Kenneth MacWilliams, a pollster and graduate student at the University of Massachusetts, reports that only two variables predict support for Donald Trump among Republican voters. Gender, age, income, education, religiosity and even ideology failed to predict Trump support. The two significant predictors were authoritarianism and fear of terrorism, and authoritarianism was “far more significant.”
MacWilliams’ article is light on details, but the poll was a national sample of 1800 registered voters conducted by UMass during the last five days of December.
What is authoritarianism? The theory of the authoritarian personality has its origin in the aftermath of World War II when social scientists were attempting to account for anti-Semitism in Europe. It was originally measured using the California F-Scale, in which “F” stands for fascism.
The most extensive research program on authoritarianism was conducted by Bob Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba in the 1980s and 1990s. He found that authoritarianism is best described by three attitudinal clusters:
- Authoritarian submission refers to a high degree of obedience to authorities that are regarded as legitimate in the society in which you live.
- Authoritarian aggression refers to hostile behavior directed at disliked outgroups, provided that such aggression is sanctioned by authorities.
- Conventionalism refers to a high degree of conformity to behavioral norms endorsed by religious and political authorities.
Combining the first two clusters, authoritarians are said to have a bicyclist’s personality. They bow to those they perceive to be above them in the social structure, while kicking those they think are below them. Not surprisingly, people high in authoritarianism tend to be politically conservative, religious, and prejudiced against racial and ethnic minorities and homosexuals. They favor more punitive sentences for criminals and are more accepting of covert government surveillance such as illegal wiretaps. Their preferences for strong leaders and for the exclusion of outsiders are consistent with their support for Trump. MacWilliams found that high authoritarians were more likely to support deporting immigrants that are in the country illegally, prohibiting Muslims from entering the country, closing mosques, and establishing a national data base to track all Muslims.
MacWilliams measured authoritarianism with four questions about child rearing. Participants were asked whether it is more important for children to be respectful or independent, obedient or self-reliant, well-behaved or considerate, and well-mannered or curious. The first of each pair is the authoritarian option. While these questions may seem remote from politics, I see this as a strength of the current survey, since these items are largely independent of any campaign issues.
Political scientists Marc Hetherington and Jonathan Weiler found that, while at one time authoritarianism was unrelated to party affiliation, over the last several decades white authoritarians have gravitated to the Republican party while non-authoritarians have shifted into the Democratic party. This may be a result of the Democrats’ support for civil rights and Republicans’ “Southern strategy” of using coded racial messages to appeal to white Southern voters. In the current survey, 49% of Republican voters scored among the top quarter of authoritarians, over twice as many as the number of Democratics.
In 2008, authoritarianism predicted preference for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama among Democratic voters. However, in the current survey, authoritarianism did not predict Democrats’ candidate preference. (Maybe not enough Democrats are aware that Bernie Sanders is Jewish yet.)
Hetherington and Suhay found that the threat of terrorism is associated with greater support for an aggressive foreign policy and the suspension of civil liberties among low authoritarians, but not among high authoritarians, since they prefer these policies regardless of the threat level. In other words, the threat of terrorism leads low authoritarians to act like high authoritarians. There is a very real danger that terrorist attacks in the U. S. and Europe could influence the 2016 presidential election.
Altemeyer reports a small study in which he had two groups of about 65 participants each—one consisting of high authoritarians and the other of low authoritarians—play the Global Change Game, a complex 3-hour simulation of the Earth’s future in which players represent different continents. In the low authoritarian simulation, no wars or threats of wars occurred and there was considerable international cooperation. However, the the high authoritarian game, countries responded to the same crises by increasing their arms and the session ended with a nuclear war in which the total population of the Earth was declared dead.
Of course, it was only a game.
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