Many of Trumps supports who voted for him and are sticking by him are not well off. While it is true that the further up the income ladder you go, the great support the support for Trump was i
n 2016, amazingly 41 % of those earning under $30K and 42% of those earning between $30 and $50K voted for him:
http://www.businessinsider.com/exit-polls-who-voted-for-trump-clinton-2016-11/#by-income-clinton-led-only-among-voters-with-a-2015-family-income-under-50000-a-group-that-included-36-of-the-voters-in-the-exit-polls-4
Yes, during the campaign, he made many promises to the working middle class which, of course went out the window in the form of the recent tax giveaway to the wealthy. Yet, I have seen little evidence that those people are abandoning him in large numbers
What is going on here?
Trump once said, ' I love the poorly educated" Yes, he does and for good reason. They have been easily duped into supporting him, and continuing to support him despite the fact that everything that Trump does and everything that he says indicates that it is the wealthy and privileged - who tend to be better educated that he really "loves". The connection between education and wealth /income is irrefutable
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-strauss/the-connection-between-ed_b_1066401.html
High and rising income inequality in the United States has recently been widely commented upon. What has not been as widely discussed is the role educational attainment has played in these disparities. Indeed, America is in some ways two different countries economically, segregated by educational achievement.
Or ….. are there other forces at work that intersect at Trump .
Let’s consider cognitive abilities*- which are highly indicative of educational level- and race
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/millennial-media/201304/do-racism-conservatism-and-low-iq-go-hand-in-hand
Lower cognitive abilities predict greater prejudice through right wing ideology
Hodson and Busseri (2012) found in a correlational study that lower intelligence in
childhood is predictive of greater racism in adulthood, with this effect being mediated (partially explained) through conservative ideology.
They also found poor abstract reasoning skills were related to homophobic attitudes which was mediated through authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact.
What this study and those before it suggests is not necessarily that all liberals are geniuses and all conservatives are ignorant. Rather, it makes conclusions based off of averages of groups. The idea is that for those who lack a
cognitive ability to grasp complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.
Bottom line: Lower intelligence equals low income Trump Supporters who have a marked tendency toward racism.
Those same people tend to own guns as well and Trump is not a big fan of gun control:
http://www.guns.com/2013/11/03/study-finds-correlation-racism-white-gun-owners-video/
There’s is a positive correlation between symbolic racism amongst white Americans and gun ownership, according to the results of a new international study published in PLoS One, the peer-reviewed scientific journal
The study, “
Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions,” conducted by researchers from Britain’s Manchester University and Australia’s Monash University, collected data from white U.S. voters and found that for each one point increase (on a scale from one to five) in symbolic racism there was a 50 percent increase in the odds that the respondent had a firearm in the home. This political reality did not spring up overnight.
The picture is almost complete: A high correlation between support for Trump, low cognitive ability, racism and now guns. But there is one more variable to consider, the role of religion. We know that a good deal of Trumps support comes from religious zealots, namely the Evangelicals. Why is that? It turns out that it ties in very neatly with the intelligence factor:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1088868313497266
A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from −.20 to −.25 (mean r = −.24). Three possible interpretations were discussed. First, intelligent people are less likely to conform and, thus, are more likely to resist religious dogma. Second, intelligent people tend to adopt an analytic (as opposed to intuitive) thinking style, which has been shown to undermine religious beliefs. Third, several functions of religiosity, including compensatory control, self-regulation, self-enhancement, and secure attachment, are also conferred by intelligence. Intelligent people may therefore have less need for religious beliefs and practices.
So there we have it the complete picture -Intelligence and cognitive ability, Race, Guns, and now Religion. My work is done here.
*
https://www.education.com/reference/article/iq-school-achievement/
