There are two reasons for skepticism regarding the assumption that personal economic hardship drove Trump support. First and foremost, over many decades of scholarship, evidence of voters politicizing personal economic hardship has been exceedingly rare (8). Although aggregate-level evidence has been suggestive of a public that blames incumbents for general economic downturns and rewards incumbents for economic gains, these relationships seldom hold up at the level of individual economic hardship. For example, those who recently lost jobs are unlikely to blame government policy for their personal circumstances (9), and those who have personally suffered financially under a given administration are no more likely to vote against the incumbent (10, 11). Across a wide range of issues, scholars have found that citizens seldom form policy or candidate preferences on the basis of their family’s personal economic self-interest. This is not to suggest that citizens never do so, but the conditions under which this occurs are very rare (12, 13). Even membership in groups with economic interests that have been helped or hurt seldom changes political preferences (14).
A second reason for skepticism regarding the left behind thesis involves timing. Trump’s victory took place in the context of an economic recovery. Throughout the year preceding the election, unemployment was falling, and economic indicators were on the upswing. Likewise, the dramatic drop in US manufacturing jobs took place during the first decade of the 21st century; since 2010, manufacturing employment in the United States has actually increased somewhat (15). Research on economic voting suggests that recent economic events are most influential for voting (16, 17). Given all of the positive economic indicators, why would 2016 be ripe for an economic backlash? The most common explanation is that it is precisely those who did not recover from the Great Recession of 2008 who elected Trump, those who were left behind by virtue of ongoing joblessness and/or stagnant wages.
Perceived Status Threat.
One way to understand the surprising public acceptance of openly disrespectful statements about women, minorities, and foreigners is as manifestations of preexisting racist and sexist views; in other words, the 2016 election raised the salience of people’s preexisting views on these topics, so that they mattered more to presidential vote choice in 2016 (5). However, as with the economic hardship thesis, the timing of Trump’s rise to power is curious. How is it that the same American public that elected an African American to two terms as US President subsequently elected a president known to have publicly made what many consider to be racist and sexist statements?
A possible explanation is dominant group status threat. When members of a dominant group feel threatened, several well-established reactions help these groups regain a sense of dominance and wellbeing. First, perceived threat makes status quo, hierarchical social and political arrangements more attractive (18). Thus, conservatism surges along with a nostalgia for the stable hierarchies of the past. Perceived threat also triggers defense of the dominant ingroup, a greater emphasis on the importance of conformity to group norms, and increased outgroup negativity (19, 20). It is psychologically valuable to see one’s self as part of a dominant group; therefore, when group members feel threatened, this prompts defensive reactions. It is precisely this form of group threat that may have motivated Trump supporters (21).
Two forms of group status threat are especially prominent in the United States today. For the first time since Europeans arrived in this country, white Americans are being told that they will soon be a minority race (22). The declining white share of the national population is unlikely to change white Americans’ status as the most economically well-off racial group, but symbolically, it threatens some whites’ sense of dominance over social and political priorities. Furthermore, when confronted with evidence of racial progress, whites feel threatened and experience lower levels of self-worth relative to a control group. They also perceive greater antiwhite bias as a means of regaining those lost feelings of self-worth (23).
Second, Americans feel threatened by the increasing interdependence of the United States on other countries. As recent headlines have warned, “The era of American global dominance is over” (24, 25). Whether such headlines are true remains debatable (26), but the perception of a threat to US global dominance is very real. For example, in 2011, 38% of Americans endorsed the view that “[t]he US stands above all other countries in the world” (27); by 2014, that same percentage was down to 28% (27). This drop has been most precipitous among Republicans. The “China threat” in particular looms large in many American minds (28).
Although economists see globalization as mutually beneficial to countries that participate, Americans increasingly feel that they are not getting their fair share. For example, roughly one-half of Americans view trade as something that benefits job availability in other countries at the expense of jobs for Americans (29). To the extent that the public views the global economy in zero-sum terms, the rise of countries, such as China and India, represents a threat to America’s dominant status. Interestingly, whites’ perceptions of antiblack and antiwhite bias also are also zero sum: that is, the less antiblack bias that whites perceive in a given decade, the greater the antiwhite bias that is perceived (30).
Racial status threat and global status threat are technically separable, but they are difficult to distinguish in practice. Because white male Christians are seen as most prototypically “American” (31), they have the most to lose psychologically if they perceive America and/or whites to be no longer dominant. Given that the 2016 election featured discussions of perceived threats from religious minorities, racial minorities, and foreigners, this generalized sense of threat is likely to have spilled over into multiple arenas. For white Americans, the political consequences of racial and global status threat seem to point in similar directions with respect to issue positions: opposition to immigration, rejection of international trade relationships, and perceptions of China as a threat to American wellbeing.
For two of these three issues—trade and China—trends in public opinion clearly support the thesis of increased threat between 2012 and 2016 (32, 33). For immigration, however, multiple sources instead suggest increasingly supportive attitudes among Republicans and Democrats alike (34). Likewise, to the extent that immigration is perceived as threatening by Americans, scholars find that it is due to the increased economic burden Americans believe immigrants place on the social welfare system rather than a threat to white status (35). Nonetheless, it remains possible that the heightened salience of immigration contributed to Trump’s victory without increasing actual opposition to immigration, consistent with previous findings attributing preference changes to the increased salience of immigration (3).
How plausible is status threat—whether from a sense of declining racial or global status—as an explanation for changes in voting behavior in 2016? With respect to global status threat, the received wisdom from decades of research has long been that “voting ends at water’s edge.” In other words, outside of foreign wars, international affairs are assumed to have little if any electoral importance (36). However, economic globalization has gained prominence in recent years (37). Racial status threat makes perfect sense occurring immediately after 8 y of leadership by America’s first African American president. It is not racism of the kind suggesting that whites view minorities as morally or intellectually inferior, but rather, one that regards minorities as sufficiently powerful to be a threat to the status quo. When members of a dominant group experience a sense of threat to their group’s position, whether it is the status of Americans in the world at large or the status of whites in a multiethnic America, change in people’s sense of their group’s relative position produces insecurity.
Despite multiculturalism’s ostensible goal of inclusion, experimental studies suggest that it is experienced by whites as a form of status threat that produces more negative attitudes toward outgroups of all kinds (38). Simply reminding whites about their impending loss of majority status produces feelings of threat in experimental studies (39), particularly among those who think of the “American way of life” as being white (40). Consequences of exposure to information about impending majority–minority status have included increased conservatism and greater identification with the Republican Party (41) and the Tea Party (42), increased opposition to diversity (41), greater explicit and implicit racial bias, and a stronger preference for interacting with one’s own race (43). In one study, reminding participants about the upcoming racial shift also produced increased support for Trump among both Democrats and Republicans in a white convenience sample (44).
