United States: Racial Resentment, Negative Partisanship, and Polarization in Trump’s America

• Author: Jennifer McCoy,Alan Abramowitz
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716218811309
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: III. Democratic Careening and Gridlock

811309ANN
THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMYUnited States
research-article2018
Growing racial, ideological, and cultural polarization
within the American electorate contributed to the
shocking victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 presi-
dential election. Using data from American National
election Studies surveys, we show that Trump’s unusu-
ally explicit appeals to racial and ethnic resentment
attracted strong support from white working-class vot-
ers while repelling many college-educated whites along
with the overwhelming majority of nonwhite voters.
United States: However, Trump’s campaign exploited divisions that
have been growing within the electorate for decades
Racial
because of demographic and cultural changes in
American society. The 2016 presidential campaign also
reinforced another longstanding trend in American
Resentment, electoral politics: the rise of negative partisanship, that
is voting based on hostility toward the opposing party
Negative
and its leaders. we conclude with a discussion of the
consequences of deepening partisan and affective
polarization for American democracy and the percep-
Partisanship, tions by both experts and the public of an erosion in its
quality.
and Polarization Keywords: polarization; Donald Trump; 2016 presi-
in Trump’s
dential election; political parties; realign-
ment
America
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presi-
dential election was one of the most
shocking upsets in American electoral history.
Perhaps more than any presidential candidate
since George wallace in 1968, and certainly
By
more than any major party candidate in the
ALAN AbRAmOwITz
past 60 years, Donald Trump’s candidacy rein-
and
forced some of the deepest social and cultural
JeNNIfeR mccOy
Alan Abramowitz is Alben W. Barkley Professor of
Political Science at Emory University. As a specialist
in American elections, voting behavior, and public
opinion, he has authored or coauthored seven books,
dozens of contributions to edited volumes, and more
than 50 articles in political science journals. His most
recent book is The Great Alignment: Race, Party
Transformation and the Rise of Donald Trump (Yale
University Press 2018).
correspondence: polsaa@emory.edu
DOI: 10.1177/0002716218811309
ANNALS, AAPSS, 681, January 2019 137

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THe ANNALS Of THe AmeRIcAN AcADemy
divisions within the American electorate—those based on race and religion.
Nevertheless, it was, in many ways, the natural outgrowth of the racial, cultural,
and ideological realignment that has transformed the American party system and
the American electorate since the 1960s. Divides between a shrinking white
majority and fast-growing nonwhite minority; values, morality, and lifestyles; and
views about the proper role and size of government have been mirrored in the
political parties (Abramowitz 2018).
The movement of white working class voters from the Democratic camp to the
Republican camp has been going on since at least 1964, when Lyndon Johnson
firmly aligned the Democratic Party with the cause of civil rights for African
Americans. The movement of white evangelicals and other religious conserva-
tives has been going on since at least 1980, when Ronald Reagan and the
Republican Party came out for the repeal of Roe v. wade.1
These voter shifts and the Southern Democratic political party realignment in
the 1970s and 1980s led to increased party polarization in the 1990s and 2000s as
Americans sorted into more ideologically homogeneous political parties, per-
ceived the parties as growing further apart on policies, and their representatives
in congress voted in more lock-step party unity roll-call votes (campbell 2016;
Pew Research 2016). within the electorate, the growing affective polarization
(sympathy to the in-party and antipathy toward the out-party) accelerated after
barack Obama was elected in 2008 as the first African American biracial presi-
dent, giving voice to an underrepresented minority with a long history of
discrimination.
Obama’s presidency disappointed those who hoped that the United States had
entered a postracial political era. Instead, political scientists determined that
racial resentment, ethno-nationalism, and racial prejudice played a major role in
predicting voting choice among whites in the next two presidential elections,
costing Obama votes in his second election in 2012 and lending votes to Trump
in 2016 (Abramowitz 2016; Knuckey and Kim 2015; morgan and Lee 2017;
Tesler 2016).
Obama’s election also spurred a counter-mobilization of white, conservative,
and evangelical voters in the Tea Party movement. The early Tea Party move-
ment expressed anger and resentment at the distributive injustice of welfare
programs for “undeserving” immigrants, minorities, and youth, while favoring
entitlement programs like Social Security and medicare for “hard-working”
Americans (Skocpol and williamson 2016).
Six years later, the reaction to the growing racial, ethnic, religious, and gender
diversity of the American electorate produced a surprising win for Donald
Trump, whose campaign rhetoric was starkly polarizing and anti-establishment,
dividing the country between “Us”—the “real” Americans who hungered for a
return to an idealized past when industrial jobs provided for upward mobility and
Jennifer McCoy is a professor of political science at Georgia State University. As a specialist
in comparative politics and democratization, she has coordinated international research on
political polarization and democratic consequences. Her most recent book is International
mediation in Venezuela (with Francisco Diez; United States Institute of Peace 2011).

