly journals Witchcraft as Political Resistance

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 43-68
Author(s):  
Sabina Magliocco
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Political Response ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Resistance Movement ◽  
Cultural Features ◽  
Trump Administration

The use of political magic is one of the remarkable and unexpected cultural features to emerge from the 2016 presidential election in the United States. Using a combination of digital and face-to-face ethnography, this article explores the emergence of a movement dedicated to resisting the Donald Trump administration through witchcraft and magic. Applying the lens of Italian ethnologist Ernesto de Martino, it argues that the 2016 election created a “crisis of presence” for many left-leaning Americans who experienced it as a failure of agency. Their turn to magic was in response to feelings of anxiety and helplessness. Drawing from the approach of anthropologist James C. Scott, it analyzes magic as an art of resistance, an aesthetic, performative, as well as political response. Finally, it examines the fissures within the magical resistance as clashes in ethics, aesthetics, and beliefs associated with magic came to the fore, effectively splintering the magic resistance movement and rendering it less effective.

Almost “Nothing New Under the Sun”: American politics and the election of Donald Trump

Leadership ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
George R Goethals
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Popular Vote ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Electoral Vote ◽  
The Social ◽  
Large Factor ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Implicit And Explicit

Donald Trump’s surprising 2016 election as President of the United States was unusual both in the set of states he won and in clearly winning the electoral vote while decisively losing the popular vote. His victory is somewhat less surprising given recent Republican domination of American politics, a context which provides Trump both leadership opportunities and constraints. A large factor in Trump’s rise is the leader–follower dynamics of crowds, seen throughout time, which enabled him to win an uncritical and devoted following. An important part of that dynamic was Trump’s validation of the social identity of the white working class in the United States, especially in comparison to Hillary Clinton’s both implicit and explicit denigration of that base of Trump support. Trump’s identity story for his base is unusually exclusive, highlighted by ingroup vs. outgroup hostility. His appeal is compared to inclusive identity stories successfully related by other US presidents, which suggest how future leaders might effectively touch “the better angels of our nature.”

scholarly journals Trump and Muslims: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Islamophobic Rhetoric in Donald Trump’s Selected Tweets

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824402110041
Author(s):  
Mohsin Hassan Khan ◽  
Farwa Qazalbash ◽  
Hamedi Mohd Adnan ◽  
Lalu Nurul Yaqin ◽  
Rashid Ali Khuhro
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Sphere

The emergence of Donald Trump as an anti-Muslim-Islam presidential candidate and victory over Hillary Clinton is an issue of debate and division in the United States’ political sphere. Many commentators and political pundits criticize Trump for his disparaging rhetoric on Twitter and present him as an example of how Twitter can be an effective tool for the construction and extension of political polarization. The current study analyzes the selected tweets by Donald Trump posted on Twitter to unmask how he uses language to construct Islamophobic discourse structures and attempts to form his ideological structures along with. The researchers hypothesize that Islamophobia is a marked feature of Trump’s political career realized by specific rhetorical and discursive devices. Therefore, the study purposively takes 40 most controversial tweets of Donald Trump against Islam and Muslims and carried out a critical discourse analysis with the help of macro-strategies of the discourse given by Wodak and Meyer and van Dijk’s referential strategies of political discourse. The findings reveal that Trump uses language rhetorically to exclude people of different ethnic identities, especially Muslims, through demagogic language to create a difference of “us” vs. “them” and making in this way “America Great Again”.

No sympathy for the bully

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Scott Atkins ◽  
Ashley Mote ◽  
Kimberly Gonzalez ◽  
Krystal Alexander
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
State University ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Metaphor Analysis ◽  
Portland State University ◽  
Immigration Debate

Abstract This paper is part of a project begun at Portland State University that examines political polarization through metaphor analysis (Ritchie, Feliciano, & Sparks, 2018). The current study looks at two sources of discourse on immigration in the United States, each exemplifying opposing sides of the larger immigration debate. The first source is a speech by then presidential candidate Donald Trump at a campaign rally, and the second is Senator Kamala Harris’s maiden speech delivered on the Senate floor. The goal of this analysis is to investigate the way metaphors may be used in political discourse to demonstrate or create polarization between opposing sides of the debate.

Cross-Racial Mobilization in Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 160-174
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood
Keyword(s):  
Republican Party ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
The Right ◽  
The U.S

The final chapter summarizes the research developed and presented in chapters 1 through 5. The chapter discusses the rise of Donald Trump, his takeover of the Republican Party, and what this means for continued political polarization along racial lines. Despite the immigration policies of the Reagan and Bush Administrations, and general warmth to Latinos under Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the contemporary GOP seems set to generate policies that disproportionately target and lock up immigrants. The pull to the right on immigration policy is likely generating major long-term political and coalitional consequences. While this policy may be smart for the GOP in the short term (i.e., Trump won the 2016 election by employing hard-right anti-Mexican racial appeals), in the long term, as the U.S. rapidly diversifies, this approach will lead to an extremely untenable for the GOP and Democrats work to strengthen their position with minority voters in general and Latinos in particular.

Free Media and Twitter in the 2016 Presidential Election

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter L. Francia
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Tracking Data ◽  
Primary Reason ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Free Media

This article examines the surprising outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump defy nearly all of the conventional wisdom to become the 45th president of the United States. Political commentators and experts offered several immediate postelection explanations for Trump’s victory, one of which focused on how Trump was able to generate considerable unpaid or free media for himself, often directly through Twitter. This article explains the theory and rationale underlying the free media thesis (FMT) and then examines whether there is any preliminary empirical support for it. Using media tracking data and public opinion surveys, the results reveal that Trump indeed dominated the unpaid media market. Although the findings in this article cannot make causal claims about whether Trump’s advantages in free media are the primary reason for his upset victory, the results, nonetheless, suggest that some of the basic conditions necessary for the FMT were present in the 2016 election and that the FMT offers a plausible avenue for further analysis and future research.

scholarly journals Why Would Hispanics Vote for Trump? Explaining the Controversy of the 2016 Election

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Quinn Galbraith ◽  
Adam Callister
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Illegal Immigrants ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Hispanic Voters

Donald Trump was particularly vocal in shaping his presidential campaign around policies perceived as being anti-immigration. Consequently, many were shocked that Hispanic support for the Republican Party did not drop in the 2016 presidential election. In fact, our survey, which consisted of 1,080 people of Hispanic descent living in the United States, found that 74% of Hispanic Trump voters were in favor of generally deporting all illegal immigrants. Our results suggest that the population of Hispanics who voted in the 2016 presidential election was, on average, more conservative than the overall population of Hispanics living in the United States. Furthermore, our analysis suggests that issues such as the economy, health care, and education were more important to Hispanic voters than were issues related to immigration.

American Nightmare: How Neoliberalism Broke US Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hopkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Income Inequality ◽  
Extreme Case ◽  
The United States ◽  
Brute Force ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Long Run ◽  
2016 Election

This chapter argues that the 2016 election in the United States is best understood in terms of the long-run consequences of the neoliberal turn in the 1970s, and the way in which the financial crisis of the late 2000s was addressed. In 2016 the electorate of the United States delivered probably the biggest political shock in their modern history, electing the unlikely figure of Donald Trump to the presidency. Trump’s rise is deeply intertwined with the financial crisis and with the longer-term political shifts resulting from the market liberal turn of the 1980s. If Trump is the most spectacular example of anti-system politics, the United States is the most extreme case of the subjection of society to the brute force of the market. The destabilization of US politics shows how an obsessive drive for marketization, high levels of income inequality, an unstable financial system, and constraints on political choice provoke political revolt.

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