Academics think they've figured out why people voted for Trump and Brexit [View all]

[Soph0571]

After Trump's victory, pundits debated the influence of factors such as economic hardship and racial anxiety. With the absence of hard evidence, Professor Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania questioned 1,200 voters.

She observed:

Candidate preferences in 2016 reflected increasing anxiety among high-status groups rather than complaints about past treatment among low-status groups.

Both growing domestic racial diversity and globalization contributed to a sense that white Americans are under siege by these engines of change.

Mutz concluded that the people most likely to vote for Trump, after either voting Democrat previously or not voting at all, were those who felt their place in the world was being threatened.

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Brexit voters were found to have greater nationalism, conservatism, and support for authoritarian policies. The paper concludes that these reasons accounted for almost half (47.6 percent) of the variability in support for Brexit.

Zmigrod added:

In today’s politically-polarised climate, it is important to understand more about the psychological processes behind nationalistic and social attitudes if we are to build bridges between communities.

https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-brexit-vote-study-science-race-nationalism-8326876

Polite way of saying they are the very least xenophobic?