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UNITeD STATeS
139
white males were in charge in the workplace and the family, and “Them”—the
immigrants, minorities, and liberal elites who had wrought an “American car-
nage.”2 Trump’s victory spawned another grass-roots counter-mobilization, this
time on the Left and among college-educated women, who marched and ran for
political office in massive numbers.
The U.S. story thus reflects the dynamics of severe polarization laid out in the
introduction to this volume and in mccoy, Rahman, Somer (2018). The empow-
erment of new minority groups in the form of barack Obama’s election rein-
forced a sense of loss and disempowerment by white working-class voters whose
economic base was shifting in a globalized economy and whose previously domi-
nant social status was being challenged by the growing diversity of the country in
terms of race and ethnicity, gender roles, and sexual orientation. Their sense of
injury and injustice was exploited by Trump, who employed a populist polarizing
message casting blame on the “nefarious” washington elites working against the
“virtuous” people, giving permission to his supporters to express their resentment
and anger even, at times, in violent ways at some of his campaign rallies. As an
outsider candidate, Trump masterfully articulated and reinforced the existing
divides in the electorate, but did not create them. He appealed to the camp who
viewed the effects of the demographic and social changes of the last half-century
as mostly negative, as opposed to those in the other camp who viewed them posi-
tively (Abramowitz 2018).
Deepening racial, cultural, and ideological divides within the American elec-
torate and the dramatic increase in negative affect toward the opposing party and
its leaders made it possible for Donald Trump to win the 2016 presidential elec-
tion despite having the highest negatives of any major party nominee in the his-
tory of public opinion polling. Trump first won the Republican nomination over
the opposition of virtually the entire GOP establishment by playing to the anger
and frustration of a large segment of the Republican electorate with the party’s
leaders for not delivering on campaign promises to reverse the policies of barack
Obama—promises that were clearly not realistic to begin with. That anger and
frustration was fueled by alarm over changes in American society and culture,
including, especially, the growing visibility and influence of racial and ethnic
minorities (Ingraham 2016).
In the Republican primaries, Donald Trump’s reputation as the nation’s most
prominent advocate of birtherism3 (barbaro 2016), his attacks on mexican immi-
grants and muslims and his promise to “make America great again” by renegoti-
ating trade deals and bringing back lost manufacturing jobs resonated most
strongly with white, working-class voters. However, the appeal of his message was
by no means limited to the economically marginalized. many relatively affluent
whites found Trump’s promise to reverse barack Obama’s policies and his attacks
on the washington political establishment appealing (Silver 2016). At the same
time, however, Trump’s racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic comments, as well
as his attacks on the media and on leaders of both major parties turned off a large
number of voters, especially racial minorities and college-educated white women.
even after winning the Republican nomination, Trump’s unfavorable ratings
remained far higher than his favorable ratings (Lauter 2016).

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THe ANNALS Of THe AmeRIcAN AcADemy
Two powerful trends affecting the American electorate further contributed to
Donald Trump’s rise and to his eventual victory in the 2016 presidential election:
the politicization of racial resentment among...